wxPdfDocument

0.8.5

What is wxPdfDocument?

wxPdfDocument is a C++ class which allows wxWidgets applications to generate PDF files. The code is a port of FPDF - a free PHP class for generating PDF files - to C++ using the wxWidgets library. wxPdfDocument does not make use of any libraries like PDFlib or ClibPDF which require a fee at least for commercial usage. wxPdfDocument is published under the wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) license. This means you may use it for any kind of usage and modify it to suit your needs.

wxPdfDocument offers all advantages of FPDF. Several add-on PHP scripts found on the FPDF web site are incorporated into wxPdfDocument. The main features are:

The class can produce documents in many languages other than the Western European ones: Central European, Cyrillic, Greek, Baltic and Thai, provided you own TrueType or Type1 fonts with the desired character set. In the Unicode build Chinese, Japanese and Korean are supported, too.

A Reference Manual showing all available methods in alphabetical order is provided. A sample application including more than 20 examples demonstrates the different features. A separate detailed description is available for the MakeFont Utility. The chapter Styling text using a simple markup language describes the supported tags of the simple XML markup language used by the method wxPdfDocument::WriteXml.

wxPdfDocument is hosted as a component of wxCode. For any remark, question or problem, you can leave a message on the appropriate wxCode tracker accessible from the wxCode support page. Or you can send a mail to me directly.

Version history

Todo:
Although all features were thoroughly tested individually, not all possible combinations were verified to function properly. This means: wxPdfDocument still needs intensive testing. If you find bugs please report them to the author!
0.8.5 - October 2009

wxPdfDocument is compatible with wxWidgets version 2.8.10. Some preparations were done to make wxPdfDocument compatible with version 2.9.x and above, too.

Added features in all builds:

  • support for individual page sizes
  • support for setting fill rule to odd/even or winding
  • support for setting the text render mode
  • support for layers (optional content groups)
  • support for patterns as draw and fill colours
  • support for Code 128 barcodes

Added features in Unicode build:

  • support for kerning
  • support for different encodings for Type1 and TrueType fonts
  • support for using TrueType and OpenType fonts loaded directly from .ttf or .otf file
  • support for using Type1 fonts loaded directly from .pfb and .afm file
  • support for using TrueType and OpenType fonts defined by a wxFont object
  • font subsetting for OpenType Unicode fonts (experimental, currently non-CID fonts only)
  • direct positioning and writing of glyph numbers for TrueType/OpenType Unicode fonts
    this may be used in conjunction with tools for writing complex scripts like ICU

Added features in ANSI build:

  • support for fonts defined by a wxFont object (mapped by family, weight and style to the Adobe core fonts)

General changes:

  • coordinate transformation (location of origin and y axis orientation) is now done directly in PDF. This was a prerequisite to add wxGraphicsContext support in an upcoming version. User unit scaling is done programmatically.
  • unified the naming of all methods manipulating colours. Now always the British spelling is used, i.e. colour instead of color.

Fixed bugs:

0.8.0 - December 2006

Added features:

  • support for external templates: pages of existing PDF documents may be imported and used as templates
  • font subsetting for TrueType and TrueType Unicode fonts, often resulting in much smaller PDF file sizes
  • support for using and embedding OpenType Unicode fonts
  • enhanced support for password based encryption, encryption key length freely definable between 40 and 128 bits (Attention: Adobe Reader supports only keys with 40 or 128 bits.)
  • support for AES encryption (additional standard encryption method in PDF version 1.6 and above)

wxPdfDocument is compatible with wxWidgets version 2.8.0 as well as with version 2.6.x.

As an add-on preprocessed font files for the free DejaVu fonts (version 2.12) are provided in the file release wxPdfDocument Add-Ons.

Attention: For supporting font subsetting for ordinary non-Unicode TrueType fonts the format of the font definition files has been extended. Font definition files created with prior versions of the MakeFont Utility are still usable, but do not support font subsetting. It is recommended to regenerate own font definition files. Unfortunately common AFM font metric files do not contain glyph information which is required by the MakeFont Utility to create the character-to-glyph mapping. Therefore the utility ttf2ufm had to be changed. The modified version including a Windows executable is available in the file release wxPdfDocument Add-Ons.

0.7.6 - October 2006

Added features (thanks to Stuart Smith):

  • setting/getting the default path used for loading font files
  • getting the description of the current font
  • loading images from a wxInputStream (in addition to loading from file or wxImage)

Attention: The structure of the font definition files has changed due to the addition of the font attribute xHeight. It is necessary to regenerate own font definition files using the MakeFont Utility. To support the xHeight attribute the utility ttf2ufm had to be changed.

wxPdfDocument is now compatible with wxWidgets version 2.7.1 and above as well as with version 2.6.x.

Fixed several bugs

0.7.5 - September 2006

Added or enhanced features:

  • support for tables in simple XML markup spanning more than a page
  • support for internal links in simple XML markup
  • support for transparency
  • support for image masks
  • support for internal templates
  • support for polygon and shape clipping
  • support for printing text along a path
  • extended support for fill gradients (API changed!)
  • internal colour management reworked

Fixed some minor bugs

0.7 - April 2006

Added features:

  • support for CMYK and spot colours
  • support for named colours (486 predefined names for RGB colours) (wxPdfColour)
  • support for colour names in HTML notation (#rrggbb) (wxPdfColour)
  • text annotations
  • additional font decorations: overline, strikeout
  • PDF forms
  • JavaScript at the document level
  • Simple XML markup language for styling and structuring text

Added or modified methods:

0.6 - November 2005

Added features:

Changed API of graphics primitives: line style and fill colour parameters deleted, line style and fill colour have to be set using wxPdfDocument::SetLineStyle and wxPdfDocument::SetFillColour.

0.5 - September 2005

First public release

0.4 - August 2005

Support for embedding fonts

0.3 - July 2005

Support for embedding images

0.2 - June 2005

Several add-ons implemented

0.1 - May 2005
Planning and basic PDF features implemented
Author:
Ulrich Telle (ulrich DOT telle AT gmx DOT de)

Known issues

Acknowledgements

I'm very grateful to Bruno Lowagie, the main author of the iText Java library (http://www.lowagie.com/iText), for allowing to take lots of ideas and inspirations from this great Java PDF library. Especially the font handling and font subsetting was influenced in that way.

Many thanks go to Ben Moores who provided code for layers and patterns he wrote for his PDF extension for Mapnik (http://www.mapnik.org). This code has been extended based on ideas from the iText Java library and was incorporated into wxPdfDocument.

Since wxPdfDocument is based on the great FPDF PHP class and several of the contributions to it found on the FPDF website I would like to thank

The wxPdfDocument encryption methods use the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message Digest Algorithm (RSA Data Security license) and the Rijndael cipher implementation of Szymon Stefanek (Public Domain). For detailed license information

See also:
files pdfencrypt.cpp and pdfrijndael.h.

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