PDF Library SDK Overview

This provides an overview of the PDF Library SDK. This guide provides an introduction to development using the PDF Library. It describes the PDF Library, the PDF Library Software Development Kit (SDK), support and licensing options, and basic development tasks.

This guide is intended for programmers who need basic information on the PDF Library and its capabilities. It assumes familiarity with C programming, common development tasks, and the use of methods exported by an object code library.

A detailed description of the PDF file format. PDF Reference Developing plug-ins for Acrobat and Reader, as well as for PDF Library applications. Detailed descriptions of the APIs for Acrobat and Reader plug-ins, as well as for PDF Library applications. An overview of the SnippetRunner tool and the plug-in snippets provided with the Acrobat

Introduction to PDF Library

Designed specifically for OEMs, ISVs, system integrators, and enterprise IT developers, the PDF Library SDK contains a powerful set of functions for developing third-party solutions and processes around PDF. The PDF Library is based on the core technology of the Acrobat line of products and offers complete functionality for generating, manipulating, rendering, and printing PDF documents.

The library enables PDF functionality to be seamlessly embedded within applications. It also provides reliable, accurate and -supported implementation of the latest PDF specification.

The PDF Library and the PDF viewers

The PDF Library shares much of the same source code as the PDF viewing applications (Acrobat Professional, Acrobat Standard and Reader). There is a large degree of overlap between the functionality provided by the PDF Library Software Development Kit (SDK) and that of the Acrobat SDK. They differ in providing access to the Acrobat user interface:

  1. The Acrobat SDK is meant for the plug-in environment, and allows you to control and interact with the Acrobat user interface.
  2. The PDF Library SDK is intended for interaction between PDF content and other applications, such as high volume batch processing and PDF generation applications. It does not export methods for creating or managing Acrobat UI elements—that is, the AcroView (AV) layer of the core API.

If you are interested in the documentation and samples in the Acrobat Software Development Kit (SDK), see the Acrobat Developer Center.

About the PDF Library SDK

This helps you get started with development using the PDF Library SDK. It describes the contents of each directory in the SDK installation, lists available code samples, and provides platform-specific information on how to set up the development environment.

PDF Library Supported environments

PDF Library SDK and its project files are supported for the platforms, operating systems, and compilers listed in Developing Plug-ins and Applications. While it may be possible to use the library in other development environments, such use is not supported by Developer Support.

The PDF Library SDK consists of the following components:

  1. CorePDF libraries that provide the functionality
  2. Header files that provide access to the libraries
  3. Sample applications and code snippets showing how to use the library for a variety of purposes
  4. Documentation of installation and development techniques and of the PDF Library APIs

The components that are shipped with the PDF Library SDK are listed in Developing Plug-ins and Applications. These include the PDF Library, helper libraries, headers, and samples.

Installing the PDF Library SDK

The PDF Library SDK installation process differs depending on the target platform

  1. Windows — Do one of the following:
  2. For the standard version of the PDF Library SDK, unzip PDFLibrarySDKMinSize18.x.y.zip
  3. For the speed-optimized version of the PDF Library SDK, unzip PDFLibrarySDKMaxSpeed18.x.y.zip.
  4. Mac OS — Mount the dmg image, PDFLibrarySDK18.x.y.dmg, and copy the PDFLibrarySDK18.x.y folder to your local drive.
  5. Linux — A gzip compressed tar file, PDFLibrarySDK18.x.y.tar.gz, is provided; developers determine where to decompress and install the SDK

Updating to PDF Library SDK

All PDF Library SDK APIs are still supported in PDF Library SDK . Other than a few minor code changes, all you should need to do is recompile your application with the new SDK headers using the recommended development environment.

Windows PDF Library

If applicable, change PDFLibrary70.lib to PDFLibrary.lib in your project settings. By default, for 18.x builds, Windows SDK version for all samples and plugins is set to 10.0.15063.0 which is included in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.1.

Mac OS PDF Library

Refer to the sample projects for information on updating. PDF Library SDK uses frameworks instead of shared libraries. For convenience, the sample applications are built to include the PDF Library frameworks. The libraries are in the Libs:Mac:PDFLibrary.framework folder. Aliases or proper paths need to be set to ensure that your applications run properly. Include PDFLibraryInitCommon.c in the Include:Headers folder to your client project. All C source files must be compiled as C++ files using the following steps: 1. In the project source pane, select the file(s) and click Get Info. 2. In the General panel, change the File Type: popup from sourcecode.c.c to sourcecode.cpp.cpp. The Needs Raise Aware flag has been turned off on Mac OS.

