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Create PDF Documents in .NET
Posted January 12, 2004
O2 Solutions' PDF4NET opens the world of Portable Document Format (PDF) documents—and a new approach to .NET reporting—to your applications. Its powerful yet easy-to-use class library allows you to generate and edit PDF documents from C#, VB.NET, or any other .NET language (see Figure 1).
Your applications can use Adobe's free and readily available Acrobat Reader to let users view documents you generate with PDF4NET. PDF is a reasonably compact, yet flexible, document format. It supports a variety of graphics, formatting, and linking options. PDF is almost as common as HTML, but offers the advantage that you don't need to worry about PDF's compatibility with multiple browser versions, as you do with complex HTML. However, PDF's special encoding makes the format a little more difficult to edit than HTML, so you can't edit it with a simple text editor, such as Notepad—you must use a special editing tool. PDF4NET turns VS.NET into a PDF editing tool.
The PDF4NET class library is easy to understand yet robust. However, you still must do quite a bit of work to create a lengthy document, as you would with any other complex format. You start by generating a PDFDocument object. You add PDFPage objects to create new pages and add other objects to your pages' canvas objects.
PDF4NET supports a wide variety of fonts and text-formatting options. You have the option of using HTML formatting sequences on your text. You also can place text within boxes easily and exploit PDF capabilities by defining outlines, page templates, watermarks, and customer page numbering. PDF4NET also lets you add links to locations within your current document, in external PDF documents, in other types of documents, and in Web pages.
PDF4NET provides extensive graphics support. It includes objects for defining lines, ellipses, arcs, and polygons. You have complete control over your lines' color, width, dashing, and other attributes when you draw an object. You can include JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNP, or EMF objects directly in your documents.
O2 Solutions' support staff is knowledgeable, helpful, and prompt. PDF4NET's help could be improved by integration of the help files into VS.NET. I'd also like to see the product's installation add links to PDF4NET's help to the Windows Programs menu. However, you should have little trouble understanding the PDF4NET documentation and the product itself. This is a useful and comprehensive tool that supplies an effective way to add PDF reporting to your .NET applications. No runtime fee is associated with PDF4NET, regardless of how widely your applications are distributed.
About the Author
Andy Clark is a consultant with iGate Inc. in the Richmond, Va., area. He holds PMP, MCSD, and SJCP certifications. Reach him at .
PDF4Net
O2 Solutions
Web:
Phone: +4-0-788-347-487
Price: $699
Quick Facts: Class library for creating PDF documents with VS.NET tools.
Pros: Easy to understand and use; no runtime fees.
Cons: Help does not integrate into VS.NET.
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