iText RUPS

Developed for tech savvy users and based on the iText library, iText RUPS (Reading and Updating PDF Syntax) is a Java application that reads PDF documents and lets you explore its structure, including PDF objects and content streams.

You can find out the number of outlines, pages, forms and objects, and examine the file's console. It comes in handy for debugging and testing PDF documents, as well as for performing low-level manipulation.

As long as you have Java installed on your system, you don't need to set up anything else. The entire application is wrapped in a JAR executable file, which can be placed anywhere on the disk and double-clicked to launch the environment. Worth noting is that, unlike most installers, iText RUPS doesn't make any modifications to your Windows registry.

After dropping a PDF in the main window, the tool puts together its object tree with dictionary information (e.g. creator, creation date, producer), checksum, groups, contents, and other details.

It's possible to navigate pages to learn their specific attributes (e.g. parent, mediabox, resources), as well as to investigate bookmarks, the structure tree, form, XFA, and XRef. If the document contains only plain-formatted text, you can preview it. The stream, XFA and console details are listed on the bottom part of the screen.

The tool was light on system resources usage in our tests, and it didn't hang, crash or display error notifications. It definitely has a lot of perks for debuggers and testers. Nevertheless, iText RUPS could have implemented more intuitive options to make it easier to explore, as well as to attract the attention of less experienced users who are curious about such software.