Tiny hand-composed PDF for unit tests.

tiny.pdf

tiny.txt

%PDF-1.7
1 0 obj               % The list of pages.
<<
  /Type /Pages        % Define the pages in the file.
  /Count 1            % There's just the one.
  /Kids [2 0 R]       % It's defined in object 2.
>>
endobj
2 0 obj               % Definition of our single, simple page
<<
  /Type /Page
  /Parent 1 0 R
  /Resources <<
    /Font <<
      /F0 <<
        /Type /Font
        /BaseFont /Times-Italic
        /Subtype /Type1
      >>
    >>
  >>
  /MediaBox [0 0 600 850]
  /Contents 3 0 R
>>
3 0 obj               % Contents of the page
<< /Length 314 >>
stream
BT                    % Begin text object
  /F0 180 Tf          % Use super-tall 180-point Times-Italic
  30 Tz 40 Tc         % Smush it narrow and space it out a bit
  60 400 Td           % Stick the text about in the middle
  (Page Number 1) Tj  % It'll be the page number
ET                    % End text object
endstream
endobj
4 0 obj               % The page catalog
<<
  /Type /Catalog
  /Pages 1 0 R
>>
endobj
xref
0 0
trailer
<<
  /Root 4 0 R
>>
startxref
984
%%EOF

🎤🔻

 %!PS
 showpage

And that's all you need to ship. To PDF-ize it (if you really need a PDF), run this source through ps2pdf, which also lets you pick a specific PDF version to target. (By way of ps2pdf12 tagged commands or -dCompatibilityLevel switch.) It can also be a one-liner in a Makefile or something:

sample.pdf: sample.ps
	echo -e " %!PS\n showpage" | ps2pdf - - > sample.pdf

(Mine has some software-generated commentary and extraneous metadata, but essentially not worth the effort to try to remove from a one-liner.)