What's New  

Jul 18, 2011 - AspPDF 2.2 Released with AES Support

AspPDF now supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cipher with 128-bit keys in addition to the RC4 cipher. AES is also known as Rijndael.

Previous versions of AspPDF could not open or operate on AES-encrypted PDF documents. An attempt to work on such a document usually resulted in the error

Decoder failed.

To encrypt a new document with AES, the Encrypt method needs to be called with -128 (negative 128) as the key length argument:

Doc.Encrypt "abc", "xyz", -128, pdfFull

May 11, 2011 - AspPDF 2.1 Released, Automatic Printing Implemented

• The PDF-to-Image conversion feature has been expanded to provide an automatic printing function via the new method PdfPreview.SendToPrinter. This feature is described here. This functionality is still in a beta testing phase.

• A bug in the PdfPage.ExtractText method responsible for the appearance of stray characters when used on some PDF documents has been fixed.

• Other bugs in the PDF-to-image and parsing modules have been fixed.

Mar 08, 2011 - Service Release 2.0.0.7 Available

• Support for the popular QR Code barcode has been added to the DrawBarcode2D method. Click here for more information.
• An enhancement to the PDF parsing module has been made that prevents the exception "This object is neither a /Page nor /Pages" from occurring when parsing certain badly formed PDF documents.
• An enhancement to the ImportFromUrl method has been made that enables it to handle CMYK images properly. Previous versions would display CMYK images inverted. The new version adds a new parameter to the ImportFromUrl method, InvertCMYK, which inverts the CMYK images back to normal when set to True.

• An enhancement to the PdfDocument.Sign method has been made via the new parameter BinarySize that enables the user to avoid entering the PIN twice during the signing if the signer certificate is PIN-protected. Click here for more information on this new parameter.

• Minor bugs have been fixed.

Dec 16, 2010 - Service Release 2.0.0.6 Available

• A bug responsible for crashes on certain PDF documents during PDF-to-Image conversion has been fixed.
• Support for 16-bit images has been added to the PDF-to-Image conversion code.

Nov 01, 2010 - Service Release 2.0.0.5 Available

• The text extraction functionality (the PdfPage.ExtractText method) has been improved to reduce the amount of unnecessary space delimiters in the extracted text. This improvement works with many but not all documents.
• Minor bugs have been fixed.

Sep 15, 2010 - Service Release 2.0.0.4 Available

• A bug in the method PdfPage.ResetCoordinates has been fixed. This bug was responsible for incorrectly resetting the coordinate transformation matrix on some documents.

Sep 08, 2010 - Service Release 2.0.0.3 Fixed

• A compilation problem causing the error "Library not registered" in service release 2.0.0.3 fixed.

Aug 30, 2010 - Service Release 2.0.0.3 Available

• A bug causing a crash in the ToImage functionality caused by a compilation error in the previous service release fixed.

Aug 16, 2010 - Service Release 2.0.0.2 Available

• A bug responsible for the error message "Object number not found in object header" when appending a large number of documents together, and also for document corruption, has been fixed.

Jul 21, 2010 - Service Release 2.0.0.1 Available

• A bug in ImportFromUrl responsible for incorrectly handling HTML ampersand notations such as £ fixed.
• Both the 32-bit and 64-bit installers now contain full documentation and code samples. The previous version of the 64-bit installer only contained the DLLs but not documentation.

May 06, 2010 - AspPDF 2.0 Released, PDF-to-Image Implemented

Version 2.0 offers the following new features:

• PDF-to-Image Conversion.

  You asked for this feature and we delivered! PDF-to-Image conversion functionality has finally been added to AspPDF. AspPDF 2.0 offers a new object, PdfPreview, a new chapter in the User Manual, Chapter 14, and a new method in the PdfPage object, ToImage, all devoted to this much-requested feature.

  You can try out the new feature on-line via Live Demo #14.

• Support for "comb" fields in the PdfAnnot.SetFieldValue method.
• Support for CSS property background-position in the PdfDocument.ImportFromUrl method.
• Multiple minor bugs fixed.

Download AspPDF 2.0 now! Upgrading is free for registered users.

