Superfast rendering of PDF files to a pic
Printed From: Debenu Quick PDF Library - PDF SDK Community Forum
Category: For Users of the Library
Forum Name: General Discussion
Forum Description: Discussion board for Debenu Quick PDF Library and Debenu PDF Viewer SDK
URL: http://www.quickpdf.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=168
Printed Date: 22 Nov 24 at 11:15PM
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 11.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Superfast rendering of PDF files to a pic
Posted By: Michel_K17
Subject: Superfast rendering of PDF files to a pic
Date Posted: 03 Nov 05 at 7:41PM
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My program, "PDF reDirect Pro" generates a "preview" of a PDF in the corner of the user interface so that the user can see what it looks like before saving it to disk. The current version of PDF reDirect Pro uses the QuickPDF library to render the preview, but this is about to change...
This summer, I managed to get Ghostscript's "Display" device to work with VB6 by modifying the Ghostscript code slightly. You can read all about it, with sample code on the Ghostscript forum [ https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1323769&forum_id=5452 - here ]. Ghostscript generates the preview faster than QuickPDF, but unfortunately has a memory leak - so this was a show-stopper. However, upon some additional investigation, I went with a commercial solution provided by Foxit software [ http://www.foxitsoftware.com - www.foxitsoftware.com ]. Their SDK generates the preview amazingly fast, sometimes by a factor of 10. Also, their engine and the one from Ghostscript is the most faithful: highly recommended. If you want to see how good their SDK is, you can try their free PDF Reader. It uses the same SDK. 
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Replies:
Posted By: chicks
Date Posted: 08 Nov 05 at 3:11PM
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I've used the Foxit Reader occasionally, still a few bugs, but much smaller and faster than Adobe Reader.
There's talk on their forum about adding AcroForm support - I wonder if it will allow saving of entered data without forking over $$$$$, as in Adobe's model. They don't have pricing for their SDK on their web site. I assume it's no where near QuickPDF's $95- royalty-free price? |
Posted By: Michel_K17
Date Posted: 08 Nov 05 at 10:49PM
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You are right about the price. I negociated a price reduction on the basis that I did not need high resolution output. From that perspective they were willing to work with me. That being said, their cost is an order of magnitude higher JUST for rendering. But the performance improvement was worth it to me.
On the other hand, they seem to be introducing/developing and supporting products, so my hopes are high that they will last. |
Posted By: chicks
Date Posted: 09 Nov 05 at 1:49PM
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They seem to have a good deal of activity on their forums, so there's a lot of interest, at least in their free Reader.
Did you eval the Glyph & Cog products? http://www.glyphandcog.com/products.html |
Posted By: Michel_K17
Date Posted: 09 Nov 05 at 9:36PM
| No, I had not heard of their products (until now). Have you tried it for anything? |
Posted By: chicks
Date Posted: 10 Nov 05 at 11:10AM
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No, it's a bit pricey for me, but I (and millions of others) have used it in a way - it's based on their open-source Xpdf, the standard Adobe Reader alternative on most *nix systems. Unfortunately, the Xpdf viewer isn't available for Windows, but the other parts of the package are, and are quite handy - pdffonts, pdfimages, pdfinfo, pdftops and pdftotext.
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Posted By: DanPhillips
Date Posted: 10 Nov 05 at 11:23AM
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Glyph & Cogg - very expensive - limited sdk functionality Amyuni sdk - better sdk / price is ok (approx( $1200)) but has trouble with pdf not generated from their applications Zeon - pdfwizards.com - reader ocx - $100/seat or $10K oem distribution license.
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Posted By: chicks
Date Posted: 10 Nov 05 at 11:36AM
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Thanks for the info. I've toyed with Amyuni several times, have always been disappointed in the quality, though it does improve somewhat with each release.
