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.
March 5, 2011
Quick PDF Library 7.24 beta 4 has been released and is ready for testing. This new beta includes several bug fixes, enhancements and new functions. The 7.24 beta 4 installer can be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
New functions
- GetFormFieldNoExport
- GetFormFieldRequired
- SetFormFieldNoExport
- SetFormFieldRequired
- GetFormFieldChoiceType
- SetAnnotBorderStyle
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
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
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.
February 26, 2011
Quick PDF Library 7.24 beta 3 has been released and is ready for testing. This new beta includes several bug fixes, enhancements and new functions. The 7.24 beta 3 installer can be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
New functions
- GetFormFieldNoExport
- GetFormFieldRequired
- SetFormFieldNoExport
- SetFormFieldRequired
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
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
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.
February 18, 2011
The goal of PDF is to enable users to exchange and view electronic documents easily and reliably, independent of the environment in which they were created or the environment in which they are viewed or printed.
PDF files can be thought of as self-contained composite documents made up of many instances of many things: page contents, images, graphics, fonts, colorspaces, metadata, annotations, links, digital signatures and more.
If you open up a PDF in a text editor you will notice that there are parts of it which make sense, but that the majority is unreadable to the human eye. That’s because much of the data in PDF files is stored inside binary streams, in which data has been encrypted or compressed. This binary data looks like garbage, but you can easily break your PDF just by adding a single character. It’s best not to edit PDF files directly in a text editor.
Underneath the hood PDF files are made from unordered numbered objects which can refer to each other by number and are all linked together by a cross reference table which maps object numbers to very specific places within the file.
At a low level PDF combines three technologies:
- A subset of the PostScript page description programming language, for generating the layout and graphics.
- A font-embedding/replacement system to allow fonts to travel with the documents.
- A structured storage system to bundle these elements and any associated content into a single file, with data compression where appropriate.
As you can see, PDF files are quite complex and it makes a lot of sense (and saves a lot of time and money) to use products such as Quick PDF Library to keep those complexities out of your life.
However, if you are interested in studying the internals of PDF files further then these resources should be helpful:
February 7, 2011
Quick PDF Library 7.24 beta 2 has been released and is ready for testing. This new beta includes several bug fixes, enhancements and new functions. The 7.24 beta 2 installer can be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
New functions
- GetFormFieldNoExport
- GetFormFieldRequired
- SetFormFieldNoExport
- SetFormFieldRequired
Bug fixes
- Bug fix for handling of choice form fields
- Bug fix for processing of Separation color space
- Bug fix for duplicate rendering of image
Enhancements
- Range check improvements to Type1 decoding
- Support for GS1-128 (EAN-128) barcodes
- DataMatrix 2D barcodes can be rotated
- ActiveX edition now marked with ‘Safe for initializing’ and ‘Safe for scripting’ flags
- Support for DeviceN color spaces
- Minor documentation updates
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.
January 27, 2011
Quick PDF Library 7.24 beta 1 has been released and is ready for testing. This new beta is a minor release and includes several bug fixes and enhancements. The 7.24 beta 1 installer can be downloaded from the button below.
Release Notes
Bug fixes
- Bug fix for handling of choice form fields
- Bug fix for processing of Separation color space
- Bug fix for duplicate rendering of image
Enhancements
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.
December 20, 2010
Quick PDF Library 7.23 has been released and is ready for download.
This new version is a relatively minor release in comparison to 7.22 but it does include some exciting new additions — specifically a LIB edition of the SDK for C/C++ developers — and some important bug fixes and enhancements for digital signatures and font handling.
Release Notes
Enhancements
- First release of Quick PDF Library LIB Edition (static link .lib)
- Improvements to exception handling while accessing file streams
- Renderer handles images and vector graphics using the /Lab color space
- LoadFromCanvasDC allows control over which fonts are embedded
- Documentation improved for NewChildFormField function
New functions
- NoEmbedFontListCount
- NoEmbedFontListAdd
- NoEmbedFontListGet
- NoEmbedFontListRemoveIndex
- NoEmbedFontListRemoveName
- NoEmbedFontListRemoveAll
- NewPageFromCanvasDC
- SaveImageToString
- SaveImageToVariant
- DAHasPageBox
- DASetPageBox
- DADrawRotatedCapturedPage
Bug fixes
- Dingbats font is rendered correctly when drawn multiple times
- DASetPageBox supports Options = 3, 4 and 5 in accordance with the documentation
- DADrawCapturedPage handles direct page contents array
- SignFile handles encrypted files and files with cross reference streams
- DAAppendFile handles files with cross reference streams
- AddSubsettedFont and GetSubsetString functions handle character codes less than U+0100
- Pixel size of renderer output is now consistent with the DPI, page dimensions and SetRenderScale
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.
