GrapeCity Documents Roadmap 2020

Documents today are generated from data, reports, analysis, collaborations, and data retrieval every day. Several software applications have automated this process and are working with documents to process data. Data is dynamic and constant changes every day, and these applications take care of updating the documents periodically by loading them, modifying the content, and saving them back again.

When documents are managed through .NET applications, there is a strong need for document libraries, that have a detailed and rich feature set to manage complex business cases. More importantly, documents today are generated in various formats - PDF, Word, Excel being the popular ones. Document generating APIs should be able to save data in these formats, generate documents from data or convert documents from one format to another.

GrapeCity Documents 2019 Product Recap

Over the last year, GrapeCity Documents has been working on the path of covering more scenarios for automating document-related tasks and file comversions (PDF to Images, HTML to PDF, HTML to Images have been such additions).

More than just generating documents, there is an entire workflow that these documents must go through when shared across for review. PDF is one of the most popular formats to distribute documents. It allows users to view embedded documents within applications online, without the use of a third-party tool. Applications looking to support PDF documents should not rely on third-party tools (Adobe Acrobat, MS Tools,etc.) to view these documents. Currently, there are minimal tools that support standard PDF specifications-based documents in their viewers.

Users need to view and edit these documents on the web, perform viewer operations, annotate, sign, apply changes, and save. GrapeCity Documents released Javascript PDF Viewer last year, with the focus of providing a cross-platform solution to view PDF documents on Windows, MAC, Linux, iOS, and Android devices in respective browsers and support PDF features based on the PDF specification.

Another critical aspect is the ability to generate documents from Templates bound with data rather than creating them from scratch. Binding structured documents with data (from any data source) and generating Excel reports are prevalent needs of any business domain.

To distribute invoices, shipping, delivery , or purchase orders electronically to vendors, buyers, sellers, clients, customers, etc. GrapeCity Documents released the support of Templates with full syntax and API to bind Excel documents to data and generate Excel reports with advanced layouts. With a flexible syntax and easy notations for data expansion and formulas, the new template syntax and API will make it easy to define Excel templates and generate Excel reports supporting numerous use cases. You can also make use of the GcExcel API to save the Excel directly reports .xlsx files or as a PDF.

The Year 2020 Ahead

GrapeCity Documents continues to add more features to be a complete document solution for building universal documents, viewers, and editing solutions. Here are some important highlights from our Roadmap for 2020.

GrapeCity Documents for PDF

GrapeCity Documents for PDF (GcPdf) conforms to a large part of Adobe PDF specification 2.0 and we are moving on the path of providing complete PDF solutions to our customers.

Here are the additional features you can expect in 2020:

• Redacting PDF documents
• Export PDF to other formats
• Comprehensive coverage of PDF specification
• Interactive features to PDF expansion
• Extract data from PDFs
• Generate PDF documents from templates

GrapeCity Documents for Excel

GrapeCity Documents for Excel (GcExcel)is a detailed Excel API based on Excel's document object model, that allows you to generate and work with Spreadsheets with fast performance, small footprint in .NET Core applications. We extend the feature set to make it possible to achieve more complex use cases for your Excel spreadsheets. Documents for Excel (GcExcel) is available in both .NET and Java with the same feature parity and performance.

• Generate Excel reports from templates and template-based data extraction
• Export Excel to other formats
• Exporting Excel to PDF enhancements
• Provide more support for GrapeCity SpreadJS (client-side) features
• Enhance Pivot Table support
• Expand GcExcel object model to support more MS Excel features

GrapeCity Documents for Word

GrapeCity Documents for Word (GcWord) offer a rich and comprehensive object model that is simple to use and is based on Microsoft Office API, Word Javascript API, and OpenXML SDK. In 2020, we plan features that will avoid creating documents from scratch, but load existing MS Word documents and templates, perform mail-merge tasks to generate full reports, or convert Word documents to other formats. The list includes:

• Expand GcWord object model to support more MS Word features
• Generate Word documents from Templates
• Enhanced support for Word to PDF export.
• Support loading documents of other formats in Word documents

GrapeCity Documents for Imaging

GrapeCity Documents for Imaging (GcImaging) is an imaging library that can create, load, modify and save images in .NET Core applications with full support on Windows, macOS, Linux, AWS Lambda & Azure functions. GcImaging supports exclusive algorithms for image processing, and in 2020, we plan to add real-time samples and services that demonstrate these features.

GrapeCity Documents Javascript PDF Viewer

A pure Javascript client-side control, GcDocs PDF Viewer, supports all standard features of a PDF document viewer. In 2020, we move ahead to add advanced server supported APIs that will help you edit, review, design PDF Forms. Feature enhancements will provide even more interactivity.

• New PDF editing tools
• Collaborative editing
• Enhanced form filling
• Improved Interactivity

Stay tuned to our next GrapeCity Documents releases through 2020! We hope this article reveals new features and improvements you're excited about for GrapeCity Documents 2020.

If you have any questions or need clarification, please use the comments section available below. You can also contact us by submitting your questions on the GC contact page, or if you already have an account, you can log in to submit your support question.