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Watermarking a Report
The Report Generator is a layer on top of the PDF Library API which converts XML to PDF. The XML is much easier to work with, but there are always situations where you'll need the flexibility of the API. Here we show you how to do this, and we also ...
Combining Ant, Jar, Signatures and Pack200
If you're deploying Java code as Applets, Pack 200 compression can reduce the size of your download by 70%. This article shows how to build digitally signed Jars with Pack 200 compression using Apache Ant. It can be applied to any code, not just BFO ...
Extending the PDF Viewer - Part 1
The BFO PDF Viewer has a simple framework and API for adding new features. This article will show how to add a simple widget to the toolbar and then add more features that interact with the PDF document itself.Read more...Tags : pdf widget viewer ...
Public Key Encryption and PDF
Most people when they think of protecting a PDF, think of a password. However this isn't the only way to do it. Both Acrobat and our PDF viewer allow a PDF to be decrypted using a private key which is specific to a user. In this article we show you how to ...
Graphs in dynamic web pages
The traditional approach to using the BFO Graph Library in web pages has been to use the JSP tag library so that the server processes XML in JSP pages and replaces it with generated graphs. However if you want to include BFO graphs in non JSP web pages ...
QR-Code and other barcodes
The PDF Library supports a large number of barcodes, including QR-Code. This article shows some tricks you can do with these dense 2D barcodes.Read more...Tags : barcode qrcode pdflibrary
Silently* print a PDF from a web browser
We occasionally are asked how to print a PDF from a web browser without displaying a dialog. There isn't an easy answer to this, but you can get fairly close with our Viewer API.Read more...Tags : applet print pdf pdflibrary
Creating TIFF Class F Images
The BFO PDF Library can create TIFF images from PDF using a number of compression algorithms, including Group 4. If for some reason you want to use Group 3 compression you'll need to use a third party library like JAI. This article shows you how.Read ...
Logging with BFO
The release of 2.11.6 of the BFO PDF library sees the introduction of a consolidated logging API that can be integrated into customer's existing logging systems. Read on to find out how to configure BFO products to log with Log4J or java.util.logging.Re...
JPEG2000, Java and PDF
The JPEG 2000 compression algorithm was designed in 2000 as a successor to the venerable JPEG algorithm, which dates back to 1992. It's designed to compress "continuous tone" images such as photographs, and supports both a lossy (like JPEG) and ...
Using version 2.0 of the BFO Graph Library with BFO Report Generator
BFO Report Generator by default includes the BFO Graph Library, but the older version 1.0 library. While this is adequate for many users, people may want to use the new graphs and features available in version 2.0 of the Graph library. This article will ...
Funnel Charts
With the release of version 2.4 of the BFO Graph library it is now possible to create 'funnel charts' This blog article will explain how to use the new chart type and provide examples of the different styles that can be created.Read more...Tags : 3d ...
Creating PDF/A documents with the BFO library
PDF/A is a standardised subset of PDF used for long-term archive storage. The PDF/A format ensures that documents can be correctly rendered hundreds of years from now in the absence of standard frameworks we take for granted today. Read more to find out ...
Gotchas when reading and writing PDF to files
Reading and writing PDF documents to and from the same disk file can have unexpected consequences. This article covers what to watch out for if you do this, and details a few ways to get around the problems it can cause, including the new features added ...
BFO releases Java PDF library 2.11.2
BFO have released a new version of their Java PDF Library. Version 2.11.2 fixes an issue with IBM versions of Java that was introduced in the previous release - a change of obfuscator clashed with a bug in some releases of the JRE supplied with ...
New features for Java applets
Sun have rewritten the Java browser plugin in Java 6 Update 10 to address many of the issues that people have experienced with deploying Java applets, and to add new features such as dragging applets out of the browser. We have updated the PDF Viewer ...
BFO releases Java PDF Library 2.10.6 and Report Generator 1.1.40
BFO have simultaneously released new versions of their Java PDF Library and Java Report Generator tools. The 2.10.6 release of the PDF Library includes a vastly improved JavaScript environment with numerous bug fixes for the Library and the PDF Viewer ...
Big Faceless releases Java PDF Library 2.10.4
BFO are pleased to announce the 2.10.4 release of their PDF library. Several months in the making, it contains a large number of changes, mostly under the hood. For the end user, the primary new features will be the new single column display in the ...
BFO Technical Support 'second to none' says top Adobe provider
BFO are pleased to add 4Point, the world's largest Adobe consulting practice, to its enviable client base. A spokesman for 4Point said, "We used (BFO's) PDF Library to meet our client's need for rich inter-document navigation. With (the) PDF Library we ...
Converting PDF to TIFF, PNG and JPEG
We're asked some questions more than others at BFO, and one of the most common concerns conversion of a PDF to a bitmap image format - typically TIFF, but sometimes JPEG or another format. This process is called "rasterization&...

