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A new Visual Studio Code extension supporting PDF syntax
[November 30, 2023]

A new Visual Studio Code extension supporting PDF syntax


WINCHESTER, Mass., Nov. 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The PDF Association is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a unique Visual Studio Code "pdf-cos-syntax" extension supporting a wide range of software developers.

This extension extends the popular programming editor with detailed PDF syntax awareness and a rich feature set, designed to support both those learning PDF as a page description language as well as more experienced developers looking for ways to write targeted PDF test files. Although PDF is technically not a pure text format, creating and experimenting with simple PDF files that are text-based is a great way to understand PDF - and adding this extension into the VSCode development environment now makes this even easier.

At a high level, the features of the PDF COS syntax support extension for VSCode include:

  • Color-coded syntax highlighting
  • An outline tree navigation view of the PDF file showing the physical file layout, including incremental updates
  • Basic file problem reporting and highlighting, to help identify invalid files
  • Support fo folding (e.g., collapse/expand) blocks of syntax so you can focus on what's important
  • Auto-completion of first-class key names defined in PDF 2.0
  • Bracket and paired symbol matching
  • Toggling comments on and off for selected lines 
  • Hover hints, to aid understanding
  • "Go-to" functionality to facilitate locating all indirect references to an object, to locate an object from a cross-reference table entry, and to locate the cross-reference entry for an object
  • Snippets, for easy creation of new example PDF files or new objects
  • Various custom commands to make the creation of text-centric PDF files easy

This extension will not provide any rendered views of pages in the PDF, or an interactive PDF viewing experience, as other VSCode extensions already provide this functionality.

The extension's full set of features are documented on its VSCode extension page and in this GitHub repo.


Stay tuned for more results from the PDF Association's multi-year project sponsored by Adobe, Apryse, and Foxit to develop new resources derived from - and enhancing - the PDF specification.

This material is based upon work supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Contract No. HR001119C0079. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Approved for public release.

Press contact

Duff Johnson
PDF Association
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +1 617 283 4226

Cision View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/a-new-visual-studio-code-extension-supporting-pdf-syntax-302001286.html

SOURCE PDF Association


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