Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
iText can be downloaded from
the iText Software website
.
TCPDF for PHP
TCPDF is a pure PHP library for the generation of PDF reports, including text layout,
tables, conversion of HTML, annotations, hyperlinks, and images. Web services can
use TCPDF to build a document dynamically and serve it to a PDF viewer running
within a web browser, or send it by email.
TCPDF can be downloaded, together with a wide range of examples from
its website
.
Processing PDF with Perl
There are a large number of PDF libraries for reading, writing, and editing PDF files in
Perl, some of which are highly mature, others less so. Documentation is often sparse,
belying the extensive capabilities available.
As with all free Perl modules, the
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
holds both
source code and documentation.
PDF on Mac OS X
Apple's PDFKit provides a number of classes for use with Apple's supported program-
ming languages (such as Objective C). These include:
• PDFView, an onscreen view on a PDF document.
• PDFDocument and PDFPage for document and page-level manipulation.
• PDFAnnotation, PDFAction, PDFOutline, and PDFSelection for interactive
facilities.
Apple's built-in PDF viewer, Preview, is built on these libraries. The PDF Kit Libraries
are documented in Apple's
Mac OS X Developer Library
.
Converting Formats
Format conversions come in three categories:
• Converting to or from a similar, scalable vector format (e.g., PostScript or SVG).
In this case, structural information is often preserved well.
• Converting from a PDF to a raster image, such as a PNG or TIFF.
• Converting from a raster image to a PDF, which often just involves simple encap-
sulation, especially in the case of formats PDF knows about, like JPEG.
