ZLIB-FLATE(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay so this is the ZLIB-FLATE(1) page from the User Commands manual, and the star of the show is zlib-flate — a raw zlib compression program. That's the whole name, no cap.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

zlib-flate -compress | -uncompress

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Hii bestie, so zlib-flate is part of the qpdf package — yes, that qpdf. It reads from standard input and writes to standard output, either compressing or uncompressing whatever you feed it, using raw zlib compression. It's giving tiny little compression goblin, but make it useful.

You can use it to uncompress or compress raw PDF streams, or any other data that's compressed with raw zlib compression. The program is provided primarily as a debugging tool, though it could be used for other purposes too — like being called from a script that creates simple PDF files. Main character energy for a debug utility, honestly.

⚠️ bestie, do not use this as a general purpose compression tool. For real. Use something like gzip(1) instead. zlib-flate is not trying to be that girl.

For the full tea about qpdf, please see the qpdf manual, which can be found at https://qpdf.readthedocs.io. (Yes, that URL is exact — copy it, don't retype it, iykyk.)

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• qpdf(1)
• gzip(1)

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that's the whole page, babe — zlib-flate from qpdf version 12.4.2. The footer had no date listed, so I'm not inventing one; that's the receipt. 💜🎀