Sun's SwingLabs is releasing a 100% Java library which can parse PDF files and draw them to the screen. Named the SwingLabs PDF Renderer, and hosted at pdf-renderer.dev.java.net, it uses the same license as the rest of SwingLabs - LGPL. Soon to be an ISO spec, PDF is the standard way of exchanging non-interactive documents on the web.

The SwingLabs PDF Renderer was originally written in 2003 by researchers at Sun Labs for an internal collaboration tool called Sun Labs Meeting Suite. It was originally targeted at output from OpenOffice, and so can support most OpenOffice PDF exports.

Sun engineer Joshua Marinacci says: "Several of us inside the desktop Java team here at Sun have been working hard on getting this released and now it's finally here."

"Go check it out at pdf-renderer.dev.java.net." he adds. 

PDF is the standard way of exchanging non-interactive documents on the web, Marinacci reminds.  Everything from tax forms to clip art can be stored in PDFs. Mac OSX makes heavy use of PDF both as an asset format (the many widget images found in Aqua) and also as an ideal archive format using AppleScript workflows. PDF is everywhere.

"Once a PDF is created you know with great certainty that it will display and print exactly as you want on any platform," he says, adding:

"Hmm. Write a PDF once and run it anywhere? Sounds like a good fit for Java! Combined with PDF writing libraries (like iText), you can do pretty much anything you want with PDFs."