June 7, 2011
Quick PDF Library Lite 7.25, our free PDF SDK, has been released and is now ready for download from the Quick PDF Lite page.
Quick PDF Lite is a free cut-down version of Quick PDF Library. It includes functionality that lets you perform basic operations such as draw text or images onto a PDF. The new 7.25 version introduces a new function — RotatePage — which lets you rotate pages in a PDF.
Quick PDF Library Lite contains only a small percentage of the overall functions available in Quick PDF Library so if you are looking for a comprehensive PDF solution for your development needs, download the 30 day trial of the commercial version of Quick PDF Library.
Update: the information in this post has been superseded by the information from this post: Device context handles and signed/unsigned integer. It is no longer required to use unsigned integers with the ActiveX edition, this is handled internally by the library.
In version 7.25 of Quick PDF Library we made a change to the API which made the use of unsigned integers necessary. Unfortunately not all versions of programming languages support unsigned integers. In this particular case Visual Basic 6 and earlier versions do not support unsigned integers, while Visual Basic .NET and newer versions do.
Although VB6 was released over 10 years ago it still has a strong following and quite a few VB6 programmers use Quick PDF Library. This being the case we’ve come up with an easy workaround which will enable VB6 programmers to continue using all of the functions in Quick PDF Library.
We’re now providing a TLB file along with the ActiveX edition that handles the unsigned integers. The TLB file is only used at compile time so you won’t need to distribute it with your executable, but you will need to distribute the ActiveX as per usual.
The TLB file for Quick PDF Library 7.25 can be downloaded from here and will be included in all future installers.
Instructions for using the TLB file:
- Register the ActiveX on your machine as per usual
- Open your VB6 project
- Go to Project > References > Browse…
- Add the ‘QuickPDFAX0725VB.tlb’ file
- Compile
As you are adding the TLB file as the reference it is not necessary to add the ActiveX file as a project reference because the TLB file interfaces with the ActiveX through the registry.
Please note: if you do not use the GetCanvasDC, DARenderPageToDC or RenderPageToDC functions then you won’t run into any issues if you choose not to use the TLB file. The unsigned integers are currently only used with these functions.
June 3, 2011
The final version of Quick PDF Library 7.25 has been released and is ready for download from our updates page. This version includes numerous bug fixes, enhancements and new functions. As you can see from the list below, upgrading to version 7.25 will be a great decision for many Quick PDF users, especially those who use our PDF SDK for rendering.
Download 7.25 from our Product Updates page
Release Notes
Enhancements
- Added support for CCITT images with /Indexed color space
- Improvements to EMF import font scaling
- Improved reading of CID font encoding
- Documents with malformed trailers are now handled gracefully
- Reduced memory consumption with CanvasDC functions
- Added support for CCITT images with EncodedByteAlign encoding
- Documents with malformed page tree nodes are now processed
- Improvements to accuracy of text extraction
- Image resolution can now be read from certain BMP images
- Improved text alignment with certain CFF fonts
- Added support for CCITT images with the EndOfLine flag
- CMap parser now supports variable length codes
- Memory reduction on image decoding
- Metafile import now compresses images
- RenderPageToDC and DARenderPageToDC now renderer directly to the device context
- DARenderPageToDC now honours the values set using SetRenderDCOffset
- Certain TIFF images are now added directly without needing decompression
- More improvements to accuracy of text extraction
- Image import now includes support for RGB palette LZW TIFF images
- Image import now includes support for RGB palette Packbits TIFF images
- Radio button options can now be deleted Renderer output to EMF+ format now uses CreateCompatibleDC(0)’
- Changed co-ordinate order of GetAnnotQuadPoints and SetAnnotQuadPoints to match GetPageText
- Added support for flate compressed images with /Indexed /DeviceN color space
- GDI+ image smoothing now turned off by default when drawing images
- Metafile import handles all WinAnsi Unicode characters without creating subsetted fonts
New functions
- GetEmbeddedFileID
- NormalizePage
- DARemoveUsageRights
- RemoveUsageRights
- DrawImageMatrix
- SetObjectSource
- SetRenderDCErasePage
- SetMarkupAnnotStyle
Bug fixes
- ExtractPages, CopyPageRanges and ExtractPageRanges now handle inherited resources
- DrawDataMatrixSymbol now defaults to black if the fill color has not been set
- DrawDatamatrixSymbol correctly encodes double digits
- Resources are correctly freed during EMF+ output
- Corrected page indexing for DAFindPage
- Outlines are correctly appended during document merging
- Annotations now drawn independently of page transformation matrix
- Improvements to image decoding to prevent inverted images
- Image indexing bug removed from the renderer image caching system
- NewFormField returns a correct result even for fields with duplicate field names
- Improved error handling during image extraction
- Improved TIFF tag reading
- Renderer handles missing resources during color space lookup
- Improvement to text extraction
- Eliminated a possible divide by zero for DPI values in PNG images
- Renderer checks for /XObject dictionary type now allows an empty value
- HTML text drawing functions now retain list item state between breaks
- Corrected quad points order for text markup annotations
- SetAnnotQuadPoints now correctly sets the values without crashing
- Added support for OpenType fonts with CFF outlines stored in /TrueType font dictionaries
Feedback! Any feedback large or small is appreciated. We’ll shortly be planning the next round of exciting new features for Quick PDF Library, so we’d really like to know what you want to see added to the SDK. Don’t be shy, email us at support@quickpdflibrary.com and have your say.
