New PDF editing toolbar, high quality PDF printing and support for eight extra languages in ImageEn 10.2.0

[Xequte 5]

ImageEn, image editing and display library for Delphi/BCB, v10.2.0 is now generally available.This update is free if you purchased a license or extension after 15 September 2020:

http://www.imageen.com/support/download/

 

Other users can extend their registration for 12 months at:

http://www.imageen.com/order/

More info and a free trial of ImageEn are available at:

http://www.imageen.com

 
Top Ten Enhancements in ImageEn 10.2.0

1. ImageEn now uses a DLL for localization support. If you do not need localization it reduces your the EXE size by 780KB. If you use localization it adds support for eight more languages: Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Slovenian
2. The ImageEnViewToolbar can now be used to view and edit PDF files
3. Now supports high quality PDF printing, including via ImageEn TAction classes
4. Various improves to measurement, including new interactions to measure areas and lengths with a polyline and more detail in hover hints, e.g. perimeters when measuring by rectangular or circular areas
5. Masks can now be applied to non-image layers, like text and shapes
6. TIERichEdit adds support for all RichEdit 8.0 features, including spell checking
7. All ImageEn keyboard shortcuts can now be easily customized or disabled
8. New mouse interaction allows selection of text or images in a PDF files (with automatic detection based on what is under cursor), plus it is much easier to switch to pan and zoom mode
9. Many other improvements for PDF file viewing, including new options for selection, highlight and form field colors, and performance enhancements
10. Now supports Delphi 11

 

[Edwin Yip 154]

Congrats for the new release. I've got several questions if you don't mind:

• Is the pdf engine based on Pdfium?
• Can you add pdf annotation such as text, rectangle, and so on to a pdf and save to disk, like you can do with image files with ImageEn?
• Does it support navigating a pdf file with the hierarchical bookmarks like this: https://www.winsoft.sk/pdfium.png

Thanks.

[Xequte 5]

Hi Edwin

 

1. Yes, it is.

 

2. Due to the way PDF is supported, PDF files can be created with images, text and other annotations, but ImageEn cannot edit the annotations of a loaded PDF

 

3. No, but it should be added soon.

 

Best regards

 

Nigel Cross
Xequte Software
www.imageen.com

Edited September 27, 2021 by Xequte
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[Edwin Yip 154]

Thanks for your answer.

 

1. Do you use Pdfium DLL or .obj files? I prefer the later, if even possible.

 

2. Do you mean with ImageEn you cannot annotate a pdf at all, or do you mean you can annotate it but cannot modify the annotation after saving it to disk?

[Xequte 5]

Hi Edwin

 

1. We use DLL files to make it easier to plug-in the functionality (i.e. users who don't require PDF support are not burdened with a larger EXE)

 

2. ImageEn supports PDF files in multiple ways:

- Native exporting of layers (images, texts, vector shapes, etc) to PDF

- PDFium functionality (rendering and editing PDF pages, but not editing of annotations at this time)

- Other methods, such as converting image documents to searchable PDF files (OCR)

 

So the answer, unfortunately, is that there is currently not a practical way to open a PDF file, edits its annotations and save it.

 

BTW, we are hoping to have PDF bookmark support in the next release.

 

Best regards

 

Nigel Cross
Xequte Software
www.imageen.com

Edited September 27, 2021 by Xequte
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[Edwin Yip 154]

ImageEn will be unbeatable if it allows editing and saving of pdf annotations like what you can do with it against images.

I had a look at the Pdfium interface, it seems to provide such API.

[timfrost 79]

But anything based on PDFIUM has the limitation of single threading only. Which may not matter if you have a user interactively tweaking annotations and images, but it does to the applications I deal with.

[Edwin Yip 154]

26 minutes ago, timfrost said:

But anything based on PDFIUM has the limitation of single threading only. Which may not matter if you have a user interactively tweaking annotations and images, but it does to the applications I deal with.

I don't know that limit. Do you mean you cannot manipulate the pdf with Pdfium in a background thread even using a legitimate locking mechanism? 

[timfrost 79]

I don't know the answer to that specific question. I know that you cannot run multiple threads rendering (different) PDFs to image formats simultaneously, which is why I use Foxit (formerly Debenu) QuickPDF Library for this purpose, where you can safely use multiple instances of the PDFLibrary class in the same process.  Google 'PDFIUM multithread' for more information (some of it inconsistent or not recent).  When single threading, we can use either library, and we find that very occasionally some (usually CJK) PDFs, which in general our users do not have control over, do not render with one and do with the other.  Typically PDFIUM will report failures or unsupported PDF features, whereas QPDF is slightly more likely than PDFIUM to mis-render these edge cases.

[Xequte 5]

Hi

 

That is correct. PDFium should not be used in multiple threads. If you are looking to generate PDF files only (i.e. not edit existing PDF files) then ImageEn's native PDF support (creating and saving) can be used in threads.

 

Editing of annotations via PDFium is on the to-do list.

 

Best regards

 

Nigel Cross
Xequte Software
www.imageen.com

Edited September 29, 2021 by Xequte

[Edwin Yip 154]

1 hour ago, Xequte said:

Editing of annotations via PDFium is on the to-do list.

This is a great news!!!!

 

Quote

If you are looking to generate PDF files only (i.e. not edit existing PDF files) then ImageEn's native PDF support (creating and saving) can be used in threads.

Can you point us to the specific page on your site that describes this feature in detail? Thanks.

 

[Xequte 5]

Hi Edwin

 

Specifically I am referring to creating a page containing layer objects and saving as PDF:

https://www.imageen.com/help/TImageEnIO.SaveToPDF.html

Here is a demo showing layer, control and image to PDF (native code, not PDFium):

https://www.imageen.com/files/demos/run/InputOutput/PDFBuilder2/PdfBuilder2.exe

Also see:

https://www.imageen.com/help/File_Formats.html#PDF

 

Best regards

 

Nigel Cross
Xequte Software
www.imageen.com

Edited September 29, 2021 by Xequte
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