Linux PDF Library

Before you can build your product on a Linux platform running the CentOS 7.3 operation system, you must procure the Clang compiler. We recommend using version 3.9.1 or later, and keeping the compiler in the directory: /opt/llvm/ Update your makefile to reflect any new libraries in the libs folder. Important – For linux platform, new libraries libc++, libc++abi and libunwind are now included along with the existing libraries libgcc and libstdc++ in the packaging and makefiles for samples has been updated for the same. These libraries are released in PDFLibrarySDK18.x.y/Libs/linux_64/ folder. Note: Regular support for Linux-32 bit has been withdrawn.

Easy PDF Library and PDF SDK

How to use Easy PDF Library and PDF SDK to create PDF Apps

Reference: Easy PDF Library and PDF SDK

Easy PDF Library is a PDF SDK to create PDF Apps quickly

  1. Download and install Easy PDF SDK to get the PDF Library for calling PDF API.
  2. Start Easy PDF Action Center.
  3. Click on Explore (PDF) Printer SDK.
  4. Create a PDF App using Easy PDF's Library.
  5. Set PDF Library code for Image, Signature, Encryption, etc.
  6. Set Input PDF Document type to optimize PDF App.
  7. Select programming language to generate source code for your PDF APP.
  8. Generate and download a project file for your PDF APP with PDF Library source code.
  9. Access Easy PDF's library to access PDF API for your busiess needs in your software making use of PDF library API.

Easy PDF Library is for developing PDF applications that requires PDF functionality. It works with c#, ASP.Net, ASP, Java, JavaScript, PHP, c++, etc.. PDF libraries coupled with a comfortable visual interface lets software developers perform various operations with PDFs and develop powerful PDF solutions in desktop environments as well as server platforms.

What programs can open a PDF File?

About: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC software is the free global standard for reliably viewing, printing, and commenting on PDF documents.

Reference: Acrobat DC - View, sign, comment on, and share PDFs for free.

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC - The leading PDF viewer to print, sign, and annotate PDFs.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC - Do everything you can do in Acrobat Reader, plus create, protect, convert and edit your PDFs with a 7-day free trial. Continue viewing PDFs after trial ends.

What is the best free PDF reader?

The 15 Best Free PDF Readers of 2020

Reference: The 15 Best Free PDF Readers

The 5 Best Free PDF Readers for Windows and Mac

  1. Foxit Reader - The best free PDF reader & viewer used by over 560 million users. Foxit PDF reader for Windows, Mac, and more. A speedy PDF reader alternative to Adobe Reader.
  2. Adobe Acrobat Reader DC - Download free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC software for your Windows, Mac OS and Android devices to view, print, and comment on PDF documents.
  3. Javelin PDF Reader - Javelin PDF readers provide all the core functionality needed for viewing standard PDF files and PDF files encrypted using our free Drumlin Publisher software (.drmz and .drmx files).
  4. Google Drive - With Google Drive on the web, you can view things like videos, PDFs, Microsoft Office files, audio files, and photos.
  5. Your Web Browser - PDF documents have increasingly become popular. A broad range of PDF document Readers have been developed but at times you may need to view PDF online using a browser. Many official documents often come in the PDF format and may pose a challenge especially when you have not installed a PDF Reader. Going online, Google PDF Viewer, for instance, can help open the document. There are a variety of ways, for example, using the Chrome PDF Viewer or the Firefox PDF Viewer can help you get what you need to be done. Google Drive PDF Viewer, i.e. PDF Viewer, Safari PDF Viewer are also helpful.

The 5 Best Free PDF Readers for Windows

  1. Nitro Reader - Nitro’s free PDF reader offers useful productivity features beyond the typical viewing and annotation tools most other popular PDF readers provide.
  2. PDF-XChange Editor - The smallest, fastest and most feature-rich free PDF viewer/editor on the market. Create, view, edit, annotate, OCR and digitally sign PDF files - and that's just the beginning. Please see below for a breakdown of the main features of PDF-XChange Editor.
  3. MuPDF - MuPDF is a lightweight PDF, XPS, and E-book viewer.
  4. SumatraPDF - Sumatra PDF is a free PDF reader for Windows. Sumatra PDF is powerful, small, portable and starts up very fast.
  5. Slim PDF - Open and view your PDF documents, add comments and other annotations, fill out interactive forms, validate digital signatures, and more with Slim PDF Reader.

The 5 Best Free PDF Readers for Mac

  1. PDF Reader Premium - Manage your PDF files easily with PDF Reader Pro – Doc Expert PDF Reader Pro – Doc Expert is a great PDF reader/editor application. The app features a familiar and easy to use interface that allows users to export PDF documents
  2. Preview - You can open PDFs and images in Preview. You can double-click a PDF or image file to open it by default in Preview. When you open a PDF with multiple pages, you can view thumbnails of all the pages in the sidebar.
  3. Skim - Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file.
  4. Soda PDF - Soda PDF was built with you in mind. Say goodbye to complicated software & hello to easy-to-use PDF tools.
  5. Haihaisoft Reader - Haihaisoft Reader is a free PDF document Reader and Printer, extremely fast launch speed and rich feature set. It is also for reading PDF document protected by DRM-X platform. It is now available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone/iPad.

