A little while back we released version 7.15 of Quick PDF Library, which included an exciting new feature: support for creating and manipulating GeoPDF dictionaries.

For anyone who hasn’t come across the published GeoPDF extension to PDF before, it is used to present GIS and mapping data in a standard PDF.

The new GeoPDF related functions in Quick PDF Library are:

• AddLGIDictToPage
• GetPageLGIDictCount
• GetPageLGIDictContent
• DeletePageLGIDict

For some examples of GeoPDF enabled PDFs, check out the GeoPDF gallery.

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The current version of Quick PDF Library isn’t fully compatible with Delphi 2010, however, we’re working on a new compatible version which should be ready by the end of the year.

Free Upgrade

The upgrade to the Delphi 2010 compatible version of our PDF SDK will be free for all owners of a version 7.x license. For any customers who purchase a full license or an upgrade for version 7.x now, you will also receive a free upgrade to the Delphi 2010 compatible version when it’s released.

Yes, it does.

A few of us here at Debenu have taken the plunge and replaced Windows Vista on our primary machines with Windows 7. Quick PDF Library works perfectly on this new OS — as we already knew from earlier testing — and the general experience with Windows 7 has been great so far. It gets a big thumbs up from us.

Quick PDF Library 7.16 has been released and is now ready for download from the updates page. The new version contains over twenty new functions, important bug fixes and a number of customer-requested feature enhancements, such as the ability to output PDFs as TIFFs and the ability to insert, append and count columns and rows in tables. Plus much more.

New Features and Improvements

• New! GetObjectCount function
• New! GetObjectCount function
• New! GetObjectSource function
• New! DAOpenFromStream function
• New! DASaveToStream function
• New! DAGetObjectCount function
• New! DAGetObjectSource function
• New! DAGetFormFieldCount function
• New! DAGetFormFieldValue function
• New! AppendTableRows function
• New! AppendTableColumns function
• New! InsertTableRows function
• New! InsertTableColumns function
• New! GetTableRowCount function
• New! GetTableColumnCount function
• New! AppendTableRows function
• New! AppendTableColumns function
• New! FontFamily function
• New! DeleteAnnotation function
• New! CloneOutlineAction function
• New! GetActionType function
• New! GetOutlineActionID function
• New! GetAnnotActionID function
• TIFF images optionally loaded using GDI+
• TIFF output added to renderer
• File names in link annotations (eg. AddLinkToFile) can now be Unicode (/UF key used in file spec dictionary)
• NewCustomPrinter bug fix
• HTML text font size bug fix
• Delphi 2009 string cast bug fix
• Fixed bug signing a PDF produced by Word 2007
• Fixed bug with RenderDocumentToFile page number substitution
• New pixel offset mode for rendering images to eliminate white lines
• C# DLL wrapper handles unicode filenames correctly
• Fixed memory leak bug: rendering documents with many large images
• Fixed memory leak bug in DLL allocation
• Bug fix for PDFs with comments in the cross reference stream
• Improvements to GetPageLGIDictContent
• Bug fix AddSubsettedFont
• AddToFileList now supports Unicode file names

Free Upgrade

Version 7.16 is a minor update and therefore all existing version 7.x license owners are entitled to a free upgrade. Owners of older versions of Quick PDF Library can upgrade online here for $149.40.

Discuss The New Version

We’re proud of the community that has formed around Quick PDF Library, so we’d like to encourage new users to join in the fun and discuss the latest version of Quick PDF Library over at QuickPDF.Porg.

P.S. In version 7.17 we’ll be introducing much improved support for EMF/WMF files. Stay tuned!

Why is a PDF SDK necessary? Why can’t I write the necessary code myself?

This isn’t a question we often get — generally speaking, if a developer has contacted us, it’s because they already know the answer. But it is a question that I quite frequently see on the developer Q & A site, StackOverflow.com.

Some programmers — and lets be fair, managers — are notorious for having a do-it-yourself attitude. This in itself isn’t a bad quality, in fact, in a lot of cases, it’s a great quality, but there are other times when it’s more of a hindrance than a benefit.

Lets look at adding PDF functionality to an application, as an example. PDF is an ISO standard and the PDF reference, which describes very aspect of the PDF format, is freely available online. Anyone can download the PDF reference, decipher it and then build their own PDF library to handle their PDF needs.

But most don’t.

The reason is pretty simple: the PDF specification is a large and complex document and it’s contents aren’t easily deciphered. Reading and understanding the entire PDF specification, or even more than just a small bit, takes more than a casual weekend — indeed it can take years to fully understand the full scope of the format. What’s more, not all PDFs are created in 100% accordance with the PDF specification. Due to the high number of PDF producers available, there is a lot of poorly constructed PDFs floating around — which you’ll have to account for if you’re creating a serious business application. And unfortunately, this is quite a time consuming task.

All of this means that unless your in the business of developing complete PDF solutions, it’s probably not worth your time or money to go it alone and develop an in-house solution, when you could simply purchase a third-party library for a few hundred dollars and save yourself hours, and hours, and hours of work.