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Alternatives for replacing QuickPDF

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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=824
Printed Date: 22 Nov 24 at 6:55PM
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Topic: Alternatives for replacing QuickPDF
Posted By: jabaltie
Subject: Alternatives for replacing QuickPDF
Date Posted: 27 Nov 07 at 11:17AM
Hello !

I've had serious issues of damaged PDFs generated here on my installation (see my other postings).

I really cant figure out what's going on. When I generate say 1000 PDFs, some of them will have field contents replaced by other fields contents.

This is totally random.

I'm thinking about replacing QuickPDF.

Hate to do that cause I've invested a lot on top of it (effort , time, infra-structure etc) and I dont wanna throw it all away.

But, since I cant solve the damaged PDFs problem, I see no other choice but to replace it.

What are the alternatives ?

My requirements for another library :

- The same function set, mostly when regarded to form fields, images and barcodes.

- It needs to be something that I can embed into my EXE and that I can run it anywhere, that is, on several machines and on my server too.

- Yes, I could pay more. What's the value of something cheap that I can trust ? That is, I can no more trust on the documents generated from my platform cause the PDFs are corrupted (see my other postings).

- Needs to have ActiveX interface (or DLL mode) just like QuickPDF.

What would you pick out there ? PDFlib ? Where have you gone to ?





Replies:
Posted By: chicks
Date Posted: 28 Nov 07 at 5:41PM
Well, QuickPDF certainly has limitations, but I've never experienced a problem with filling/flattening form fields with it, if you remember that the field numbers shift as you flatten.

However, the "standard" PDF library I generally use is iText, which is available in .NET and Java versions. It's considerably more capable than QuickPDF, and is being actively maintained. It's also open source.

If you are primarily filling and flattening fields, you can use pdftk, if you are willing to transform your XML datasource into Adobe's standard XFDF format. I've written an "extended" version of pdftk that allows stamping images and barcodes into the fields - see http://www.esnips.com/web/PDFTools - pdftk_chicks . You'll also find a DLL wrapper for the iText fill/flatten example, but it's currently limited to FDF.

For industrial-strength forms processing, see
http://www.appligent.com/products/product_families/forms_processing.php - Appligent's tools.


Posted By: jabaltie
Date Posted: 29 Nov 07 at 5:30AM
Originally posted by chicks chicks wrote:

Well, QuickPDF certainly has limitations, but I've never experienced a problem with filling/flattening form fields with it, if you remember that the field numbers shift as you flatten.


I'm very sad cause the whole project is sinking JUST BECAUSE this flattening problem.... Can a single function shut it all down ?

We had to suspend the PDF generation because of the corrupted PDFs generated. It is not reliable.

No matters if I generate 8.000 PDFs and 10 of them are corrupted. CANT have a single one corrupted.

Anyway....

Ah, what's the best approach to replace form field contents and flatten them all ?

How is your loop ?

Do you do a single loop where you replace fields from bottom/up and flatten them right away or do you do 2 separate loops, one for field replacement and the other for flattening ?

I have tried several different logics and none of them solve the problem....

Originally posted by chicks chicks wrote:


However, the "standard" PDF library I generally use is iText, which is available in .NET and Java versions. It's considerably more capable than QuickPDF, and is being actively maintained. It's also open source.


It needs to be ActiveX compatible (or DLL) cause I'll use it with XBase++.


Originally posted by chicks chicks wrote:


If you are primarily filling and flattening fields, you can use pdftk, if you are willing to transform your XML datasource into Adobe's standard XFDF format. I've written an "extended" version of pdftk that allows stamping images and barcodes into the fields - see http://www.esnips.com/web/PDFTools - pdftk_chicks . You'll also find a DLL wrapper for the iText fill/flatten example, but it's currently limited to FDF.


I could do that. I'm very skilled with XML handling and strings processing (regular expressions etc).

Originally posted by chicks chicks wrote:


For industrial-strength forms processing, see
http://www.appligent.com/products/product_families/forms_processing.php - Appligent's tools.


Once more, thank you so much Chicks !



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