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as Dynamic PDF
The Home of
ClibPDF & TIFF2PDF
December 12, 1999: ClibPDF ver.
2.02-r1-1
Just Released
ANSI C Library for Direct PDF
Generation
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What is ClibPDF ?
ClibPDF is a library of ANSI C functions, distributed as source code,
for creating PDF files directly via C language programs without
relying on any Adobe Acrobat(R) tools and related products. It is free
for private, non-profit use, but a commercial license is required for for-profit
applications (Please see FastIO ClibPDF License
for details or a Digest Version -- License
Summary
in Japanese). The library is suitable for creating fast dynamic
PDF Web pages in response to user input and from dynamic data sources,
and also for implementing publication-quality graph plotting, report or
form generation. Since there is minimal platform-specific code, it
is ideal as cross-platform graphing solutions with minimal developement
efforts. Generated PDF files may be viewed and printed by auto-launching
Adobe
Acrobat(R) Reader or any other PDF viewer available free for many platforms.
Note that ClibPDF is for PDF file creation only. It has no support for
reading or modifying existing PDF files.
[Nearly everything on our web site requires Acrobat(R) Reader.]
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Notable Features of ClibPDF
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NEW - Thread-Safe. Creates
multiple PDF documents simultaneously.
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NEW - Unicode and Asian Font
Support -- Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts.
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Most basic PDF drawing primitives are supported, plus arc
and circle.
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Columnar text formatting with chaining of columns/text
boxes.
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Aligned text: left-, right-, top-,
bottom-, and center-aligned string in both horizontal and vertical dimensions.
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Image import, drawing on top of images, in-line images.
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48 built-in fonts including 39
Roman, 2 symbol, and 7 Asian language fonts (each with 4 styles).
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PS/ATM Type-1 font embedding from PFM/PFB files (e.g. bar
code).
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Plot domains (linear, semi-log, log-log)
with mesh to give graph paper appearance.
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Axes (linear, log, date) with flexible tick marks, numbering, and labelling.
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Markers, pointers, error bars for marking
data points.
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Multi-page documents may be generated in any page order, and pages may
be written to in an interleaved manner.
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Multi-level outline (book marks).
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Hyper-text links, annotations.
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In-memory PDF generation (no temporary files; direct web-serving and getting
the Content-Length: value is trivially simple).
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Transition, timed slide show support.
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Viewer preference control (e.g., have book mark view upon document open).
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Support for Flate/Zlib
compression for fast web download (We do NOT use LZW algorithm in
any part of our software.)
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Possible Applications
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Fast, light-weight CGI for dynamic PDF web page generation.
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Automatic generation of customized financial, performance reports directly
from database.
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Report generation in medical, scientific, and industrial test equipment
(and plots may be used directly in publications via, e.g., Adobe Illustrator(R)
8).
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On-line maps that are not ugly when printed.
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Convert legacy documents (e.g., parts list, service/maintenance/procedural
manuals, architectural/engineering drawings, SEC/Edgar filings) into electronic
format with ease of access via outlines (book marks).
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Giving legacy console-type applications an attractive graphic output via
auto-launched Arobat(R) Reader (or any PDF viewer).
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Cross-platform graphing solutions.
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A unified imaging model for X-Window applications for beautiful screen
and printed output (no more ugly screen dumps). This eases the pain
of the death of DPS (Display PostScript).
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See how other users have applied ClibPDF in their applications (hints !)
What's New
How does it work?
Download
Current Product Versions
-- find out if a new version is ready
ClibPDF Version 2.02-r1-1 (1999-12-12)
-- Unicode, CJK Font & Multi-threading
Unicode annotations and bookmarks. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
language support -- 7 base fonts (each with 4 styles for a total of 28
CJK font styles). Bug fixes that solve excessive use of memory by
TIFF2PDF type application with thousands of pages of images.
ClibPDF Library Source Code + Everything (2.02-r1-1, ~900kB)
ClibPDF API Reference Manual (v2.01-r2-7) [PDF
(also in the above package)]
Verson 2.02 Addendum to Reference Manual [PDF
(also in the above package)]
Release README file.
Linux RPM files (v2.02r1-0)
ClibPDF Version 1.10-7e (1999-06-10) -- Old API
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ClibPDF Library Source Code + Everything (1.10-7e, ~800kB)
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ClibPDF API Reference Manual (v1.10) [PDF
(also in the above package)]
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Manual Addendum (v1.10 to v1.10-7e) [ PDF
|| PostScript ]
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Windows stdout output bug fix --
README
for the fix (Sep. 20, 1999; not included in the Everything package)
TIFF2PDF Version 1.14 (1999-12-14)
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Now Multi-page! TIFF2PDF -- TIFF
image to PDF converter (binary only)
Platforms Tested
ClibPDF is highly platform-independent. It can be made to compile
on just about any platform with little effort. This is especially
true for most Unix variants. Please note that we are unable to answer
questions regarding installing and compiling ClibPDF on a given platform.
For your information, ClibPDF has been tested on the following platforms
(the list will grow over time):
AIX 4.2
BSDI BSD/OS 3.1 (gcc 2.7.2.1)
FreeBSD 2.2.8-STABLE (gcc 2.7.2.1)
HP-UX
B.11.00
Linux 2.0.34 (Red
Hat 5.2, 6.x, 7) (gcc 2.7.2.3)
NEXTSTEP 3.2, 3.3, OPENSTEP
4.2
MacOS X Server 1.1
MacOS X (10.0.x) (should also work with Darwin)
SGI IRIX 6.2 (gcc 2.8.1) -- Thanks
to Matt Warner.
SunOS 5.4 (C-4.0)
Sun Solaris 7 (gcc 2.95.1
and Sun CC)
MacOS 8.x/9.0 (Metrowerks
IDE 3.2/CWPro 4) -- README.MacOS8
Windows 95/98/NT(4.0 SP3/SP4)/2000 (VC++ 6.0) -- README.win32
Cygwin b20.1 (gcc
egcs-2.91.57) -- port
by Stipe Tolj
Amiga WarpUP PPC
-- Precompiled
library by Steffen Haeuser
Useful Links
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PDFzone -- a great resource and starting point for anything PDF
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PlanetPDF -- another great PDF resource, CodeCuts,
developer forums.
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PDFCorner
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Adobe
Acrobat(R) SDK -- If you must edit or manipulate existing PDF files,
and are a voracious reader of programming documentation.
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Adobe(R)
Tech Notes for Developers -- many useful documents
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PDF Reference 2-nd Edition, v. 1.3 (Jul. 3, 2000)
-- The official PDF file format specification
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PDF specification changes from V. 1.3 to 1.4 (Apr. 2, 2001)
-- spec. delta from 1.3 to 1.4
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PHP Interface to
ClibPDF (manual) -- server-side HTML-embedded scripting language (Replace
Perl?)
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VTeX -- Another great non-Adobe
way to produce PDF directly with math and scalable fonts
(including Asian fonts), and complex automated formatting.
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Xpdf - (PDF viewer for X Window;
with C++ source code)
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Luc Devroye's amazing collection of PDF,
PostScript, Font
resources.
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Japanese PDF file samples - PDF
Link Collection by K. Hirota
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CGIHTML - CGI library
for C. It works well with ClibPDF.
ADOBE and ACROBAT are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
[ Copyright (C) 1998-2002 FastIO Systems, All Rights Reserved,
Last updated: April 8, 2002.
FastIO, ClibPDF, JlibPDF, TIFF2PDF are trademarks of FastIO
Systems. ]