PDFsharp specifications

Version 6.1.0

In this article

This article describes technical specifications of PDFsharp Library 6.

Capabilities by build flavor

PDFsharp Core build

The Core build can run on various platforms, including Windows, Linux, MacOS, and others. The default PlatformFontResolver will find some fonts under Windows and WSL and also under some Linux distributions, but to make a portable application, implement IFontResolver in your own FontResolver class that returns all the fonts needed by your application. See Fonts for details.

The Core build supports a few image formats like JPEG, PNG, and Windows BMP. See this topic for details:
Bitmap Images

Other images should be converted to Windows BMP or PNG for use with the Core build.

Please note that images in the PDF file will always be compressed, so converting to BMP instead of PNG will not generally lead to larger PDF files. So if, for example, your image is a 16 color raster image, then converting to BMP with 16 color may lead to a smaller PDF file than converting to a PNG file with 256 colors.

PDFsharp GDI+ build & PDFsharp WPF build

These builds continue to rely on Windows components, either GDI+ or WPF, to import images. See this topic for details:
Bitmap Images

Normally those builds can use all fonts from the Windows Fonts folder, but in some server scenarios access to this folder is restricted. To use fonts that are not installed in the Windows Fonts folder or to make your app work when access to this folder is restricted, implement IFontResolver in your own FontResolver class that returns all the fonts needed by your application. See Fonts for details.

Supported .NET versions

PDFsharp 6.0 compiles against .NET 6 and should also work with higher .NET versions.

PDFsharp 6.1 additionally compiles against .NET Standard 2.0 or .NET 4.7.2 respectively, and should also work with higher .NET Framework versions.

Notes when upgrading from PDFsharp 1.x to PDFsharp 6

Note for users of PDFsharp & MigraDoc Foundation version 1.5: With version 1.5 the packages PDFsharp and PDFsharp-MigraDoc still depended on GDI+ to import images and resolve fonts. To get the same functionality with version 6.0, use either one of the -GDI oder one of the -WPF packages.

Upgrading an existing MigraDoc project is described in Upgrade existing projects to PDFsharp 6.