ABCpdf .NET 9

The information on this page relates to an old version of ABCpdf.

Click here for information about the latest version of ABCpdf .NET.

If you want a quick overview you may be interested in the ABCpdf PDF Comparison Chart...

ABCpdf now supports the PDF/A standard. There are lots of solutions which will validate a document and tell you whether it is PDF/A conformant. Or solutions which will allow you to generate conformant documents. However making a document PDF/A compatible is rather more difficult.

With ABCpdf we wanted things to work the way they ought to. So we've enabled ABCpdf to fix-up all documents into PDF/A conformant ones. Practically any document from any source, not just those generated by ABCpdf. And that's unique.

To go with this we now implement transparency flattening. Transparency in documents is common. However the coverage of support for transparency in third party software is often patchy. The PDF/A standard recognizes this as a problem and prohibits the use of transparencies for this reason. Using advanced vector flattening routines ABCpdf can now eliminate transparencies from a document without affecting its overall appearance. The resultant documents are still vector but all transparency is converted into opacity looking just the same as the original.

GigaPDF™ Extremely Large Document Support is now available under x64. This expands support for reading and saving PDFs into the GB range and beyond. Indeed we handle all PDF documents up to the maximum size that the PDF cross reference table will support. If you want to work on excessively large documents then ABCpdf will support you.

PDF optimization and size reduction has been a frequently requested feature. With the new release of ABCpdf you can perform whole document optimization using a variety of options to reduce font sizes, remove embedded fonts, to resample and recompress images, to flatten wherever possible for the smallest possible output.

PDF analysis has been extended into easy-to-use operations for text and images. Simple on the surface but sophisticated underneath, they allow you to extract common-sense, de-hyphenated and de-ligatured text from PDFs. Then you can select items of that text within the PDF and perform operations on those selections - highlighting, framing etc. Image operations allow you to easily determine image placements and resolution and perform operations such as extraction on images that match appropriate conditions.

ABCpdf has allowed you to produce incrementally updated PDFs for some time. Now it allows you to analyze the different revisions within one PDF document and skip back in time to display any of those revisions at the point it was originally saved. This is particularly useful and relevant for digitally signed documents where incremental updates may have resulted in changes to a document after it was signed.

Corrupt documents are something we have to deal with on a regular basis. More and more our clients have been asking us for an effective PDF validation solution. With this release we have reached a point at which we have an extremely effective PDF validation routine which will reliably throw exceptions if a document is invalid. If such an exception is thrown the document can be rebuilt using a full scan. So you get the best of both worlds - a reliable validation routine and a robust fix-up routine.

Better TIFF support. We now support the import of unusual formats of TIFF which have hitherto proved problematic. These include the old JPEG-in-TIFF format and multi-page TIFF images with frames in a variety of color spaces. You may not ever want to generate this type of image but if you have to deal them then ABCpdf will help. In terms of output, TIFF metadata allows flexible output using custom tags.

Then there are numerous minor enhancements to make your life easier. ABCpdf is easier to code and debug due to new debugger visibility attributes. There are lots of useful additions to classes like XRect, XTransform and XColor. Just to make things a little simpler and more elegant.

What's New in Other Versions