I don't know exactly how long FoxIt has owned the QuickPDF library now but one would assume (and this is the heart of the question) they would work on making the output/capabilities of the QPL compatible with their other products such as Fox It PhantomPDF and FoxIt Reader.

I was wondering if there is anyone with any inside knowledge who can answer that, not with an opinion but with knowledge of the internal goals at FoxIt.

For example, and this is the technical issue related to the question above, I have a PDF I edited with PhantomPDF and added a multi-line text field. If I switch into input mode it allows me to input 8 lines of text.  If I open that same PDF with FoxIt Reader it also lets me input 8 lines of text that match the editor exactly in terms of alignment of text in the text field to other static text in the document. 

However if I use the latest version of QuickPDF 16.x for Delphi 7 and open the same PDF, call SetNeedAppearances(0) and assign 8 lines of text to the multi-line text field (memo field) then call UpdateAppearanceStream and (either flatten it or not; it makes no difference) then save the PDF. You can open the saved copy of the PDF with FoxIt Reader and the memo field shows only 7 lines of text. The first line is about a quarter of an inch lower than the original and the 7th line of text is way below where the memo field should end and the 8th line of text is not even seen.

But then if I don't flatten the field then you can click in the memo field and Reader will realign the text and everything looks correct again.

So the point here is if UpdateAppearanceStream does not make the output of the memo field match what you see in the editor (PhantomPDF) or what you see when inputting data using Fox It Reader, then it means the QPL is simply not compatiable with the other FoxIt client apps. Because I have to flatten the file and print it with my application I need the QPL to match the other FoxIt client apps.

My company deals with a tremendous amount of hand built PDFs and if we can't make the output match what the designer creates with the PDF editor then it is not a working solution. We thought by going with all the same brand tools (FoxIt) would provide the most compatible solution, but its not turning out that way.

Thanks