December 17, 2010
Exciting news for all of our C/C++ customers: we’ve just finished creating a statically linked version of Quick PDF Library.
The LIB Edition of Quick PDF Library is generated automatically by converting the DLL Edition into a static link library. The static link library file is called QuickPDFLIB0723.lib and a header file called QuickPDFLIB0723.h is included.
The new .LIB version will be included with the 7.23 release which will be made public very soon.
Make sure you read the getting started guide for the new .LIB version when you get it for some information on link dependencies and initializing/releasing the library.
December 5, 2010
A few months ago PicaJet, a happy customer of Quick PDF Library, wrote a review of the SDK on their website:
It took us about six months of experimenting before finally selecting Quick PDF Library from among all the other PDF libraries. Quick PDF Library is not 100% pure .NET code, but it still renders PDF documents with maximal speed and quality; it supports CMYK images; it quickly extracts native PDF properties; it sells for a reasonable price. And it is backed by a company with a solid reputation and history of excellence.
You can read the full review on PicaJet.com.
November 25, 2010
Quick PDF Library 7.22 has been released and is ready for testing. This is the official (and final) build of 7.22 and it is jam-packed with new functions, enhancements and bug fixes. Three major highlights for this release include Delphi XE support, JBIG2 support and improved CMYK rendering.
Release Notes
New functions
- SetImageResolution
- SetOutlineRemoteDestination
- SetRenderDCOffset
- SetOverprint
- CompareOutlines
- GetOutlineObjectNumber
- NewDestination
- AddLinkToDestination
- NewNamedDestination
- GetDestName
- SetOutlineNamedDestination
- SetRenderScale
- GetRenderScale
- SetFindImagesMode
Bug fixes
- Circle co-ordinates in metafile import
- Empty fills in metafile import
- Added support for a text output operator in the renderer
- Alignment calculations for the FitImage function for different measurement units
- Corrected DADrawCapturedPage function
- NewStaticOutline function accepts a ParentID of 0
- LoadFromString correctly sets the SourceFileSize
- Improvements to retrieval of annotation properties (page number)
- Improvements to font name matching for non-embedded fonts
- Improvements to form field appearance stream generation for rotated pages/fields
- Improvements to form field appearance stream generation for fields with auto-size fields
- GetTableColumnCount returns correct result
- Adjustments to EPS output
- Corrected the operation of the DAMovePage function
- Improvements to direct access form field functions
- Protection from divide by zero exceptions in the renderer
- Correct handling of offset CropBox in the renderer
- Direct access image extraction corrected for TIFF images
Enhancements
- Support for rendering images compressed with JBIG2 encoding
- Support for reading PDFs containing malformed (19-byte) xref table entries
- Support for CFF fonts stored in OpenType format
- Support for Format2 charset tables in CFF font data
- Support for remote destination file names in GetOutlineOpenFile
- Added new DLL import for C++ with MFC (CString instead of std::string)
- Added new DLL import for Visual FoxPro
- Added new DLL import for VB.NET
- Support for Delphi XE
- FitTextBox, allow Options = 3
- Improved CMYK to RGB mapping
- Added support for bleed, trim and art box in CapturePageEx
- Added support for bleed, trim and art box in DACapturePageEx
- Improvements to GetNamedDestination
- Upgraded internal ZLib library to version 1.2.5
- Improved loading of documents with data after the %%EOF tag
- Added new DLL import for C++ with MFC (CString instead of std::string)
- Added new DLL import for Visual FoxPro
- Added new DLL import for VB.NET
- Support for Delphi XE
- Direct access image extraction now supports JPEG 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.
