PDF News

Mark Up PDFs with Customizable Annotations

March 20, 2025
Rectangle annotations provide a precise way to highlight sections within a PDF, with adjustable colors, borders, and transparency.

Rectangle annotations in PDF controls allow users to highlight specific areas within a document by drawing rectangular shapes. These annotations are useful for marking sections for review, redaction, or emphasis without altering the original document content. Typically, rectangle annotations support customization options such as border color, fill color, opacity, and line thickness, enabling users to tailor them to their needs. Many PDF viewer components also provide interactive features, such as the ability to move, resize, or delete annotations, ensuring flexibility in document review and collaboration workflows.

Several ASP.NET Core PDF viewer controls offer rectangle annotations including:

  • Document Solutions for PDF by MESCIUS provides extensive support for rectangle annotations that can be dynamically added, modified, and saved within the PDF file.
  • ImageGear for .NET by Accusoft supports rectangle annotations with styling options, suitable for applications requiring advanced document markup and editing features.
  • Syncfusion ASP.NET Core PDF (part of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise) allows users to create rectangle annotations with options for color, transparency, and border width.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our ASP.NET Core PDF viewers comparison.

Compare ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer Controls

Secure PDF Documents with a Streamlined API

March 20, 2025
Secure PDF by /n software enables users to sign, verify, encrypt, and decrypt files with integration into existing workflows.

Secure PDF by /n software is a powerful development library designed to provide enterprise-grade security for PDF documents. It enables developers to sign, verify, encrypt, and decrypt PDFs with ease, ensuring compliance with modern security standards. Supporting Basic Adobe Signatures and advanced PAdES levels (B-B, B-T, B-LT, B-LTA, and PAdES-EPES), Secure PDF ensures long-term document authenticity and integrity. With password and certificate-based encryption, seamless Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) integration, and support for qualified signatures and EU Trusted Lists, the library delivers a comprehensive solution for securing digital documents. Built on the proven security technologies of SecureBlackbox, Secure PDF combines reliability with an intuitive API for effortless implementation across platforms.

Secure PDF empowers businesses to automate and streamline secure document workflows, making it ideal for enterprise security applications, legal and compliance processes, and document management systems. It supports fillable PDF forms, allowing organizations to create, modify, and process interactive PDFs efficiently. Advanced features like timestamped certification (TSA) and the ability to update existing signatures with CRLs or OCSP responses further enhance security and compliance. Designed for performance and reliability, Secure PDF is rigorously tested, thread-safe, and optimized for resource efficiency. Backed by comprehensive documentation and professional support, it enables developers to quickly integrate trusted, high-performance PDF security into their applications.

Secure PDF is licensed per developer and is available as a Perpetual License with a 12 month support and maintenance subscription. See our Secure PDF licensing page for full details.

Secure PDF is available to buy in the following products:

Add Critical e-Invoicing Functions to your Apps

March 20, 2025
PDF Xpansion SDK - E-Invoicing 17.1.2 enhances support for XRechnung and Factur-X/ZUGFeRD to meet EU standard EN 16931.

PDF Xpansion SDK – E-Invoicing from soft Xpansion is a comprehensive software development kit designed to facilitate the creation, processing, and management of electronic invoices in compliance with international standards. The SDK simplifies integration into existing applications, allowing seamless handling of structured invoice data in XML, and the hybrid format PDF/A, thereby enabling digital invoicing workflows, enhancing automation, and ensuring legal conformity.

As of January 1, 2025, Germany has implemented a mandatory e-invoicing regulation requiring businesses to receive and process invoices compliant with the EU standard EN 16931. With paper invoices losing their priority status, companies must now adapt swiftly to digital invoicing formats. To support this transition, the PDF Xpansion SDK – E-Invoicing 17.1.2 offers enhanced functionality for XRechnung and Factur-X/ZUGFeRD, ensuring seamless compliance. Among other enhancements the SDK now supports the credit note (code 381) in XRechnung (UBL syntax) and enables extraction of non-standard XMLs from Factur-X/ZUGFeRD invoices for greater flexibility.

To see a full list of what's new in v17, see our release notes.

soft Xpansion offers the following products to meet your e-Invoice needs:

Protect Sensitive Documents with Strong Encryption

March 14, 2025
Encrypting and decrypting PDFs protects sensitive information, blocks unauthorized access, and ensures safe document sharing.

Encrypting and decrypting PDFs protect sensitive information by preventing unauthorized access, data breaches, and cyber threats. With strong encryption, password protection, and role-based access control, it ensures document confidentiality while allowing secure sharing and controlled modifications. Decryption enables authorized users to access protected files without compromising security. Essential for businesses, legal firms, and financial institutions, it safeguards contracts, financial records, and proprietary data while ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

Several .NET WPF PDF controls offer encryption and decryption support including:

  • Syncfusion WPF PDF (part of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise) lets you encrypt and decrypt PDFs with strong AES encryption, ensuring secure access  and compliance.
  • Telerik UI PDF for WPF (part of Telerik UI for WPF) allows you to apply encryption and decryption, safeguarding sensitive PDFs with password protection.
  • ComponentOne Studio WPF PDF (part of ComponentOne Studio WPF by MESCIUS) enables secure encryption and decryption of PDFs, preventing unauthorized access.
  • ImageGear for .NET by Accusoft facilitates robust PDF encryption and decryption, protecting confidential data with security protocols and flexible access controls.

For an in-depth analysis of features and price, visit our .NET WPF PDF controls comparison.

Compare .NET WPF PDF Controls

Improve Accessibility with Advanced Text Rendering

March 12, 2025
PDF4NET 15 expands global reach with support for complex scripts including Arabic, Bengali, Devanagari, Hebrew, Khmer, Tamil, and Thai.

PDF4NET is a .NET library for generating, importing, and manipulating PDF documents on the fly from any .NET application. It does not rely on any Adobe products for creating or importing PDF files. PDF4NET hides the complex structure of PDF files behind a simple object model that allows creation of complex PDF files with a few lines of code.

The PDF4NET 15.0.0 update enhances document processing by introducing support for complex scripts, including Arabic, Bengali, Devanagari, Hebrew, Khmer, Tamil, and Thai. This improvement ensures accurate text rendering, proper character shaping, and right-to-left script support, allowing developers to generate and manipulate PDFs with multilingual content more effectively. By enabling seamless integration of these scripts, the update enhances localization capabilities, improves accessibility, and ensures compliance with diverse linguistic requirements, making it easier to create globally compatible PDF documents without additional customization or external dependencies.

To see a full list of what's new in version 15, see our release notes.

PDF4NET is licensed per developer. All licenses include a 12 month subscription which provides all major and minor product updates and technical support. See our PDF4NET licensing page for full details.

PDF4NET is available individually or as part of PDFBundle4NET.