What's new in Documents for PDF v2 Service Pack 1

January 30 2019

We're pleased to announce new GcPdf v2 Service Pack 1. This SP includes new feature enhancements in GcPdf and several bug fixes.

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New feature: SoftMask to draw transparent elements on PDFs

GcPdfGraphics introduces SoftMask feature, which allows you to create a mask with a FormXObject; draw on that object's Graphics using any supported drawing methods (including semi-transparent drawing); and then use the result as a mask when drawing on the document's pages. This feature can help you specify images that have transparent content on a PDF document:

Add a soft mask to PDFs

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Text outlining and filling

Sometimes you may not need to display the text in forecolor, but instead display the outline of the text. You may just outline the text and not fill it in; or you need to outline a text in different color and fill in the text with some background color. With GcPdf Service Pack 1, you can apply font outlining with:

Single outline color
Double outline
Gradient color
Shadows

Outline and fill fonts

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Include horizontal text fragments in vertical text

You can now render horizontal characters vertically without rotation, a use case that would mostly be for rendering Chinese, Japanese, or Korean vertical text. Features supported are:

TextFormat allows you to specify the character orientation in vertical text blocks using SidewaysInVerticalText and UprightInVerticalText properties
Latin (ASCII) letters are automatically rendered horizontally in vertical text ("Tate chu yoko")
You can now output several horizontal characters together (without line breaks) in vertical text (TextFormat.TextRunAsCluster)

Include horizontal text fragments in vertical text

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Add sound annotations to PDF files

GcPdf supports several annotation types and now it adds another to the list: sound annotations! This support can make your PDF documents more interactive. Sound annotations can be applied on a form action or describe particular parts of PDF documents. This annotation has a sound object associated with it recorded from computer's microphone or from a file.

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This support adds specific page navigation features to PDF documents, including the ability to add page labels to pages so that PDF viewers would show a page label (e.g. 'Preface iii') instead of the generic 'Page 3.' The feature supports all features as mentioned in the PDF Specification 1.7 Chapter 8.3.

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Extract a list of fonts used in a PDF document

You can now extract a list of fonts used in a PDF so you can use the PDF on a different system or reuse the fonts for a different PDF file. The list includes fonts with their properties from PDF documents. Simply load a PDF document in the GcPdfDocument object, and use the GetFonts() method:

using (var fs = new FileStream(Path.Combine("Resources", "PDFs", sourcePDF), FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))

{
        var doc1 = new GcPdfDocument();
        doc1.Load(fs);
        var fonts = doc1.GetFonts();
}

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Support for all PDF/A conformance levels

GcPdf has been supporting saving PDF documents to PDF/A. With GcPdf, you can now create, edit, and save PDF/A documents of all conformance levels.

The support also includes Associated Files concept, which is needed to support embedded files in PDF/A-3 documents. You can embed files, images, txt, docx files, and more, and associate them with document elements. PDF/A-3a requires all content to be tagged, so you can add elements tagged as per PDF/A rules in the PDF/A documents.

Support for all PDF/A conformance levels

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Extract data from PDF files from specific position

If you need to use data from specific parts in the PDF file, you can now extract text from any position on the page. You'll be able to fetch data from PDF documents based on geometry and use this data in any other documents like TXT, DOCX, XLSX.

Extract data from PDF files from specific position

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Format text as Subscript or Superscript in PDF

You can now add text like mathematical equations, chemical formulas, trademark, or copyright to your PDFs using GcPdf. Add these simple boolean properties to the TextFormat class, and you can set text to superscript or subscript in just a single line of code.

Format text as subscript or superscript in PDF