How to Open PDF Files

PDF (Portable Document Format) files are widely used to create and share documents, as the PDF will keep formatting intact regardless of the viewer's operating system and software. Because it is a different kind of document file, it requires special software in order to open. Nearly every device will be able to open and view PDFs with the right software.

Windows PDF Files

Download Adobe Reader. This is a free program that can open PDF files so that you can read them. Adobe Reader can be downloaded from get.adobe.com/reader/. You cannot use it to edit or create PDF files.

To learn how to edit PDF files, you can edit PDF files online.

There are a variety of other free PDF reader programs if you don't want to install Adobe Reader. Windows 8 comes with a PDF reader installed if you don't want to use Adobe Reader.

Mac PDF Files

Double-click the PDF. OS X comes with Preview, a tool that opens a wide variety of files, including PDF files. Preview allows you to read PDF files, but not edit them. To learn how to edit PDF files.

Change the program that OS X uses to open PDFs. If you have a different PDF program and no longer want to use Preview, you can set all PDF files to open with the new program.

PDFs won't open in Safari. This is typically caused by an error with the Adobe plugin after updating Safari. You can fix it by manually deleting the plugin and restarting Safari.[2] Open /Library/Internet Plugins/ and delete AdobePDF.plugin Open /User/Username/Library/Internet Plugins/ and delete AdobePDF.plugin Restart Safari and try to open the PDF again.

"Adobe could not open PDF name because...". This error typically occurs if you save a PDF file using Safari's "Save As" or "PDF Export" option. Reopen the PDF in Safari. Click the Disk (Save) button at the top of the window or in the from the menu that appears when you move your mouse to the bottom-center of the page. Save the PDF file to your computer. Open the newly-saved file.

Android PDF Files

Download an app that supports PDF files. While Android does not have "built-in" support for reading PDF files, there are a large number of free apps that will easily open your PDF files. You may even have one of these already installed: Google Drive Quickoffice Adobe Reader Foxit MobilePDF

Find the PDF file you want to open. Typically, when you download a PDF file, you can open it from your Notification bar by tapping the completed download. If you need to open the PDF file later, you can do so from your Downloads folder.

PDF attempts to open in the wrong app. if your PDF is trying to open in an app that doesn't support PDFs, you may have the default app set wrong.

Tap the PDF that you want to open. iOS has a built-in PDF reader which can be used to open PDF attachments in emails or PDFs that you find online.

Tap the open PDF to open the menu. This will allow you to select another app to handle the PDF.

Tap "Open in..." or the Share button. If you are viewing the PDF in your Mail app, you will use the Share button. If you are viewing the PDF in Safari, you will use the "Open in..." button. This will display a list of apps that support PDF.

Select the app that you want to use. You can add your PDF files to iBooks, or open it in Adobe Reader or any other PDF application you have installed on your iOS device. The PDF will open immediately in your selected app.[4]

Kindle PDF Library

Transfer the PDF file to your Kindle. There are a couple of different ways that you can do this. You can connect your Kindle to your computer and add the file to your Kindle's storage. You can wirelessly transfer the PDF file using your free Kindle transfer email.

Open the file on your Kindle. Once the PDF file has been transferred, you can select it from your Kindle's library. There aren't many options for interacting with the PDF on a Kindle, as you can't add additional functionality with other apps.

How to Edit a PDF Without Adobe Acrobat?

We've outlined the best PDF editor apps— and Google Drive isn't one of them. For filling in forms and editing layout, you might want to download your PDF from Drive and use one of those apps. But Google Drive can work in a pinch.

Google Drive makes it easy to convert any PDF into a Google Doc, and and the built-in optical character recognition (OCR) will even extract text from images.Here's how to get started.

Preview Any PDF in Google Drive

Open drive.google.com in your browser. You can click-and-drag the PDF from your file browser, or you can click New followed by File Upload and browse to the file you want to upload.

You can read the entire PDF from here. The downside: You can't make any edits or even fill out fillable forms. You also can't copy text that was scanned into a PDF.

Convert a PDF File to a Google Doc

Google Drive can automatically transform any PDF into a Google Doc, allowing you to edit the text as you will. Even text in images will transfer over to this document, thanks to Drive's built in OCR capability.

Google Drive will now smack your PDF with an ugly stick, removing all images and generally ruining the layout. Still, this is a very quick way to extract the text from a PDF. And the built-in OCR support means you can use this method to convert a series of scanned images into text in just a couple of clicks.

