BFO PDF Library 2.28.3
It's been six months since we've had a PDF Library release, but 2.28.3 is here
with some major new functionality.
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"Per-Separation" rendering allows each individual ink in a PDF to be rendered
seperately, reproducing the "Output Preview" functionality in Adobe Acrobat.
We first promised this to one customer about a decade ago, so this has been a very
long time coming - it's a complex piece of work under the hood, but simple to use.
It's significant enough to get its
own article, so we'll say
no more on this here.
-
As part of this change we had to redo the "Device CMYK" color-space we ship with the
API, as represented by the
CMYKColorSpace
class. Intended to represent a non-specific, generic CMYK colorspace, this class has
been
in the API since the first release in 2001. However now we're not only converting
from
CMYK to RGB, with "per-separation" rendering we're going the other way. The existing
color-space wasn't suitable for this, so we've replaced it with - essentially - FOGRA39.
If you're converting PDFs containing device-dependent CMYK colors to RGB, the new
release
will result in a very slight color shift as a result. Device-dependent CMYK is, of
course,
going to vary across devices. But if the old colorspace is required, it's still available.
See the API docs for CMYKColorSpace for details
-
Document Parts, new in PDF 2.0, allow pages in a PDF to be assigned to a particular
part.
This is primarily intended for use with PDF/VT, a section of the industry we don't
have much
to do with. But it's also been discussed as a component of the in-progress
email archiving
work, so we've added support.
-
We've added output-profiles to support the Factur-X specification for e-invoicing
in Germany, France,
Italy and elsewhere. We'll have more to say on this later, including how to generate
these with
BFO Publisher and XSLT. Watch this space.
-
We can now create the variant of the four-state barcode used by Australian Post for
bulk mailing.
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Finally, there's a broad selection of minor fixes, covering everything from OCSP responses
during
digital signing, to PDF/UA creation and validation. Full details, as always, in the
CHANGELOG
Download, as always, available from bfo.com/download. Remember upgrading with BFO is
always free, so don't be shy.