Quick PDF Library 8 API Changes

Quick PDF Library 8 is a major new version of Quick PDF Library and contains a few changes to the API that were necessary to provide native support for Unicode and to improve the way secured PDF files are handled by the library. We also took this opportunity to rename some functions which used terms that conflicted with terms used by Acrobat.

This document contains a list of items that developers looking to upgrade to Quick PDF Library 8 should pay attention to. Changes to code may be required in order for your projects to compile using the new version.

1. Changed functions definitions

• The LoadFromFile, LoadFromString, LoadFromVariant and LoadFromStream functions now have a Password parameter. Note functionality changes below.
• The ExtractFilePages and GetFileMetadata functions now have a Password parameter.
• All functions that previously returned or accepted 8-bit character strings (either UTF-8 encoded, WinAnsi encoding or unspecified encoding) now use UTF-16 Unicode strings.
• Certain functions continue to accept or return 8-bit data, others have been renamed to more easily facilitate working with binary data.
• All the text drawing functions (such as DrawText, DrawHTMLText) allow the text to be specified using UTF-16 Unicode strings. The fonts automatically convert the text string’s Unicode characters to the appropriate encoding for storing in the content stream.

2. Renamed functions

• The fullowing functions have been renamed due to the changes from 8-bit to 16-bit strings. The change results in two new functions to replace each original function:

• In QPL v7 the term “layer” was used to describe a part of a page’s content stream. This conflicted with Adobe’s use of the term “layer” for the PDF feature known as optional content groups. To avoid confusion, all the layer functions have been renamed:

3. New functions

• GetContentStreamToString and GetContentStreamToVariant have been added to replace the functionality previously provided by the GetPageContent function.
• SetContentStreamFromString and SetContentStreamFromVariant have been added to replace the functionality previously provided by the SetPageContent function.
• SetTextExtractionOptions was added to provide greater contrul over the text extraction functions.
• CheckFileCompliance was added to check for PDF/A compliance along with the GetStringListCount, GetStringListItem functions needed to retrieve the compliance test results.
• SetPDFAMode was added to allow the creation of new PDF/A-1b compliant documents.
• Other new functions include DrawPDF417Symbul, AddTrueTypeSubsettedFont, SetLineDashEx and SetRenderCropType.

4. Removed functions

• The SetAdvancePassword and SetPassword functions have been removed. They are no longer necessary because the LoadFrom* functions now have an additional parameter for specifying the password.

5. Changed functionality

• When the LoadFrom* functions are used to open an encrypted document the objects will be automatically decrypted as necessary. Calls to SetPassword, SetAdvancePassword and Decrypt are no longer necessary to access any parts of an encrypted document. The SaveTo* functions can be used to save an encrypted document and the original encryption will remain in place with any new content automatically encrypted to the existing security settings.
• The LoadFrom* functions now return 1 on success and 0 on failure. In QPL v7 these functions would return 2 if an encrypted document made use of object streams or cross reference streams. This is no longer necessary as these functions have a new password parameter. If the wrong password is given, the LoadFrom* functions will return 0 and the LastErrorCode function will return error code 404.
• The Encrypt and Decrypt functions can still be used to add or remove security and full access to the document is possible even after encryption has been applied.
• In QPL v7, the GetPageContent function returned only a portion of the page’s content stream. The replacement functions GetPageContentToString and GetPageContentToVariant now return the entire content stream of the selected page, not just an individual part.
• Similarly, the SetPageContentFromString and SetPageContentFromVariant functions now set the entire content stream of the selected page, not just an individual part.
• The SecurityInfo function returns the active encryption details even though encrypted object in documents are internally decrypted as needed.
• XMP metadata is now added to new documents and maintained in existing documents. Calling functions like SetInformation will result in the XMP metadata being updated to keep that particular item in the document information dictionary in sync.