May 30, 2011
We have just updated the samples page with a package of Perl samples to use with the ActiveX edition of Quick PDF Library.
Perl will only work with Quick PDF Library on Windows, though we hope to provide a cross-platform solution in the future.
If there are any other programming languages that you would like to see some samples for, leave a comment!
May 19, 2011
Quick PDF Library 7.25 beta 3 has been released and is ready for download and testing. This new beta includes updates to the CMap parser, improved memory handling for image decoding and various other updates to the library.
This beta release also includes the new Quick PDF Library Developer Guide that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago.
The 7.25 beta 3 installer can be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
Enhancements
- Added support for CCITT images with /Indexed color space
- Improvements to EMF import font scaling
- Improved reading of CID font encoding
- Documents with malformed trailers are now handled gracefully
- Reduced memory consumption with CanvasDC functions
- Added support for CCITT images with EncodedByteAlign encoding
- Documents with malformed page tree nodes are now processed
- Improvements to accuracy of text extraction
- Image resolution can now be read from certain BMP images
- Improved text alignment with certain CFF fonts
- Added support for CCITT images with the EndOfLine flag
- New Quick PDF Library Developer Guide
- CMap parser now supports variable length codes (beta 3)
- Memory reduction on image decoding (beta 3)
- Metafile import now compresses images (beta 3)
New functions
- GetEmbeddedFileID
- NormalizePage
- DARemoveUsageRights
- RemoveUsageRights
- DrawImageMatrix (beta 3)
Bug fixes
- ExtractPages, CopyPageRanges and ExtractPageRanges now handle inherited resources
- DrawDataMatrixSymbol now defaults to black if the fill color has not been set
- DrawDatamatrixSymbol correctly encodes double digits
- Resources are correctly freed during EMF+ output
- Corrected page indexing for DAFindPage
- Outlines are correctly appended during document merging
- Annotations now drawn independently of page transformation matrix
- Improvements to image decoding to prevent inverted images
- Image indexing bug removed from the renderer image caching system (beta 3)
- NewFormField returns a correct result even for fields with duplicate field names (beta 3)
- Improved error handling during image extraction (beta 3)
Feedback! Any feedback large or small is appreciated. We’ll shortly be planning the next round of exciting new features for Quick PDF Library, so we’d really like to know what you want to see added to the SDK. Don’t be shy, email us at support@quickpdflibrary.com and have your say.
May 11, 2011
ARTS PDF Workshop, a Microsoft Excel add-on that lets you retrieve, manipulate, and print PDF information quickly and easily, has been upgraded to use Quick PDF Library as its core PDF engine. In addition the add-on is now also 100% free.
ARTS PDF is a sister business division of Quick PDF, which are both owned by Debenu.
ARTS PDF Workshop lets you view and update the properties of batches of PDF documents, including document info (title, author, subject and keywords), as well as document open options and security. It is a great tool for batch updating multiple PDF files at once.
The Excel add-on can be downloaded from the ARTS PDF Workshop page on www.artspdf.com.
May 5, 2011
Quick PDF Library 7.25 beta 2 has been released and is ready for testing. This new beta includes several exciting bug fixes for the renderer related to CCITT images and JBIG2 compression, plus new functions and many other enhancements and bug fixes.
This beta release also includes the new Quick PDF Library Developer Guide that we mentioned here yesterday.
