v17.8.0
plausible/analyticsv17.8.0Jul 1, 2026by github-actions[bot]
AI Summary
OCRmyPDF v17.8.0 significantly improves PDF/A compliance and standard output protection. The default output behavior now produces PDF/A whenever possible, matching OCRmyPDF 16, and includes fixes for non-embedded CID font handling and veraPDF detection.
Key Highlights
- Default output now produces PDF/A when possible
- Protection against stdout corruption by third-party code
- Fixed detection of veraPDF 1.30.0 and newer
- Fixed UnicodeDecodeError for Latin-1 encoded document info
- Added public API function to configure stdout protection
Breaking Changes
- Default path may invoke Ghostscript (slower) for PDF/A conversion
- Non-embedded CID fonts no longer silently corrupt; now produces regular PDF or error
New Features
- New public API function `ocrmypdf.configure_stdout_protection`
- Better handling of non-embedded CID (CJK) fonts
- Protection mechanism for standard output writes
Full Release Notes
- `--output-type auto` (the default) again produces PDF/A whenever it can,
matching OCRmyPDF 16's "PDF/A by default" behavior. It first tries the fast
Ghostscript-free conversion (validated by veraPDF when available) and now
falls back to Ghostscript when that cannot produce PDF/A, only emitting a
regular PDF when even Ghostscript cannot safely convert (for example, an
input with non-embedded CID/CJK fonts, per {issue}`1561`). A consequence is
that the default path may once again invoke Ghostscript, which is slower and
may transcode images; use `--output-type pdf` to skip PDF/A conversion
entirely.
- Fixed detection of veraPDF 1.30.0 and newer: recent builds print JVM
warnings before their version string, which caused OCRmyPDF to report
veraPDF as unavailable and skip the fast PDF/A path.
- OCRmyPDF no longer silently corrupts a non-embedded CID (CJK) text layer when
producing PDF/A ({issue}`1561`). PDF/A requires all fonts to be embedded, so
Ghostscript substitutes and re-embeds non-embedded CID fonts — such as the OCR
text layer Adobe Acrobat adds to scanned CJK documents — which mangles the
text and destroys searchability. OCRmyPDF now detects non-embedded CID fonts
before conversion: with `--output-type auto` (the default) it produces a
regular PDF and preserves the existing text layer, and with an explicit
`--output-type pdfa*` it stops with an error rather than emit corrupted
output. Use `--output-type pdf` to keep the text layer, or `--force-ocr` to
rebuild it with embedded fonts.
- Writing the output PDF to standard output (`ocrmypdf input.pdf -`) is now
protected against corruption at the operating system level. Previously
OCRmyPDF relied on no in-process code — third-party libraries, plugins, or
stray `print()` calls — ever writing to stdout; a single accidental write
would silently corrupt the PDF. The command line program now saves the real
stdout at startup, before plugins are loaded or any worker process/thread is
started, and redirects file descriptor 1 to stderr, so that only OCRmyPDF's
final PDF output can reach stdout. A consequence is that a plugin which
intentionally prints to stdout will have that output redirected to stderr.
- Added the public API function {func}`ocrmypdf.configure_stdout_protection`,
which installs this same protection. Like {func}`ocrmypdf.configure_logging`,
it is optional and intended for callers that want command-line-like behavior;
applications that manage their own standard output should not call it.
- Fixed an uncaught `UnicodeDecodeError` when processing a PDF whose
`/DocumentInfo` dictionary contains a `/Name` key encoded in Latin-1 (or
another non-UTF-8 encoding), such as `/Saks#e5r`. `repair_docinfo_nuls` now
treats such a block as malformed, logs a message, and continues instead of
crashing the pipeline ({issue}`1540`). Current pikepdf releases tolerate these
keys by surrogate-escaping them, but older versions raised while iterating the
dictionary.