DOC: CMaps

docs/dev/cmaps.md

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+# CMaps
+
+Looking at the cmap of "crazyones":
+
+```bash
+pdftk crazyones.pdf output crazyones-uncomp.pdf uncompress
+```
+
+You can see this:
+
+```text
+begincmap
+/CMapName /T1Encoding-UTF16 def
+/CMapType 2 def
+/CIDSystemInfo <<
+  /Registry (Adobe)
+  /Ordering (UCS)
+  /Supplement 0
+>> def
+1 begincodespacerange
+<00> <FF>
+endcodespacerange
+1 beginbfchar
+<1B> <FB00>
+endbfchar
+endcmap
+CMapName currentdict /CMap defineresource pop
+```
+
+## codespacerange 
+
+A codespacerange maps a complete sequence of bytes to a range of unicode glyphs.
+It defines a starting point:
+
+```text
+1 beginbfchar
+<1B> <FB00>
+```
+
+That means that `1B` (Hex for 27) maps to the unicode character [`FB00`](https://unicode-table.com/en/FB00/) - the ligature ff (two lowercase f's).
+
+The two numbers in `begincodespacerange` mean that it starts with an offset of
+0 (hence from `1B ➜ FB00`) upt to an offset of FF (dec: 255), hence 1B+FF = 282
+➜ [FBFF](https://www.compart.com/de/unicode/U+FBFF).
+
+Within the text stream, there is
+
+```text
+(The)-342(mis\034ts.)
+```
+
+`\034 ` is octal for 28 decimal.

docs/dev/pdf-format.md

@@ -99,3 +99,15 @@ Table 3.13 of the PDF Reference 1.7, e.g. `/Root` and `/Size` (both are required
     * `R` is the keyword that indicates that the object is a reference to the
       catalog dictionary.
 * `/Size` (integer) contains the total number of entries in the files xref table.
+
+
+## Reading PDF files
+
+Most PDF files are compressed. If you want to read them, first uncompress them:
+
+```bash
+pdftk crazyones.pdf output crazyones-uncomp.pdf uncompress
+```
+
+Then rename `crazyones-uncomp.pdf` to `crazyones-uncomp.txt` and open it in
+our favorite IDE / text editor.

docs/index.rst

@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@ You can contribute to `PyPDF2 on Github <https://github.com/py-pdf/PyPDF2>`_.
 
    dev/intro
    dev/pdf-format
+   dev/cmaps
 
 .. toctree::
    :caption: About PyPDF2