Quick PDF Library 8.13 beta 2 has been released and is ready for download and testing. Version 8.13 beta 2 includes new functions and bug fixes. The 8.13 beta 2 installer can be downloaded from the button below.

Release Notes

New functions

• GetLatestPrinterNames
• GetPageImageList
• GetImageListCount
• GetImageListItemIntProperty
• GetImageListItemDblProperty
• GetImageListItemDataToString
• GetImageListItemDataToVariant
• SaveImageListItemDataToFile
• DASetTextExtractionWordGap
• DASetTextExtractionOptions
• DASetTextExtractionArea

Bug fixes

• SecurityInfo function now returns correct values for owner and user password
• PrintDocument, GetPrinterBins and GetPrinterDevModeToString fixed in Delphi 4-2005 and LIB edition
• Fixed rendering issues with certain fonts containing a FontMatrixScaling value
• Fixed issue with DrawHTMLTextBox stack unwinding
• Fixed error in IsAnnotFormField if the document doesn’t have any form fields
• Added support for cross reference streams containing a /W entry greater than 4
• Fixed rendering of inverted CMYK JPEG images in 64-bit builds
• Fixed VB.NET Import definitions
• Corrected handling of Type1 fonts with non-sequential /Subrs ordering
• Added code to support CIDToGID maps that are too short
• SetTextExtractionArea function corrected
• Right aligned comb fields are now drawn correctly
• Trailing slash bug fix for embedding file streams
• AddTrueTypeFontFromFile function now returns a valid FontID
• Correct handling of BoldItalic fonts in metafile import

Enhancements

• Improved text extraction speed when PDF contains bitmaps
• Improved text extraction accuracy
• Comb fields are now drawn with vertical lines

Upgrading To Version 8

Quick PDF Library 8.13 beta 1 has been released and is ready for download and testing. Version 8.13 beta 1 includes new functions and bug fixes. The 8.13 beta 1 installer can be downloaded from the button below.

Release Notes

New functions

• GetLatestPrinterNames
• GetPageImageList
• GetImageListCount
• GetImageListItemIntProperty
• GetImageListItemDblProperty
• GetImageListItemDataToString
• GetImageListItemDataToVariant
• SaveImageListItemDataToFile

Bug fixes

• SecurityInfo function now returns correct values for owner and user password
• PrintDocument, GetPrinterBins and GetPrinterDevModeToString fixed in Delphi 7 and LIB edition
• Fixed rendering issues with FontMatrixScaling
• Finally fixed DrawHTMLTextBox
• Fix A/V error in IsAnnotFormField
• Fixed bug in DAOpenFile with Compressed Content Streams
• Improved text extraction speed when PDF contains bitmaps
• Rendering of images CYMK images in 64-bit version
• Fixed VB.NET Import definitions

Upgrading To Version 8

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.

Quick PDF Library 8 is a major new version of the product which means that the upgrade process is different from the minor version upgrade process, namely, upgrades aren’t free unless you meet certain requirements.

Free upgrades

Customers who purchased version 7 of Quick PDF Library on or after the 1st of June, 2011 (within 90 days of version 8’s release) or who own an active Premium Upgrade Protection subscription are eligible for free upgrades from version 7 to version 8.

Contact our sales team if you fall into this category and we’ll help you out.

Purchase an upgrade

An upgrade from version 7 to version 8 can be purchased at a discount (40% off) through our online store. Look for the products that include “Upgrade License” and “7.x to 8.x” in the product name and then choose which version of those products describes your upgrade situation.

For example, if you own a Single Developer License + Standard Upgrade Protection for version 7 of Quick PDF Library then you will need to purchase the Single Developer Upgrade License + Standard Upgrade Protection (7.x to 8.x) product in order to upgrade to version 8 — though you can choose to buy the Premium Upgrade Protection version of that product if you prefer.

Online Store – Quick PDF Library

Contact our sales team if you have any questions about upgrading.

Quick PDF Library 7.26 beta 1 has been released and is ready for download and testing. This new beta includes  numerous enhancements, new functions and bug fixes. The 7.26 beta 1 installer can be downloaded from the button below.

Release Notes

Enhancements

• Improved handling of unexpected CCITT data streams
• Elimination of invalid character codes in text extraction
• Improvements to accuracy of text extraction
• GetFormFieldSubName changed to return UTF-8 text for all field types
• Type library files included with ActiveX (special version for VB6)
• Added options 5 and 6 (character width output) to GetPageText function
• Better handling of malformed TrueType font data
• Added support for CMYK JPEG2000 images
• NormalizePage function now adjusts annotations

New functions

• CreateNewObject
• GetOptionalContentGroupPrintable
• GetOptionalContentGroupVisible

Bug fixes

• Parsing of strings containing invalid reverse solidus codes corrected
• Reduced inconsistencies of internal image conversions
• Corrected image reversal for CCITT mask images
• LIB Edition of QPL now built with FastMM4 memory manager
• ServiceUnit.dfm correctly generated as part of source code release
• Corrected the direction rectangle paths are drawn
• Corrections to the way parent form fields are created
• Internal parent/child relationship corrected with NewChildFormField

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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:

• Quick PDF Library 7 Developer Guide

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).