The 7.25 beta 2 installer can be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
Enhancements
- Added support for CCITT images with /Indexed color space
- Improvements to EMF import font scaling
- Improved reading of CID font encoding
- Documents with malformed trailers are now handled gracefully
- Reduced memory consumption with CanvasDC functions
- Added support for CCITT images with EncodedByteAlign encoding
- Documents with malformed page tree nodes are now processed
- Improvements to accuracy of text extraction
- Image resolution can now be read from certain BMP images
- Improved text alignment with certain CFF fonts
- Added support for CCITT images with the EndOfLine flag
- New Quick PDF Library Developer Guide
New functions
- GetEmbeddedFileID
- NormalizePage
- DARemoveUsageRights
- RemoveUsageRights
Bug fixes
- ExtractPages, CopyPageRanges and ExtractPageRanges now handle inherited resources
- DrawDataMatrixSymbol now defaults to black if the fill color has not been set
- DrawDatamatrixSymbol correctly encodes double digits
- Resources are correctly freed during EMF+ output
- Corrected page indexing for DAFindPage
- Outlines are correctly appended during document merging
- Annotations now drawn independently of page transformation matrix
- Improvements to image decoding to prevent inverted images
Feedback! Any feedback large or small is appreciated. We’ll shortly be planning the next round of exciting new features for Quick PDF Library, so we’d really like to know what you want to see added to the SDK. Don’t be shy, email us at support@quickpdflibrary.com and have your say.
May 4, 2011
Quick PDF Library has an extensive function reference but we’ve received quite a few requests for a developer guide that provides details on how all of the functions work together. So we have written a Developer Guide for Quick PDF Library. The first public draft of the Developer Guide can be downloaded from here:
We will update the Developer Guide based on your feedback — so let us know what is missing and what you think could be improved. We’re hoping to release the final version of the Developer Guide with version 7.25 (beta 2 should be out any day now).
April 18, 2011
Quick PDF Library 7.25 beta 1 has been released and is ready for testing. This new beta includes several bug fixes, enhancements and new functions. The 7.25 beta 1 installer can be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
New functions
Bug fixes
- ExtractPages, CopyPageRanges and ExtractPageRanges now handle inherited resources
- DrawDataMatrixSymbol now defaults to black if the fill color has not been set
- DrawDatamatrixSymbol correctly encodes double digits
- Resources are correctly freed during EMF+ output
- Corrected page indexing for DAFindPage
- Outlines are correctly appended during document merging
Enhancements
- Added support for CCITT images with /Indexed color space
- Improvements to EMF import font scaling
- Improved reading of CID font encoding
- Documents with malformed trailers are now handled gracefully
- Reduced memory consumption with CanvasDC functions
- Added support for CCITT images with EncodedByteAlign encoding
- Documents with malformed page tree nodes are now processed
Feedback! Any feedback large or small is appreciated. We’ll shortly be planning the next round of exciting new features for Quick PDF Library, so we’d really like to know what you want to see added to the SDK. Don’t be shy, email us at support@quickpdflibrary.com and have your say.
March 25, 2011
The official version of Quick PDF Library 7.24 has been released and is ready for download from our updates page. This version includes numerous bug fixes, enhancements and new functions. The 7.24 installer can also be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
New functions
- GetFormFieldNoExport
- GetFormFieldRequired
- SetFormFieldNoExport
- SetFormFieldRequired
- GetFormFieldChoiceType
- SetAnnotBorderStyle
- IsTaggedPDF
- DAEmbedFileStreams
- RemoveCustomInformation
Bug fixes
- Range check improvements to Type1 decoding
- Corrected missing letters in form field annotations
- Rendering and extraction of direct font dictionaries
- ToUnicode CMaps handled for non-CID fonts
- MissingWidth font metric used instead of DW
- Consistent handling of CCITT images on various operating systems
- Improvements to nested CID font widths structures
- Improvements to parsing of various destination structures
- Improvements to parsing of comments and whitespace
- Inline image resource stream improvements
- Memory allocation fix in JBIG2 decoder
- Bitmaps row access fix in JBIG2 decoder
- Appearance stream generation for auto-size fields now handles alignment correctly
- Resource names are now correctly normalized in the renderer
- Infinite loop in xref processing of small files eliminated
- Process DPI tags in TIFF images correctly (AP1 marker)
- Aspect ratio of canvas corrected
- EPS output bug fixes (miter limit and image references)
Enhancements
- DataMatrix 2D barcodes can be rotated
- Support for GS1-128 (EAN-128) barcodes
- Support for DeviceN color spaces
- Faster direct access page searching for very large documents
- DrawDataMatrixSymbol allows the fill color to be set
- Memory optimizations for ICC based images
- Get/set embedded file description
- CFF font data in OpenType fonts enabled for non-embedded fonts
- More options for getting/setting choice form field flags
- Added an option to retrieve an annotation’s border width
- Added support for B/W LZW images
- SetCustomInformation now allows empty values
Feedback! Any feedback large or small is appreciated. We’ll shortly be planning the next round of exciting new features for Quick PDF Library, so we’d really like to know what you want to see added to the SDK. Don’t be shy, email us at support@quickpdflibrary.com and have your say.
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