I've been wanting to see the insides of a PDF for a while, like, the raw source code of it so I can look at it. Any way of doing that?
4 Answers
If the purpose is just to look into the file, then any simple text editor will do, ex, Notepad. PDF is just a text based format, including embedded content byte streams. Raw PDF looks like this:
>>
/Border [0 0 0]
/Rect [121.02 332.48 363.24 343.64]
/StructParent 1321
/Subtype /Link
/Type /Annot
>>
endobj
64579 0 obj
<<
/Filter /FlateDecode
/Length 5771
>>
stream
Ũn0x/�+�}�ǹ����\֛ bYO�5[��X��W��L��(�������V�A3�C���������u큋_�a��ךm2N�6� ��A��8
�d���NQ⺢GI��G�[��)�̉Y��R�y{R����&�&�;��g�k1���ҋeTC�(W��`���*��(;�AEc<= mnZ+��|T��v
�.��зe�aޞ��V4�b���L����k�Oj.ֿ�y�����kc|I�� ��C�0��Hf�7d�/�z���m��o��A��B��IJ�%�.
!�%f�б���&�ޒ�4Ύ7�l�3���3`�
endstream
endobj
64580 0 obj
<<
/Border [0 0 0]
/Dest <E4AE7DD2769553EF1668>
/Rect [219 648.5 256.8 659.66]
/StructParent 1323
/Subtype /Link
/Type /Annot
>>
What you see are basic COS objects like name, dictionary, stream and so on. All objects are described in PDF 32000 standard, see section 7.3 Objects.
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