Behind the Pdfium Open source project

You may have seen this news, Google recently launched a new open source project named Pdfium, will become http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/33824.html "> The PDF rendering engine component of the Chrome browser. Pdfium performance is much better than existing open source PDF engines such as Firefox's current PDF solution Pdf.js and Poppler. Therefore, this news not only csdn very fire, also aroused the enthusiastic discussion of the foreign community. The Pdfium project has reduced the Open-source code in the Chrome browser, leaving only the last bastion of the Flash plugin. In particular, it is worth emphasizing that the initial code for the Pdfium project comes from China's well-known PDF technology public Sifu.

We all know that the PDF rendering engine is one of the key components of the PDF-related software and solutions, so why does Fu Xin open its own core technology?

Photo: Chongyu, founder and president of Fu Xin

Bear Yuqian (about Bear Yuqian himself, you can read the "Programmer" magazine 2013 5th "Chinese Power in PDF") for this purpose has been specifically accepted our interview. He first confirmed that the open source was indeed the core of the engine code in the Fu Xin Technology, and adopted a looser new BSD license, that is, you can use the source code or binary form for commercial purposes, as long as the original copyright notice is retained.

This part of the code is relatively low-level and basic, supporting PDF reading, searching, printing and document/form filling, Jim Fuxin Total code volume of about 7%. The technology community can develop a relatively simple PDF reader on this basis, but to provide a complete enterprise-class solution, there is still a lot of work to do, the threshold is not low. Although Fu Xin's free reader has more than 200 million global users, but the company's revenue is mainly dependent on enterprise-class solutions, and 90% from overseas, so open source basic code on the company's business itself is basically not adversely affected.

Figure: Pdfium Project's source code directory, which has a good coding quality, but almost no comment

Bear Yuqian said that before the technical level of Fu Xin has been recognized in the industry, Google, Amazon and other international technology leading companies will be Fu Xin PDF scheme for their core products. But in addition to Fu Xin PDF Reader, outside of the understanding of Fu Xin is not too much. This code becomes the name of open source project chromium part, is to Fu Xin Technology highly recognized, will help promote Fu Xin technology brand. Of course, this is great for open source communities and products. As Peter Kasting, senior engineer at Google Chrome, said: "This is almost certainly the highest quality PDF engine in the open source world, and can now be used as a template for other projects, integrated into other chromium or completely different open source browsers." ”

When it comes to this, bear Yuqian recalls that when he worked with Amazon's Kindle to convince the other that the entire PDF solution and technology had been developed by a Chinese company such as Fu Xin, he had to invite Amazon's engineers to come over to look at the code and eventually win over the technology itself. And get Amazon's strategic investment. Today, with open source projects, any potential partner can Jie Fuxin technology at any point in the open source project, and completely break the trust barrier, which will eventually help the company's business development.

The source is Google-led, because the PDF rendering in Chrome uses the proprietary technology license of Fu Xin, and Google hopes to open source and offer good terms. Fu Xin in the long-term consideration, accepted the Google proposal.

Next, Fu Xin still will continue to devote technical force to support pdfium development. We have seen on the Pdfium project website that three Fu Xin engineers such as Bo Xu Solve and answer various questions. The PDF SDK will also provide more business support and functionality beyond the Pdfium open source project. In addition, Fu Xin will also be in the document cloud storage and other aspects to explore new business model.

Original link: http://www.csdn.net/article/2014-06-23/2820351-Why-Foxit-Open-Sourced-Core-PDF-technologies