Feb 26, 2010 - PDF-to-Image Conversion (2.0 Beta) Released

AspPDF 2.0 (Beta) with PDF-to-Image conversion released for testing.

Jul 21, 2009 - Service Release 1.9.0.2 Available

• Minor bugs in PdfCell.SetBorderParams and PdfPage.ExtractText fixed.

Jun 10, 2009 - Service Release 1.9.0.1 Available

• A bug responsible for the error message "Decoder failed" when reading certain encrypted documents generated by Acrobat 9 fixed.
• Several important enhancements have been made to accommodate encrypted documents generated by Acrobat 9.

May 04, 2009 - AspPDF 1.9 Released

Version 1.9 offers the following new features:

• PdfDocument.ImportInfo property returning the location of the lowest boundary of the HTML content rendered by the last successful call to ImportFromUrl. For more information on this new feature, see Section 13.7 - Obtaining Y-Boundary.
• Support for 32-bit bitmaps.
• Support for the UTF-8 marker added to PdfDocument.ImportFromUrl and PdfManager.LoadTextFromFile.
• Improved support for documents with compressed cross-reference tables.
• Multiple minor bugs fixed.

Download AspPDF 1.9 now! Upgrading is free for registered users.

Apr 15, 2009 - AspPDF.NET Web Site Launched

We have finally ported AspPDF to .NET! Due to overwhelming interest in AspPDF.NET on the part of our clients, we have decided to make it available for public testing even before the official beta release day. Please visit www.AspPDF.net, the new site dedicated to this much-anticipated product, to download your free eval copy and start testing AspPDF.NET immediately!

Jan 07, 2009 - AspPDF 1.8 Released

Version 1.8 offers the following new features:

• Support for compressed cross-reference tables and object streams introduced by Adobe PDF 1.5 specifications and widely used by Acrobat 9.0. Previous versions could not open documents created with Acrobat 9.
• Support for PDF417 and DataMatrix two-dimensional barcodes via the new method DrawBarcode2D described here. Also, a bug in the UK postal barcode rendering (method DrawBarcode) fixed.

  

  

• JPEG image rendering (method DrawImage) streamlined.
• A bug in the ExtractPages method causing occasional incorrect order of extracted pages fixed.
• Various minor bugs fixed.

Download AspPDF 1.8 now! Upgrading is free for registered users.

Dec 18, 2008 - AspPDF 1.8 Beta 4 Released

The new version fixes a bug causing the error message Generation number not found in object header when appending documents with compressed object streams. Also improves support for "Revision 4" encrypted documents.

Dec 05, 2008 - AspPDF 1.8 Beta 3 Released

The new version supports Data Matrix, yet another two-dimensional PDF417 barcode. See Section 12.1.5 -- Two-Dimensional Barcodes for more information.

Nov 19, 2008 - AspPDF 1.8 Beta 2 Released

The new version supports the popular two-dimensional PDF417 barcode. See Section 12.1.5 -- Two-Dimensional Barcodes for more information. We have also added a new live demo demonstrating this new feature online.

Sep 17, 2008 - AspPDF 1.8 Beta 1 Released

The new version implements compressed cross-reference tables and object streams introduced by Adobe PDF 1.5 specifications and widely used by Acrobat 9.0. Older versions of AspPDF usually generate one of the following errors when opening a document containing these new constructs:

• Number of entries not found after xref.
  
• xref keyword not found, this document does not conform to PDF specs.
  
• End of file reached.

Jun 23, 2008 - Service Release 1.7.0.1 Available

• A bug causing incorrect rendering of <SELECT> elements by ImportFromUrl fixed.

Jun 18, 2008 - AspPDF 1.7 Released

The HTML-to-PDF functionality of the ImportFromUrl method has been significantly improved in version 1.7. New features include:

• Support for CSS when applied to "block" tags such as <P>, <UL>, <LI>, <BLOCKQUOTE> and others. In previous versions, these tags could only be used for paragraph separation and indentation.
• Improved table rendering.
• Support for form elements such as <INPUT>, <TEXTAREA> and <SELECT>. Previous versions ignored them altogether.
• Optional support for hyperlinks via a new Hyperlinks=true parameter. Previous versions ignored the <A> tag.
• Background color for individual text elements can be set. Previous versions only allowed background color to be set for an entire table or cell.
• Partial support for the position: absolute CSS property. The left and top position properties are supported while bottom and right are still ignored.
• Selective recognition of style sheets according to their MEDIA attribute. The new Media parameter specifies which style sheets to read and which to ignore. Read more about it here.
• Support for display: none CSS property.
• Support for document zoom-in and zoom-out via the Scale parameter.
• Timeout parameter for overriding the default HTTP timeout settings.
• Optional support for splitting images between adjacent pages via the SplitImages parameter.
• Multiple minor bugs have been fixed.

