iText

iText enables Java developers full control over the PDF documents they work with in their Java Web or desktop-based projects.

This library basically liberates programmers from using specific browser plugins or local software for manipulating PDF data, iText doing all the hard work via Java code alone.

This can be a great tool for talented developers which want to build PDF rendering and processing features right in their products.

iText is also available ina .NET version as iTextSharp.

Besides this open source version, a commercial version of this library is also available, mainly benefiting from extended support and liberation from the AGPL license compliance. This license has no fixed price and requires a quota inquiry.

What is new in this release:

• Modified PdfContentStream to be able to process path construction and painting, extended existing render listener
• Added classes for path abstraction
• CompareTool: fix StackOverflowError in case of repeated recursive objects comparison.
• BarcodeQRCode: add a method for drawing qr code directly on canvas.
• Wrong Body element processing in PdfDocument. pageEmpty property should be true.
• Body color issue solution
• Remove duplicate setting of base font name.

What is new in version 5.5.5:

• Fixed incorrect element tagging when a template image is added to the document.
• Added pdfaExtension schema to XMP metadata in order to add support of the PDF/A-* and PDF/UA standard simultaneously in a single PDF document.
• New functionality: Image and PdfTemplate can now be added to FDF file as field values.
• Bugfix: FdfReader should not close input source automatically. Otherwise we cannot read stream data.
• Bugfix in PdfAChecker: there was an issue with PDF/A validation of PRIndirectReference objects.
• TaggedPdfReaderTool: removed dependency on java.nio.charset.Charset to avoid issue with default charset on linux.
• TaggedPdfReaderTool: add alt attribute of tag structure to output xml.
• TaggedPdfReaderTool: fix issue with null-symbol in alt text attribute.
• CompareTool speedup, add compareByContent() method.
• CompareTool: fix issue with comparing tag structure.
• When a Chunk is a link, tagged PDF requires that an accessible attribute is added. We also add alternate text for link annotations.
• Tagged PDF and form fields: widget annotations can now be tagged.
• Better support for gradient colors
• LAB color space support

What is new in version 5.4.1:

• DocumentFont: Undo of wrong simplification introduced in iText 5.4.0
• io package: Handling small and zero-sized files.
• Reduced the memory use in the getContentBytesFromContentObject() method of ContentByteUtils.
• Improved fix by Bruno that closes RandomAccessSources when the construction of a PdfReader object fails
• Chunk: getContent() optimization (after the introduction of tabs)
• Optimization assigning the UUIDs to iText elements
• Improved fix by Kevin of fix by Bruno that closes RandomAccessSources when the construction of a PdfReader object fails
• TrueTypeFont: Glyphs hashSet should be copied when creating SubSet

What is new in version 5.3.2:

• Removing unnecessary imports.
• Fix in PdfAnnotationsImp: You can't always assume that the PdfArray returned by get(PdfName.RECT) is of type PdfRectangle. It could just be a PdfArray object.
• Creating page events for PdfCopy or PdfSmartCopy doesn't make sense, so let's throw an exception when somebody tries to do so.
• Hyphenation wasn't friendly towards unknown characters.
• Fixed a NullPointerException in PdfAWriter.

What is new in version 5.3.1:

• Improved the calculation of the leading in ColumnText.
• Class BmpImage: Support for 52 and 56 byte BMP headers
• Class ICC_Profile: Ignore invalid ICC profile (wrong number of color components) especially in Jpegs.
• Fixed pagination for PdfDiv class.
• Removed some unnecessary imports.
• Bugfix: XmpWriter shouldn't assume that all info dictionary keys have a String value.
• The new PdfDiv element should also be allowed in Phrase and ColumnText.
• Separated the release info from Document into a separate class named Version.

What is new in version 5.2.0:

• Improved the parsing of PDF documents in languages such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc..

What is new in version 5.0.2:

• Changes:
• EncryptionRevision 3 and 4 only requires the first key length bytes to be hashed 50 times (fix of a problem reported by the people of pdfforge).
• Fixed height didn't work correctly in PdfPCell.
• CFFFontSubset: avoiding a NullPointerException
• XfaForm: skipping white space
• BaseFont: Not all the xobjects have resources and that was causing a NullPointerException.
• Java 5 code simplifications in PdfCopy and PdfContentByte
• PdfPTable: New method to reset the number of columns.
• Added support for QR barcode. The code is based in ZXing (Apache license).
• PdfPTable: Fix for row span above bug (timmo3). See itextsharp bug #2979944.
• HTML Markup: Support for absolute-size (CSS).
• AcroFields: introduction of the class FieldPosition to make the code more readable.
• CMapAwareDocumentFont: Tweaks to make processing quasi-invalid PDF files more robust
• PdfContentReaderTool: null pointer handling, plus a few well placed flush calls
• PdfContentReaderTool: Show details on resource entries
• PdfContentStreamProcessor: Adjustment so embedded images don't cause parsing problems and improvements to EI detection
• LocationTextExtractionStrategy: Fixed anti-parallel algorithm, plus accounting for negative inter-character offsets. Change to text extraction strategy that builds out the text model first, then computes concatenation requirements.
• Adjustments to linesegment implementation; optimalization of changes made by Bruno to text extraction; for example: introduction of the class MarkedContentInfo.
• Major refactoring of interface to text extraction functionality: for instance introduction of class PdfReaderContentParser
• PdfImage: Provide a "nice" resource name when a null image name is passed to us.
• Image: avoiding possible null pointer exception
• AcroFields: Making deprecated public variables protected
• PdfGState: new method setRenderingIntent()
• PdfGraphics2D: performance improvement, contributed by Peter Harvey.
• PdfContentReaderTool: avoiding possible NullPointerException
• PdfName: added new name OC related constants for Not, Or, FG, Ind, and so on.
• New class PdfVisibilityExpression: Support for visibility expressions in OC membership dictionaries.
• Optional content usage: support for PageElement and User
• New class TaggedPdfReaderTool: tool that is able to convert a Tagged PDF into an XML file.
• New class TextMarginFinder: strategy to find the boundaries of text
• Introduced MarkedContent info in the TextRenderInfo
• Introduced a PdfImageObject for the ImageRenderInfo
• Replacing getStartPoint and getEndPoint with getLineSegment.
• PdfDictionary: new method clear()
• PdfCollection: Collections can also have a custom view.
• PdfAnnotation: suggestion by Eric de Beus to add a method to create Polygon/Polyline annotations. As the two methods suggested by Eric were identical except for one line, I merged them into one method.
• BaseFont: TrueTypeFont.WindowsMetrics.usWeightClass and usWidthClass and made both accessible via TrueTypeFont.getFontDescriptor() (posted to the mailing list by Thimo Seitz 14/07/2009 14:12)
• Tabs and justified alignment don't mix. Not really a bug fix, but at least the line doesn't jump out of the text column anymore.
• FDF files are now generated as version 1.4 (instead of 1.2)

Requirements:

• Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.5 or higher
• The BouncyCastle: bcprov, bcmail, and bctsp