zed/crates/pdf_viewer

pdf_viewer: Native PDF Viewer for Zed

A native, high performance PDF viewing engine and GPUI workspace item engineered for Zed.

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0. Architectural Identity & Delivery Model

Important

: This is a native workspace crate, not an installable WASM extension.
As of current Zed versions, Zed's WebAssembly extension API (zed_extension_api) contains no custom UI or file preview surfaces. pdf_viewer is designed as a native crate registered within the Zed workspace (crates/pdf_viewer).

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1. Core Architectural Pillars

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                             PDF_VIEWER CORE PIPELINE                             │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                        │
                      [PDF Document on Disk / Memory Buffer]
                                        │
                                        ▼
                  [Thread Safe Document Handle (`document.rs`)]
                                        │
                                        ▼
             [Async Background Worker Pool (`gpui::Task` / Threads)]
                                        │
                        (Zero UI Thread Blocking Rasterization)
                                        │
                                        ▼
                  [Memory Budgeted LRU Cache (`cache.rs`)]
                                        │
                       (Visible Viewport + 1 Page Margin)
                                        │
                                        ▼
                 [Luminosity Tone Mapping Engine (`ui.rs`)]
                                        │
                       (Inverts White/Black; Preserves Images)
                                        │
                                        ▼
                  [Native GPUI Canvas / Bitmap Painter (`view.rs`)]

1. Zero UI Thread Blocking: PDF parsing and rasterization never execute on GPUI's main render loop. Work is dispatched to background tasks that stream RGBA framebuffers into memory.
2. Viewport Virtualization & LRU Caching: Pages are rasterized on demand for the visible viewport plus a 1 page prefetch margin. Stale or passed by in flight render requests are cancelled during fast scrolls to prevent thread pool starvation.
3. Luminosity Threshold Dark Mode: Unlike simple blanket RGB inversion (which turns photos and charts into negative ghosts), pdf_viewer implements selective tone mapping, remapping near white canvas backgrounds to editor background tones and near black text to theme light text, while preserving saturated color images.
4. Scroll & Zoom Preserving Live Reload: Watches the underlying PDF on disk (via file system notifications) and reloads seamlessly without resetting the user's scroll percentage or zoom level.

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2. Scope Boundaries

• Continuous Scroll & Text Selection: Supports fluid high frame rate document browsing and visual text selection.
• Excluded from initial scope:
  • Interactive PDF form field editing.
• Rationale: Delivering an ultra fast, stutter free viewing experience with zero UI locks takes precedence.

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3. Security Posture & Threat Model

• In Process Parsing: PDF rasterization is performed via Google's native C++ Pdfium engine linked in process with the editor.
• Accepted Risk: Because Pdfium runs in process without sandboxing (for example, without separate process IPC or WebAssembly memory isolation), malformed or malicious PDFs could theoretically trigger memory vulnerabilities in the underlying C++ library.
• Mitigation & Future Hardening: Memory budgets are strictly capped, document handles are isolated behind thread boundaries, and a future sandboxed worker process model is planned for untrusted file browsing.

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4. Repository Layout

crates/pdf_viewer/
├── Cargo.toml               # Native crate manifest
├── README.md                # Architecture & operational guide
├── tests/
│   └── integration_tests.rs # End to end integration tests
└── src/
    ├── pdf_viewer.rs        # Crate entrypoint & exports
    ├── cache.rs             # Memory budgeted generic PageLruCache
    ├── document.rs          # Thread safe PdfDocument handle
    ├── pdfium.rs            # Pdfium engine binding & coordinate normalization
    ├── rasterizer.rs        # Async background rendering pipeline
    ├── settings.rs          # PDF viewer configuration options
    ├── ui.rs                # Toolbar state & action models
    ├── view.rs              # GPUI Render & Workspace Item implementation
    └── watcher.rs           # Live reload file watcher & scroll state

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5. Local Development & Testing

Run unit and integration tests across the caching and rasterization engines:

cargo test -p pdf_viewer