AspPDF 1.7 also offers a significant amount of fixes and improvements in methods other than ImportFromUrl. It is therefore advisable to upgrade to version 1.7 even if you are not currently using the HTML-to-PDF functionality. Upgrading is free for registered users.

Mar 15, 2008 - AspPDF 1.7 Beta Available for Testing

To expedite the official release of the much-anticipated HTML-to-PDF functionality, we have made AspPDF 1.7 Beta available for public testing.

Jan 25, 2008 - Service Release 1.6.0.10 Available

• ImportFromUrl method now supports setting margin sizes individually for each page. This feature is useful if, for example, the first page of a multi-page report requires wider top and bottom margins than the rest of the pages to accommodate the front-page header and footer.
• Various minor bugs fixed.

Aug 30, 2007 - Service Release 1.6.0.9 Available

• ImportFromUrl method optimized for performance when rendering large tables.

Aug 20, 2007 - Service Release 1.6.0.8 Available, 64-bit Version Released

• An improvement in font handling has been implemented to fix the error "Font cannot be obtained" when DrawText is used with HTML=true.
• The ImportFromUrl method now uses the Microsoft XmlHttp object instead of the WinInet library for better performance. Also, an HTML string can be fed directly to this method.
• The native 64-bit version of AspPDF is now officially released.

Jun 15, 2007 - Service Release 1.6.0.7 Available

• Vertical alignment has been implemented in the PdfCell.AddText method via the new VAlignment parameter.

Mar 14, 2007 - 64-Bit AspPDF (Beta) Released

The native 64-bit version of AspPDF is now available for testing. Download it here. The 64-bit version recognizes the same permanent and evaluation keys as the 32-bit version.

Feb 27, 2007 - Service Release 1.6.0.6 Available

• An minor enhancement in the GoToR Action.
• Further improvements in ImportFromUrl method.

Dec 20, 2006 - Build 9526 Released

• Further improvements in ImportFromUrl method.

Dec 14, 2006 - Service Release 1.6.0.5 Available

• The Pdf.OpenUrl method is deprecated, replaced by a more versatile Doc.ImportFromUrl method which allows HTML to be drawn on existing, as well as new, PDF documents. The deprecated OpenUrl method only allowed the creation of new documents. Note that ImportFromUrl is a PdfDocument method while OpenUrl was a PdfManager method.
• A new chapter, 13. PDF to HTML Conversion, has been added to the user manual describing the ImportFromUrl method.
• ImportFromUrl supports a debug mode. When debug=true is added to the parameter list, the method returns a log of non-fatal errors which occurred during the HTML to PDF conversion process, such as invalid image URLs, unknown fonts, etc.
• The Annot.SetFieldValue method's support for combo boxes in Acrobat 7 has been improved.

Dec 06, 2006 - Service Release 1.6.0.4 Available

• Enhancements in the new PNG and GIF processing modules.
• Further improvements in OpenUrl method.

Nov 30, 2006 - Service Release 1.6.0.3 Available

• Full GIF transparency support added (previous versions displayed certain transparent GIFs incorrectly.)
• Further improvements in OpenUrl method.

Nov 21, 2006 - Service Release 1.6.0.2 Available

• Full PNG image format support added, including Alpha Channel and simple transparency.
• Further improvements in OpenUrl method.

Sep 06, 2006 - Version 1.6 Released

• The new version contains an interim public-testing implementation of the PdfManager.OpenUrl method which converts HTML pages to PDF. This method provides a much wider HTML support than the existing PdfCanvas.DrawText method. Most major HTML constructs are now supported, including tables, lists, images, cascading style sheets (CSS), etc.

