README

PHP PDF library.

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This package is the current evolution of TCPDF, focused on modern PHP workflows and modular library design.

At a glance

Category: Library
Package namespace: \Com\Tecnick\Pdf
Author: Nicola Asuni info@tecnick.com
Copyright: 2002-2026 Nicola Asuni - Tecnick.com LTD
License: GNU LGPL v3 (see LICENSE)
Project website: https://tcpdf.org
Source: https://github.com/tecnickcom/tc-lib-pdf
API docs: https://tcpdf.org/docs/srcdoc/tc-lib-pdf

Description

tc-lib-pdf is a PHP library for dynamically generating PDF documents.

The first fully stable release was 8.1.0. Releases follow semantic versioning:

PATCH: backwards-compatible bug fixes
MINOR: backwards-compatible feature additions
MAJOR: breaking changes

For details, see https://semver.org.

Main features

All standard page formats, custom page formats, custom margins, and units of measure
UTF-8 Unicode and right-to-left language support
TrueTypeUnicode, OpenTypeUnicode v1, TrueType, OpenType v1, Type1, and CID-0 fonts
Font subsetting
SVG support
CSS support
HTML support
JavaScript support
Images, geometric graphics, and transformation methods
Native JPEG, PNG, and SVG support
Image support via GD (GD, GD2, GD2PART, GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, XBM, XPM)
Image support via ImageMagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/formats.php)
1D and 2D barcodes via tc-lib-barcode
JPEG and PNG ICC profiles, Grayscale, RGB, CMYK, spot PDFs, and transparencies
Page common content support (header/footer)
Document encryption up to 256-bit and digital signature certifications
PDF annotations, including links, text, and file attachments
Text rendering modes (fill, stroke, and clipping)
Multiple-column mode
No-write page regions
Bookmarks, named destinations, and table of contents
Text hyphenation
Text stretching and spacing (tracking)
Automatic page breaks, line breaks, and text alignment including justification
Automatic page numbering and page groups
Move and delete pages
Page compression (requires the zlib PHP extension)
XObject templates
Layers and object visibility
PDF/A-1b support

Installation

Install from Packagist:

composer require tecnickcom/tc-lib-pdf

Or in composer.json:

{
    "require": {
        "tecnickcom/tc-lib-pdf": "^8.5"
    }
}

Quick start

Working example scripts are available in the examples directory.

To run examples locally (requires PHP 8.1+):

make x
make server

Then open http://localhost:8971/index.php.

Development

Install development dependencies:

make deps

Show all Make targets:

make help

Run the full quality pipeline before committing:

make qa

Generated artifacts are written to the target directory.

Packaging

The primary distribution channel is Composer, but RPM and DEB packages are also supported for system-level deployment workflows.

Build packages:

make rpm
make deb

Packages are generated under target.

When installed from RPM/DEB, include the library autoloader:

require_once '/usr/share/php/Com/Tecnick/Pdf/autoload.php';

Third-party fonts and licenses

This library may include third-party font files under different licenses.

All PHP files under the fonts directory are covered by the project license (GNU LGPL v3). They contain font metadata only and no binary font payload. These files can also be generated dynamically with the font utilities and TCPDF methods.

Original binary TTF files are renamed for compatibility and compressed with PHP gzcompress into .z files.

License sources:

Prefix free: extracted from GNU FreeFont (GNU GPL v3)
Prefix pdfa: derived from GNU FreeFont (GNU GPL v3)
Prefix dejavu: extracted from DejaVu fonts 2.33 (Bitstream)
Prefix ae: extracted from Arabeyes.org collection (GNU GPL v2)

References:

GNU FreeFont: https://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/
DejaVu: http://dejavu-fonts.org
Arabeyes: http://projects.arabeyes.org/

ICC profile

This project includes the sRGB.icc profile from the Debian icc-profiles-free package: https://packages.debian.org/source/stable/icc-profiles-free

Contact

Nicola Asuni info@tecnick.com

tecnickcom / tc-lib-pdf

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