PDF

🛠 High-Fidelity Creation

When generating polished reports:

1. Generate: Use Reportlab (programmatic) or Platypus (templated) as the primary engine.
2. Preview: Convert every page to PNG for inspection:
   • pdftoppm -png -r 150 document.pdf page
3. Inspect: Verify that charts, tables, and typography are sharp and well-aligned.

📋 Common Operations

1. Form Filling

• Identify fillable fields using scripts/extract_form_field_info.py.
• Reference: See references/forms.md for detailed instructions on filling PDF forms.
• Populate fields programmatically and verify using the Render loop.

2. Manipulation (pypdf)

• Merge: Use PdfWriter to combine multiple documents.
• Split: Extract individual pages into new files.
• Secure: Add passwords or watermarks using PdfWriter.encrypt().
• Reference: See references/reference.md for advanced features and JS library alternatives.

3. Extraction (pdfplumber)

• Extract text with layout preservation.
• Extract complex tables directly into Pandas DataFrames for analysis.

💎 Quality Expectations

• Legibility: Text must be readable at 100% zoom; avoid walls of dense text.
• Polish: Maintain intentional visual design—consistent margins and color palettes.
• Verification: Zero defects (black squares, clipped text) permitted in final output.