PDF Embeds

Drop a PDF into public/ and embed it the way you would embed an image:

![[sample.pdf]]
![[sample.pdf|The handbook]] → the label names it in the header
![[documents/sample.pdf]] → the full path, when the name is not unique

The file is resolved by the same rule as any other embed — bare filename or path relative to public/, and an ambiguous name resolves to nothing rather than to a guess. See Wiki Links.

Here is one:

What the build emits#

Nothing but a link:

<figure class="ezw-pdf" data-ezw-pdf data-name="sample.pdf" data-size="3976">
  <a class="ezw-pdf__fallback" href="/documents/sample.pdf" download>sample.pdf</a>
</figure>

The viewer is mounted into that figure in the browser, and pdf.js — a megabyte of parser — is fetched only once a page turns out to have a document on it. A page without one is exactly as heavy as it was before.

That ordering is also why the fallback is a real link rather than a placeholder: without script, or before the viewer loads, or if it fails to, a reader is given the file itself.

Where it has to stand#

An embed alone in its paragraph becomes the viewer. Written mid-sentence it becomes a link to the file instead — a viewer is a block, and a block cannot sit inside a sentence. So this:

The details are in ![[sample.pdf|the handbook]].

reads as prose, with a download link where the embed was.

Reading it#

The pages are drawn as you reach them rather than all at once, so a hundred-page document opens as fast as a one-page one. The page counter follows the scroll, so it says where you are rather than where you last clicked.

Zoom is a multiple of the width of the column the document was embedded in — 100% means fitted, not actual size — so the fit survives a resize or a trip to full screen, and the reader's own zoom survives with it.

What gets deployed#

pdf.js fetches data files as it meets the need for them: a character map for a document that names one of Adobe's predefined encodings, a font program for one that uses a standard face without embedding it, an image codec for a scan. npm run build stages them into public/pdfjs/ — but only when the wiki actually contains a PDF, so a wiki without one deploys nothing extra.