~/talk

Taking Generators Too Far: Writing a PDF from Scratch in Python

recording removed on YouTubehttps://youtu.be/WqdUOt0TRP0
Talkat PyCon US 2026 · 2026-05-13..05-19· [frontend-architecture]

speaker

name:Arie Bovenberg
bluesky:ariebovenberg.bsky.social

resources

video:https://youtu.be/WqdUOt0TRP0 (removed)
slides:none on file

summary

Claim: a small Python PDF writer streaming every byte using generators produces complete PDFs in constant memory; tools actually used include the standard library deflate compressor for zlib streaming, generator return values to report compressed lengths, and itertools-like pairwise sliding windows to insert cing kerning table adjustments. Surprises: forward references and the XREF offset list force tricks (deferred length objects and a tiny final table), and the result works with one modest exception: a small accumulated XREF index.

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