PDF Patcher: Open-Source PDF Editing and Bookmark Utility for Windows

PDF Patcher is a versatile, open-source utility for managing PDF files. It allows users to modify document properties, organize bookmarks, adjust page layouts, and perform batch processing—all while maintaining the original file quality.

Basic Document Editing

• Modify document metadata, page numbering, and internal page links.
• Standardize page dimensions, reorder layouts, or extract and delete specific pages.
• Purge redundant internal data, recompress monochrome images, and remove restrictions on copying or printing.

Bookmark Manager (Includes a built-in reader with support for right-to-left vertical text)

• Batch edit bookmark colors, font styles, target destinations, and zoom levels. Configure bookmarks to link precisely to specific areas of a page.
• Utilize regular expressions or XPath for advanced search-and-replace tasks. Automatically generate bookmarks based on document hierarchy.

Document Creation & Conversion

• Combine multiple PDFs or images into a single document. Retain existing bookmarks or generate new ones from filenames using customizable templates.
• Extract high-quality images at high speeds or convert full PDF pages into image formats.
• Rename files automatically based on metadata. Leverage the Microsoft Office OCR engine to recognize text within images and embed it back into the PDF.

Advanced Features

• Replace or embed fonts to fix character encoding issues (garbled text) during copying; optimize text for Kindle and other e-readers.
• Analyze document structures via a hierarchical tree view. Export PDF data to XML for debugging and inspection.
• Preserve or re-link bookmarks automatically when splitting or merging documents.

Local Setup and Use

PDF Patcher is built on the .NET Framework and utilizes several key libraries:

• iText: Manages PDF parsing, file generation, and font embedding.
• MuPDF: Accessed via P/Invoke to render PDF pages into bitmaps.
• Other Components: Employs ObjectListView for list management, FreeImage for image decoding, and Cyotek ImageBox for page display.

System Requirements

• Operating System: Windows 7 or newer.
• Runtime: .NET Framework 4.0 through 4.8.
• OCR Requirements: Requires the Microsoft Office 2003/2007 Document Imaging (MODI) component.

Build Suggestions

• Development Environment: Visual Studio 2019 or later.
• Required Workloads: ".NET desktop development" and "Desktop development with C++."
• For Visual Studio 2022: It is recommended to update the target framework to .NET Framework 4.8.