Zeon is the renderer behind NitroPDF. I've hacked the (undocumented) NitroPDF controls, they're quite easy to use. NitroPDF has talked about providing an SDK. How about Tall Components? Any info on their .NET PDF components? |
Posted By: student
Date Posted: 19 Nov 05 at 6:24PM
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Hi Guys,
I have played with Amyuni, I really like their support team, they have always given me answers fast. But some times waiting on a new release is too loooooong for pending issues with customers. Is Zeon priced in a similar range ? |
Posted By: JanN
Date Posted: 20 Nov 05 at 12:02PM
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I happened to find another pdf viewer control. At the moment I have no time to test it. But perhaps anyone of you does.
http://www.visagesoft.com/products/pdfviewerx/index.php Student, have a look at DanPhillips post for Zeon pricing information. :) |
Posted By: jimmys
Date Posted: 15 Dec 05 at 5:16PM
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How about Tall Components? Any info on their .NET PDF components? I've tested there last 2 betas and have been impressed. i'm waiting for there programmatic access to the form fields. should be available shortly. my interest is PDF forms & scripting. I have been working on a prototype in both the desktop and asp environment using quickpdf and have not given up on it. |
Posted By: chicks
Date Posted: 15 Dec 05 at 5:38PM
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Leonard Rosenthal, who's THE PDF guru, has said some pretty good things about Tall Components' quality over on PlanetPDF.com.
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Posted By: Pirmin
Date Posted: 17 Feb 06 at 10:13AM
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Does anybody have an idea about what an Artifex Commercial License for the GhostScript API costs ( http://www.artifex.com - www.artifex.com )? I couldn't find any price information on their web site. Is it in the range of the Adobe PDF Library API or is it affordable? Last year, when I asked a reseller of the Adobe API for the price, he lasted one month to tell me about the starting price of $25,000! |
Posted By: Michel_K17
Date Posted: 19 Feb 06 at 10:17AM
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Hi,
Yes. I contacted Artifex 2 years ago. Because they cater to large, industrial manufacturers that build imbedded Postscript solutions such as managing PS files inside printers, and that these customers require immediate support, the cost is very, very high. Here is the reply that I got from Artifex in 2004: Dear Michel, Unfortunately, Artifex is not set up to handle very low volume customers. Please contact one of our existing OEM customers. Our OEM customers don't sell Ghostscript; rather they integrate Ghostscript within their applications and offer a supported PostScript/PDF solution. Please take a look at our web page description of some of our OEM customer solutions: http://www.artifex.com/techcustomers/index.htm - http://www.artifex.com/techcustomers/index.htm Artifex has a minimum monetary expectation from all of our 100+ world-wide OEM customers. It begins with a $10,000 technology access fee, and a quarterly minimum of $5,000, equaling a minimum of $30K the first year and $20K per year minimum after that. All of our licensing is done on a case by case basis weighing heavily on the number of units sold per year containing Ghostscript and the selling price of those units. It is royalty based and is the royalty or the quarterly minimum whichever is greater. Best regards, Scott Sackett Vice President Sales Artifex Software |
Posted By: Pirmin
Date Posted: 19 Feb 06 at 11:37AM
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Thank you Michel! Here is a similar reply, I got last year from datalogics. ___________________________________________________ Subject: Your evaluation request for Adobe PDF Library Dear Pirmin, I wanted to provide some details about the PDF Library so you could decide The Library exposes a low-level C/C++ interface, is this compatible with The standard OEM licensing terms for the PDF Library API consists of three Finally, the Library is licensed on a per-application basis. This means we'd Please let me know how you would like to proceed - I look forward to hearing Best regards, Greg Manuel |
Posted By: marwin
Date Posted: 20 Feb 06 at 6:25PM
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Hi,
because in our product we use preview of pdf files and Quick PDF is seems be dead, we now use Foxit software SDK in our software. There is our experience with FOXIT SDK(not too good) 1. Price price of SDK was 2500 USD but only for one in licence agreement product. You can't use it for different product. 2. The viewer is quite slow and sometimes have problem with pictures and fonts espetially eastereurope. 3. Rendering is not double buffered, then it really blinking when you refresh it. 4. Support is terrible :(. You must check theirs forum and then write them for new release of SDK. 5. Support for problem with SDK is the same. For this price is support very lax. 6. There is problem with print. Printing is slow and sometimes you get AV. There is problem get new version with update. 7. I use FoxItEdit and there is lot of bugs, but no want it repair (respective very lax) This is my experience with Foxit, but I cant find any alternative. Regards Martin Radvansky |
Posted By: Ingo
Date Posted: 21 Feb 06 at 1:52AM
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Hi!
