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Linearize a PDF for faster web loading in Rust

Restructure a PDF so the first page is available before the full file downloads. Known as "Fast Web View" in Acrobat.

Not in the current release. This capability is not part of the published PDFluent SDK; the example below does not compile against the current release. See the changelog for what ships today.
rust
use pdfluent::{PdfDocument, LinearizeOptions};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let mut doc = PdfDocument::open("brochure.pdf")?;

    doc.linearize(LinearizeOptions::default())?;
    doc.save("brochure_linear.pdf")?;

    println!("PDF is now linearized for fast web view");
    Ok(())
}
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Step by step

1

Add PDFluent to your project

Add the pdfluent crate to Cargo.toml.

rust
[dependencies]
pdfluent = "0.9"
2

Open the PDF

Load the document. Linearization rearranges the internal file structure.

rust
use pdfluent::PdfDocument;

let mut doc = PdfDocument::open("catalogue.pdf")?;
3

Configure linearization options

LinearizeOptions lets you control hint tables and resource ordering. The defaults work well for most documents.

rust
use pdfluent::LinearizeOptions;

let opts = LinearizeOptions::default()
    .primary_page_hint_stream(true) // helps browsers fetch only page 1 first
    .reorder_resources_by_page(true);
4

Apply linearization

Call linearize() on the document. The internal structure is rearranged so the first page and its resources appear at the beginning of the file.

rust
doc.linearize(opts)?;

// Verify the result
println!("Linearized: {}", doc.is_linearized());
5

Save the linearized PDF

Write to a new file. Serve this file from your web server with byte-range request support enabled.

rust
doc.save("catalogue_linear.pdf")?;
println!("Ready to serve via HTTP with Range support");

Notes and tips

  • Linearization is only effective when the file is served over HTTP with byte-range requests enabled (Accept-Ranges: bytes).
  • Any modification after linearization (adding pages, annotations, etc.) removes the linearization. Re-linearize before re-serving.
  • Linearization increases file size by a few percent due to added hint tables. The trade-off is faster first-page display.
  • Use is_linearized() to check whether a PDF is already linearized before processing it again.

Why PDFluent for this

Pure Rust

No JVM, no runtime, no DLL dependencies. Ships as a single native binary or WASM module.

Memory safe

Rust's ownership model prevents buffer overflows and use-after-free. No segfaults in PDF parsing.

Runs anywhere

Same code runs server-side, in Docker, on AWS Lambda, on Cloudflare Workers, or in the browser via WASM.

Frequently asked questions

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