README.md

May 7, 2026 · View on GitHub

Database in. PDF out. Layout-as-code for high-volume, high-precision PDFs — catalogs, reports, manuals, anything where InDesign would mean fifty thousand clicks. Open source, deterministic, scriptable, in production since 2011.

Real-world performance

Three projects, same binary, same machine (M4 MacBook Air):

# Multi-level TOC, cross-references, PDF bookmarks
$ sp --data produkte.xml --layout katalog.xml
1828 pages rendered in 2m 56s
exit status 0

# Table of contents
$ sp --layout reisebroschuere.xml --data kundendaten.xml
13 pages rendered in 0.54s
exit status 0

# ZUGFeRD invoice with PDF/A-3 validation
$ sp --data facturx.xml --layout zugferd.xml
1 page rendered in 0.21s
exit status 0

Sample brochure spread

_{Sample brochure spread — layout-driven, image cutouts, branded tables, cross-references with page numbers.}

Try it in 60 seconds

Grab a ready-to-run package from https://download.speedata.de/ (extract, set PATH, done — no TeX install, no InDesign license, everything bundled including LuaTeX). Then:

sp new mycatalog && cd mycatalog
sp                # → publisher.pdf

Full setup walkthrough in the installation guide.

Why speedata Publisher

Deterministic. Same data → bit-identical PDF. Reviewable, diff-able, CI-ready.
Scales. 1,000-page catalogs are the normal case, not the stress test.
Layout-as-code. XML layout language with XPath. Anything that takes a thousand clicks in InDesign is one rule here.
Open source. AGPLv3, builds from source, no closed-source dependencies.
Battle-tested. Production use since 2011, hundreds of QA test cases, long-term-support releases.

Think of it as XSL-FO on steroids or server-side InDesign.

Documentation & examples

Manual: https://doc.speedata.de/ — every command, every attribute, both XML parsers, HTML/CSS mode, REST server mode.
Examples repository: https://github.com/speedata/examples
Showcase: https://www.speedata.de/en/#showcase
QA suite: the qa/ directory contains hundreds of self-contained test cases — small, readable, copy-paste-ready.
Architecture: ARCHITECTURE.md
News & changelog: News.md, news.speedata.de

Community & support

Bugs & feature requests: GitHub issues
Commercial support and consulting: speedata.de/imprint
Contributing: fork, branch, PR. Build instructions in BUILDING.md.

License

AGPLv3 — see COPYING.

speedata Publisher uses LuaTeX for PDF generation (GPLv2 or later). LuaTeX is bundled in the release packages; full third-party list in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.

_{Source: https://github.com/speedata/publisher/ · Web: https://www.speedata.de/}