I've made good experiences with RenderDocumentToFile and an image component. It's fast enough, mostly with a good result and it's cheap ;-) Best regards, Ingo BTW: This forum is a sign that QuickPDF isn't dead ;-) |
Posted By: marwin
Date Posted: 24 Feb 06 at 2:34AM
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Hi Ingo,
Yes You are true, QuickPDF isn't dead, I think about iSed QuickPDF company or what is right name of the company of creators. This company is dead :(. Thanks for forum and Your great work. I>RenderDocumentToFile and an image component. I>It's fast enough, mostly with a good result and it's I>cheap ;-) You write about Foxit? The price isn't so good for commersial ussage if You don't want pay by user. Regards Martin |
Posted By: Ingo
Date Posted: 24 Feb 06 at 6:28AM
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Hi Martin!
No... I mean QuickPDF. Best regards, Ingo |
Posted By: chicks
Date Posted: 04 May 06 at 1:51PM
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I just tried Gnostice's new "ProPlus" version of their PDFToolkit, which features a PDF rendering engine for viewing and printing PDFs.
I compiled the C++ demo, ran the viewer, which looked reasonably good, but I wondered why they had hardcoded it to view only one PDF file. Soon found out - changed the code to point to a real-world PDF, and the rendering was absolute rubbish. The QuickPDF rendering engine, for all its faults, is lightyears ahead of this $600 library. |
Posted By: swb1
Date Posted: 04 May 06 at 2:35PM
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Due to my company’s preference for supported libraries, I had originally purchased the Gnostice library. I later convinced my partners that an unsupported library that does the job is better than a supported library that does not. Now I own and use the iSed library while Gnostice sits on a shelf. Though, as a registered user, I will continue to download and try their updates. In the meantime, I am not holding out hope for many improvements in the iSed library.
sb |
Posted By: JanN
Date Posted: 09 May 06 at 1:18PM
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I'm evaluating XPdfPrint (Glyph & Cog) right now. Well, I'm speechless after the first few tests. Until now I could not find a PDF file that has not been printed right.
The best thing is: XPdfPrint does not generate "bitmap output", as QuickPdf for example. That's why the size of the print jobs mostly is less than 1/10 of the QuickPdf size. Did anybody try this library? Is there anything to bear in mind before purchasing that product? Perhaps anybody of you does have time to do own tests and perhaps confirm my results. http://www.glyphandcog.com/XpdfPrint.html |
Posted By: Ingo
Date Posted: 09 May 06 at 1:31PM
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Hi Jan!
The developer-license costs US$ 600,00 ... Excellent print-engine or not... 600,00 - only for printing - is a lot of money. Best regards, Ingo |
Posted By: swb1
Date Posted: 09 May 06 at 2:52PM
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$500 developers license is not propblem however the Per-seat licensing is a deal breaker for us. Not because it is expensive - but because it is a distribution and support hassle.
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Posted By: JanN
Date Posted: 09 May 06 at 3:39PM
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Ingo,
Of course the developer license cannot be called "cheap". But I find the price per runtime license very attractive. Steve, Perhaps I don't understand you right. But in my opinion the only problem is to count the used licenses. The german distributor told me that there are no hardware keys nor something similar. So it is not really a Per-seat licensing, is it? |
Posted By: swb1
Date Posted: 09 May 06 at 4:15PM
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We license our client application on concurrent seats in use – or the number of users currently connected to the server. This presents difficulties when we wish to offer per-seat third-party components. We may sell 10 seats for perhaps 30 users to share. We would have to sell 30 run-time licenses to cover all of the possible users. When you say that they don’t require a hardware key – are they counting on developers/resellers to just be honest and tell them how many they sold? I doubt it. I do see, however, that they offer OEM licensing, though they don’t specify the price. I suspect that OEM licensing will be quite pricy. I will not completely dismiss them though, should we decide that we need something better and than QuickPDF and Adobe is just too big a pain, we may check them out.
Thanks for link. sb |
Posted By: JanN
Date Posted: 09 May 06 at 4:43PM
I understand. That is a bit more difficult to handle.
Well, that's what our contact person told us. I also have my doubts though. I think, I will let him confirm that within the next days. Thanks for your replies. |
swb1 wrote: