PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS)

What's New in PDFlib 8.0.3?

• Support for generating barcode fields (barcode fields don't work with Adobe Reader, but require Acrobat Professional)
• Support for 3D models in the PRC format (in addition to U3D)
• Adjust the size of imported PDF pages to work around problems with pages which contain content outside of all page boxes

The PDFlib Block plugin has been updated to version 4.3. It includes a redesigned user interface and offers Acrobat X compatibility on Windows and Mac OS X. The Japanese user interface is now also supported on the Mac.

What's New in PDFlib 8.0.1?
PDFlib 8.0.1 collects ca. 85 changes to the core code, language bindings, and build system.

Changes in the PDFlib product family:

• Automatic script and position (right/left) detection for bidi text
• Process certain JPEG-compressed TIFF images which previously have been rejected
• Better color handling for JPEG images with Exif data
• More workarounds for damaged PDF and font input files
• Improved treatment of Unicode CMaps for better handling of OpenType
• Features in Japanese fonts and smaller PDF output
• Various improvements specific to platforms and language bindings
• Optimized file size and loading time of shared libraries
• Enhanced build system
• General bug fixes

Changes in the PDFlib Block plugin:

• Support for the new automatic script and position detection
• Improvements for the Japanese user interface (Windows only)
• Re-introduced keyboard shortcuts
• XML configuration file to control aspects of the user interface
• Improved PDF form-field-to-Block conversion
• Several minor bug fixes

What's new in PDFlib 8?

New PDF Features for Acrobat 9
PDFlib supports various PDF features according to Acrobat 9 (technically: PDF 1.7 Adobe extension level 3).

• External graphical content (Reference XObjects)
• Layer variants (also called layer configurations)
• PDF Portfolios
• Georeferenced PDF
• AES-256 encryption and Unicode passwords
• PDFlib+PDI and PPS can import and process Acrobat 9 documents.

Font Handling and Text Output
Quite a number of new typographical features can be found in PDFlib 8.

• Complex script shaping and bidirectional formatting for Arabic, Thai, Hindi, and many other writing systems
• Fallback fonts
• OpenType layout features, e.g. ligatures and swash characters
• Retain fonts across documents
• SING fonts for CJK Gaiji characters
• Redesigned font engine
• Wrap text around image clipping paths
• Text on a path

PDFlib Block Plugin and PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS)
The PDFlib Block Plugin is used to prepare PDF documents for Block filling (personalization) with the PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS).

• Preview PPS Block processing in Acrobat
• Redesigned user interface
• Snap-to-grid for quickly layout out Blocks in a raster
• Additional Block properties, e.g. for transparency
• Clone PDF/A or PDF/X status of the Block container
• Leverage PDFlib 8 features with Blocks

Other important features
There are a number of other important new features:

• Reusable path objects
• PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5
• Alpha channel in TIFF and PNG images
• JBIG2-compressed images
• Compressed object streams and cross-reference streams
• Built-in PANTONE Goe color libraries

PDFlib is a library which allows you to generate files in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). PDFlib acts as a backend to your own programs.

PDFlib doesn't make use of third-party software for generating PDF, nor does it require any other tools. PDFlib is available for all major operating environments and development environments.

PDFlib offers many useful functions for creating text, graphics, images, and hypertext elements in PDF.

A PDFlib program can be used for dynamically generating PDF – reflecting user input or dynamic data retrieved from web or database servers. The PDF Import Library (PDI) can be used to integrate pages from existing PDF documents into the generated output. With the PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS), server side personalization of PDF files becomes possible.

With the programmer only being responsible for producing the data from whatever source, PDFlib takes the task of generating the PDF code which visually represents the data.

PDFlib can generate PDF data directly in memory (instead of on file), resulting in better performance and avoiding the need for temporary files, thus being the fastest PDF-generating method.

PDFlib makes PDF generation possible without wading through the PDF specification. While PDFlib tries to hide technical PDF details from the user, a general understanding of PDF is useful. In order to make the best use of PDFlib, application programmers should ideally be familiar with the basic graphics model of PostScript (and therefore PDF). However, a reasonably experienced application programmer who has dealt with any graphics API for screen display or printing shouldn’t have much trouble adapting to the PDFlib API as described in the PDFlib manual.

API: PDFlib offers an easy-to-use programming interface for the application programmer. The PDFlib API shields the programmer from the technicalities of PDF generation. Any programmer with decent graphics or print output experience is able to use PDFlib quickly. The PDFlib reference manual explains the basics of PDFlib programming, and provides a detailed reference to all API functions. Sample programs are provided for all supported environments.

Server Deployment: PDFlib is thread-safe, i.e. it can safely be used in multi-threaded server applications. The COM edition is both-threaded for improved performance. C or C++ library clients can install their own memory management and error handling routines. PDFlib's memory management has been rigorously engineered and tested for memory leaks in order to guarantee 24-hour deployment without any shutdown periods.

Products available in the PDFlib family include:

• PDFlib - PDFlib is the leading developer toolbox for generating and manipulating files in Adobe’s well known Portable Document Format (PDF).
• PDFlib+PDI - PDFlib+PDI includes all PDFlib functions plus the PDF Import Library (PDI). With PDI you can open existing PDF documents and incorporate some pages into the PDFlib output.
• PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS) - PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS) includes PDFlib+PDI plus additional functions for variable data processing using PDFlib blocks. PPS makes applications independent from any layout changes.
• PDFlib TET - The PDFlib Text Extraction Toolkit (TET) is a developer product for reliably extracting text, images and metatdata from PDF documents.
• PDFlib TET PDF IFilter - TET PDF IFilter extracts text and metadata from PDF documents and makes it available to search and retrieval software on Windows. This allows PDF documents to be searched on the local desktop, a corporate server, or the Web.
• PDFlib PLOP - PDFlib PLOP (PDF Linearization, Optimization, Protection) offers a straightforward way to linearize and optimize your PDF files for fast Web delivery, and to apply or remove Acrobat security features.
• PDFlib PLOP DS - PDFlib PLOP DS (Digital Signature) offers all features of PLOP, plus the ability
• to apply digital signatures to PDF documents.
• PDFlib pCOS - PDFlib pCOS provides a simple and elegant facility for retrieving any information from a PDF document which is not part of the page contents.

Annual Support is available to purchase with new product licenses or to renew an existing support contract:
The support contract is for 12 months and includes:

• Technical support with short response times
• All minor (maintenance) and major (functional) updates
• Early availability of bug fixes