pdfkit

A pure-Go, zero-C PDF 1.7 writer with a Go-idiomatic API. It embeds TrueType and OpenType/CFF fonts as subsetted composite fonts, draws vector graphics and text, and places JPEG and raster images. Fonts are parsed and shaped with go-opentype; nothing outside the Go standard library and our own pure-Go libraries is required.

pdfkit is the Go-native counterpart to our Ruby Prawn port (go-ruby-prawn); here the API is Go-idiomatic rather than a gem port.

Features

• Documents — catalog, page tree, cross-reference table and trailer; write to any io.Writer; optional Flate stream compression.
• Graphics — paths (move/line/cubic/rect/close), fill & stroke (nonzero and even-odd), DeviceGray/RGB/CMYK colour, line width/cap/join/miter/dash, CTM transforms (translate/scale/rotate/skew), clipping, q/Q state, and constant-alpha transparency via ExtGState.
• Text — embeds fonts as Type0 (Identity-H) composite fonts with glyph subsetting, a per-glyph /W width array and a /ToUnicode CMap for copy/paste. TrueType glyf → FontFile2 / CIDFontType2 (compact subset with a /CIDToGIDMap stream); CFF/OpenType → FontFile3 / CIDFontType0 with CFF charstring subsetting (only the used glyphs' charstrings are embedded). Char/word spacing, leading, render modes, a simple wrapping helper, and an optional shaped-text API (GSUB/GPOS via go-opentype) for Arabic/Indic/CJK.
• Images — JPEG embedded directly (DCTDecode); PNG and any image.Image rasterised as XObjects (FlateDecode) with an /SMask for alpha.
• Pages — standard sizes (A3/A4/A5/Letter/Legal/Tabloid), portrait/landscape, custom sizes; Pt/Mm/In unit helpers.
• Widget bridge — Page.AddWidget and Page.AddWidgetVector "print" a go-widgets/toolkit widget tree onto a page. AddWidget rasterises the tree and places it as an image XObject — pixel-identical to the screen. AddWidgetVector instead emits PDF vector operators, so fills/strokes stay crisp and text stays selectable, including a TrueType-font widget label's own face embedded as real Type0 text.
• Deterministic — with the zero Options, output has no timestamps and a content-derived /ID, so identical inputs produce byte-identical PDFs.

Install

go get github.com/go-pdfkit/pdfkit

Usage

package main

import (
	"os"

	"github.com/go-pdfkit/pdfkit"
)

func main() {
	ttf, _ := os.ReadFile("font.ttf")
	font, _ := pdfkit.LoadFont(ttf)

	doc := pdfkit.New(pdfkit.Options{Title: "Hello"})
	p := doc.AddPage(pdfkit.A4)

	p.SetFont(font, 24)
	p.Text(pdfkit.Mm(20), p.Height()-pdfkit.Mm(20), "Hello, pdfkit")

	p.SetStrokeColor(pdfkit.RGB8(0x0d, 0x94, 0x88))
	p.SetLineWidth(2)
	p.MoveTo(pdfkit.Mm(20), pdfkit.Mm(20))
	p.LineTo(pdfkit.Mm(190), pdfkit.Mm(20))
	p.Stroke()

	f, _ := os.Create("out.pdf")
	defer f.Close()
	doc.Write(f)
}

Shaped (complex-script) text uses p.TextShaped(x, y, s, features...), which runs the go-opentype shaper so Arabic, Indic and CJK position correctly. The default Text path stays a simple left-to-right cmap mapping.

Printing a widget tree

import "github.com/go-widgets/toolkit"

root := toolkit.NewContainer(toolkit.NewBoxLayout())
btn := toolkit.NewButton("Submit", nil)
btn.Style = toolkit.ButtonProminent
root.AddWidget(btn)
root.AddWidget(toolkit.NewLabel("Status: ready"))

rect := pdfkit.Rect{X: pdfkit.Mm(20), Y: pdfkit.Mm(200), Width: pdfkit.Mm(80), Height: pdfkit.Mm(30)}

// Raster: pixel-identical to the screen, not selectable.
_ = p.AddWidget(root, rect, nil)

// Vector: crisp fills/strokes, selectable text (needs an embedded Font).
rect.Y -= pdfkit.Mm(40)
_ = p.AddWidgetVector(root, rect, &pdfkit.WidgetOptions{Font: font})

WidgetOptions.Scale sets the layout-pixels-per-point ratio (default DefaultWidgetScale, 2); WidgetOptions.Theme selects the toolkit theme (default toolkit.DefaultLight()).

Testing

GOWORK=off CGO_ENABLED=0 go test ./... runs the suite at exact 100% statement coverage. Correctness is checked against an independent parser: generated documents are re-opened with rsc.io/pdf and their structure verified. The embedded TrueType subset is re-parsed with go-opentype and each drawn glyph, resolved through the /CIDToGIDMap, is confirmed contour-identical to the original; the embedded CFF subset is asserted smaller than the whole CFF table and re-parsed so each kept glyph still renders intact. Tests are deterministic and network-free: they use a synthesised TrueType font, a synthesised CFF2 font and a bundled OFL OpenType/CFF font.

Scope and limitations

• Both outline flavours are subsetted: TrueType glyf fonts via go-opentype's SubsetTrueType (compact renumbering + a /CIDToGIDMap stream) and CFF/OpenType fonts via SubsetCFF (charstring subsetting, glyph numbering preserved). All subsetting and the font-descriptor metrics come straight from go-opentype; pdfkit keeps no private sfnt re-parse.
• A CID-keyed CFF or a CFF2 (variable) font cannot be charstring-subsetted by the preserve-numbering path, so it gracefully falls back to embedding the whole CFF/CFF2 table.
• Encryption, tagged/PDF-A, forms and annotations are not yet implemented.

License

BSD-3-Clause — see LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2026 the go-pdfkit/pdfkit authors.