Open PDF Files Using Third-Party Readers

Google Drive doesn't offer any PDF editing, meaning you can't do things like fill out forms or change a PDF's layout. You can preview a PDF, you can convert a PDF to a Docs file, and that's about it. There are third-party apps you can connect with Google Drive for editing PDF files. To get started, open a PDF, then click Open With > Connect More Apps.

What is PDF Library?

PDF Library is an API for viewing, printing and manipulating PDF files. It is the core technology within the PDF product family and aims to provide developers with complete PDF reader functionality as well as PDF content extraction. The PDF Library was written in C but also has interfaces for Java (via JNI) and .NET development. The full version of PDFLibrary is distributed under a commercial license.

Tecnology of PDF Library

  1. Create, edit, inspect, render, and print PDFs
  2. C++, C#, .NET and Java interfaces and extensive code samples
  3. Futureproof and fully-supported by PDF experts

Incorporate PDF technologies into your own applications

The PDF Library SDK is a low-level PDF library that contains a powerful set of native C/C++ APIs with interfaces for .NET and Java APIs. Systems integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), enterprise IT developers, and others can integrate PDF functionality within custom applications in a client and / or server environment.

PDF Library Features

  • Create PDFs
  • Edit PDFs
  • Assemble PDFs
  • Embed and subset fonts
  • View & Render PDF files
  • Add Annotations
  • Add watermarks
  • Password-protect PDF files
  • Extract text, metadata, images, & graphics
  • Convert to PDF/A
  • PDF optimization

Quick PDF Library

Want to create, render, print, secure, merge, split, and manipulate PDF files with just a few lines of code on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android? Enhance your capability with Quick PDF Library: a powerful and royalty-free developer PDF SDK for adding PDF functionality to your applications.

Quick PDF Library is ideal for independent developers and small and medium-sized businesses and teams (250 employees or less), looking for an affordable, royalty-free, versatile, reliable and agile development kit on which to give PDF capabilities to their applications. Quick PDF Library also includes Foxit’s technology inside, which adds even more power and utility to the SDK.

With more than 900 functions for use with C, C++, C#, Delphi (version 4 to 10.4 Sydney), Objective-C, Swift, Python, PHP, Visual Basic, VB.NET, ASP, PowerBASIC, Pascal and more – it’s like your ultimate PDF toolkit, specifically useful for getting products to market faster. It includes a robust API and is available in a variety of different editions for use on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. A source code version is also available for development in Delphi.

Quick PDF Library is licensed on a per developer, per platform basis, and it is fully royalty free at a price of only $499! Work smarter and faster today with Foxit and Debenu.

Create, fill and edit PDF forms
Split, merge, append and combine PDFs
Convert EMF to PDF (Windows only)
Work with PDF Layers
Add text, images and barcodes to PDFs
Advanced support for JavaScript, bookmarks, vector graphics, geospatial PDF
Direct access functionality (load files from disk, not memory)
Annotations, bookmarks and links for easy navigation
Windows, Mac, iOS and Android support

Quick PDF Library Editions

Several different editions are available to make development easier in a variety of different programming languages. The SDK is sold on a per platform basis, so if you purchase the Windows version then you have access to all the different editions for Windows and if you purchase the Mac version then you have access to all of the different editions for Mac.

Quick PDF Library for Windows

  1. ActiveX – ActiveX COM for Windows development supports C#, Visual C++, C++ Builder, Delphi, Visual Basic, PHP, Python, Java, PowerBASIC and more. 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
  2. DLL – Dynamically-linked library for Windows development supports C, Visual C++, C++ Builder, C#, Visual Basic, Python and more. 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
  3. Delphi – DCUs and optionally source code for development using all versions of Delphi including 4, 5, 6, 7, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, XE, XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5, XE6, XE7, XE8, 10.1, 10.2 and 10.13. 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
  4. LIB – Statically-linked library for Windows development supports C and C++. 32-bit only.

Quick PDF Library for Mac

  1. Dylib – Xcode Dynamic Library for Mac development using Objective-C, Swift, C, C++ and Python. 32-bit and 64-bit.
  2. Delphi – DCUs for development using Delphi XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5, XE6, XE7, XE8, and 10.2 on Windows to generate apps for the Mac operating system. 32-bit only.

Quick PDF Library for iOS

  1. iOS Static Lib – iOS Static Lib for Apple iOS development using Objective-C, Swift, C, C++ and more. 32-bit and 64-bit.

Quick PDF Library for Android

  1. Android Static and Dynamic Lib – Android (API 15, Android 4.0.3 or newer) Static and Dynamic Lib. Android Studio and Visual Studio samples provided. 32-bit and 64-bit.

Quick PDF Library for Linux

  1. Linux – 64-bit operating system
  2. Ubuntu – version 16 and later
  3. CentOS – version 6 and later
  4. Debian – version 8 and later