  WARNING: The OpenUrl method is currently a work in progress. and not entirely stable yet. Not all HTML tags and CSS properties are currently supported. Use this method at your own risk!

  We are anxious to bring this much-anticipated feature to completion as fast as possible, and we need your feedback and bug reports. Please check this site for new updates often.

• GIF transparency support has been added. For more information, see Section 5.2.3 - GIF Transparency Support.
• Tiling pattern support has been added. For more information, see Section 5.3.2 - Tiling Patterns.
• Multiple bugs have been fixed in document stitching, form fill-in, tables, font handling and other areas.

Jan 30, 2006 - Version 1.5.0.4 (Service Release) Available

• A bug in DrawText has been fixed which caused characters to be cut off in certain circumstances.
• A bug in the image drawing functionality has been fixed which occasionally caused existing images to be overwritten by calling DrawImage.
• A bug in the text extraction functionality has been fixed which caused occasional truncation of extracted text.

Jan 10, 2006 - Version 1.5.0.3 (Service Release) Available

• A bug has been fixed which caused AspPDF to occasionally throw the exception Reading from file failed. The error message is: The handle is invalid..

Oct 25, 2005 - Version 1.5.0.2 (Service Release) Available

• A bug has been fixed which caused Acrobat 5.0 to generate "Error 107" when attempting to modify documents assembled via the Document Stitching functionality.
• A bug has been fixed which would crash the component when appending certain kinds of PDF documents.
• The AppendDocument method has been enhanced to allow the stitching of forms generated by Adobe Acrobat/Designer 7.0 without losing field values.

Sep 01, 2005 - Version 1.5.0.1 (Service Release) Available

• With the release of Acrobat 7.0 and Designer 7.0, Adobe has introduced a new standard, the XML Forms Architecture (XFA), which describes PDF forms using XML and departs from its own legacy PDF form specifications. We are currently working to add XFA support to AspPDF.

  Meanwhile, to address partial incompatibility with forms created by Adobe Designer 7.0, we have added a new method, PdfForm.RemoveXFA, which removes the XFA information from such PDF forms, thus making them compatible with AspPDF and viewable across all versions of Acrobat. You should call this method every time you open a PDF form created by Acrobat/Designer 7.0 until an XFA-compatible version of AspPDF is released.

• A new chapter, 11a - Existing Form Fill-in, has been added to the AspPDF user manual which, among other things, addresses Acrobat 7.0 compatibility issues and provides a new form fill-in code sample.

Jun 28, 2005 - Version 1.5 Released

• The method PdfPage.ResetCoordinates has been added to simplify drawing text and graphics on existing PDF documents. The new method is described in Section 9.3.5 - Coordinate Reset of the User Manual.
• The method PdfFont.GetParagraphHeight has been added to determine the vertical extent of a text paragraph at run-time.
• A number of bugs have been fixed in the PdfCell.AddText method which caused text cut-off and displacement under certain circumstances.
• Minor fixes and enhancements have been made.

Nov 29, 2004 - Version 1.4.0.3 (Service Release) Available

• A bug in SetFieldValue has been fixed related to radio buttons.
• Other minor form-field related bugs have been fixed.

Nov 11, 2004 - Version 1.4.0.2 (Service Release) Available

• Several minor issues related to text form fields have been fixed.

Oct 27, 2004 - Version 1.4.0.1 (Service Release) Available

• TrueType Font-related bugs have been fixed to make AspPDF-generated documents work better with "preflight" packages such as PitStop, and also with Acrobat's TouchUp Text Tool. This service release also addresses printing problems on MAC OS.

Sep 23, 2004 - Version 1.4 Released

• Document stitching functionality has been enhanced to allow multiple interactive forms to be merged correctly.
• The method PdfAnnot.SetFieldValue has been enhanced to handle non-ASCII characters.
• Support for outlines has been extended to existing documents. Previous versions could only add outlines to new documents.
• Minor bugs have been fixed.

