Dev Team Builds Rust Binary 'dxpdf' to Replace Headless LibreOffice in Doc Pipelines

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A development team replaced their headless LibreOffice-based DOCX-to-PDF pipeline with a custom open-source tool called dxpdf, a single Rust binary that parses OOXML directly and renders output using Skia. The switch was driven by recurring production problems with LibreOffice, including serialized conversions, process hangs, per-worker profile directory management, and inconsistent output across versions. The new binary converts a 3-page document in 170 ms and a 171-page document in 420 ms on an M3 Max, with font resolution — not document size — identified as the primary performance cost. dxpdf currently supports 74 OOXML features fully, 11 partially, and leaves 12 unimplemented, making it a targeted rather than complete replacement for LibreOffice. The project is open source and designed to run entirely on-premise, requiring no cloud API or external office suite dependency.

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