Aug 13, 2004 - Version 1.3.0.3 (Service Release) Available

• A bug in BMP format processing module causing certain BMP images to be displayed incorrectly fixed.
• PdfAnnot.FieldName property changed from read-only to read/write. This enables you to specify a text box title for text annotations.
• PdfAnnot.FieldAlternateName property added to return or specify an alternate name for a field, and also to specify a "short description" value for link annotations.
• A minor bug in the PdfDocument.Sign method fixed.

Jul 14, 2004 - Version 1.3.0.2 (Service Release) Available

• PdfAnnot.Flags property added to control an existing annotation's various flags such as Hidden, Invisible, Print, etc.
• All form field creation methods enhanced to account for page rotation.
• Angle parameter added to DrawBarcode method.
• A few minor bugs fixed.

Jun 24, 2004 - Version 1.3.0.1 (Service Release) Available

• Minor bugs fixed in HTML parsing, digital signature verification, table rendering and the SetViewerPrefs method.

Jun 10, 2004 - Version 1.3 Released

• A new Close method added to the PdfDocument object enabling an application to explicitly close an opened PDF file to avoid share-related errors.
• CMYK color space support added. New methods SetColorCMYK and SetFillColorCMYK were added to the PdfCanvas object. Also, additional CMYK-related parameters were added to the methods SetParams and DrawText.
• Minor TIFF-related enhancements made.

May 19, 2004 - Version 1.2.0.1 (Service Release) Available

• Page extraction functionality made subject to PDF permission settings.
• Minor bugs fixed.

Apr 27, 2004 - Version 1.2 Released

• Page extraction functionality added via the method PdfDocument.ExtractPages.
• Text extraction functionality (PdfPage.ExtractText method) enhanced. Space parameter eliminated.
• DrawText method optimized, HTML rendering significantly accelerated.

Apr 08, 2004 - Version 1.1.0.2 (Service Release) Available

• Support for justified text (alignment on both the left and right sides of a paragraph) added via the HTML tag <DIV ALIGN="JUSTIFY">.
• Minor bugs fixed.

Apr 02, 2004 - Version 1.1 Released

• Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) support added.
  • Supported color spaces: Bilevel, Grayscale, Indexed, RGB, CMYK, L*a*b.
  • Supported compression types: No compression, PackBits, LZW, CCITT Group 3 Modified Huffman, Group 3 Fax, Group 4 Fax.
  • Support for single-page and multi-page TIFFs. A new Index parameter is added to the PdfDocument.OpenImage method to support multi-page TIFFs.
• New properties ResolutionX and ResolutionY added to the PdfImage object returning DPI resolution of JPEG and TIFF images.
• Several minor bugs fixed.

Mar 10, 2004 - Version 1.0.0.4 (Service Release) Available

• The Annot.SetFieldValue method enhanced to recognize pre-selected text font color for a form field.
• A bug causing form field text to be invisible under certain conditions fixed.
• The Doc.Sign method enhanced to optionally mark digital signatures as "Adobe.PPKMS" (standard Windows security handler) instead of "VeriSign.PPKVS" (VeriSign plug-in).

Feb 27, 2004 - Version 1.0.0.3 (Service Release) Available

• A bug causing the error "Access is denied" when using the Doc.Fonts collection fixed.
• Several other font-related bugs fixed.

Feb 19, 2004 - Version 1.0.0.2 (Service Release) Available

• A bug causing the error "The system cannot find the file specified" when working with fonts on Windows 2003 fixed.
• The property PdfAnnot.FieldOnValue added.
• The property PdfAnnot.FieldFlags made read/write (was read-only).

Feb 16, 2004 - Version 1.0.0.1 (Service Release) Available

• Form.FindField method enhanced to accept multi-level field names with dots, such as "Address.City".
• Several font-related bugs fixed.

Feb 02, 2004 - AspPDF 1.0 Released

Version 1.0 is officially released. Download it here.

Jan 09, 2004 - AspPDF Beta 1 Released

Persits Software announces the release of AspPDF Beta 1.

Nov 15, 2003 - AspPDF Pre-Beta Released

Due to an overwhelming interest towards AspPDF from our clients, we decided to let all interested parties test-drive our new product even before the offical beta release date. The component is already extremely robust and feature-rich, although new features are still being added, and bugs fixed.

For the current list of features, see Chapter 1 of the User Manual.