Recent Responses

Re: Creating PDF/A documents with the BFO library
good !
Re: Creating TIFF Class F Images
Outstanding. This is the best example that I have found so far for creating tif files in java at a specific resolution. It is complete without being complex. Thanks.

Watermarking a Report

Going beyond XML, and custom Blend Modes

The Report Generator is a layer on top of the PDF Library API which converts XML to PDF. The XML is much easier to work with, but there are always situations where you'll need the flexibility of the API. Here we show you how to do this, and we also present a neat and non-obvious technique for watermarking.

Add a comment

Posted by Mike Bremford on 03 August 2010 12:26:03 BST #

Combining Ant, Jar, Signatures and Pack200

Signing and Compressing your code for applets

If you're deploying Java code as Applets, Pack 200 compression can reduce the size of your download by 70%. This article shows how to build digitally signed Jars with Pack 200 compression using Apache Ant. It can be applied to any code, not just BFO code.

Tags : applet pack200 tips

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Posted by Mike Bremford on 13 May 2010 11:14:00 BST #

Extending the PDF Viewer - Part 1

The BFO PDF Viewer has a simple framework and API for adding new features. This article will show how to add a simple widget to the toolbar and then add more features that interact with the PDF document itself.

Tags : pdf widget viewer pdflibrary

Add a comment

Posted by Jim Crossley on 21 December 2009 13:55:54 GMT #

Public Key Encryption and PDF

Encrypting a PDF for individual users

Most people when they think of protecting a PDF, think of a password. However this isn't the only way to do it. Both Acrobat and our PDF viewer allow a PDF to be decrypted using a private key which is specific to a user. In this article we show you how to create a key, encrypt a document for that key and then decrypt it again.

Add a comment

Posted by Mike Bremford on 12 November 2009 14:10:22 GMT #

Graphs in dynamic web pages

The traditional approach to using the BFO Graph Library in web pages has been to use the JSP tag library so that the server processes XML in JSP pages and replaces it with generated graphs.

However if you want to include BFO graphs in non JSP web pages that use AJAX to load data dynamically then the tag library is not very useful. Although the Graph Library has a SOAP interface for web service access SOAP is not well suited to being used from web pages, so instead we will use the plain XML interface to the Graph Library to dynamically add charts to web pages.

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Posted by Jim Crossley on 05 November 2009 16:25:00 GMT #

QR-Code and other barcodes

The PDF Library supports a large number of barcodes, including QR-Code. This article shows some tricks you can do with these dense 2D barcodes.

Tags : barcode qrcode pdflibrary

Responses[1]

Posted by Mike Bremford on 07 October 2009 16:00:09 BST #

Silently* print a PDF from a web browser

* almost

We occasionally are asked how to print a PDF from a web browser without displaying a dialog. There isn't an easy answer to this, but you can get fairly close with our Viewer API.

Tags : applet print pdf pdflibrary

Add a comment

Posted by Mike Bremford on 28 September 2009 15:46:00 BST #

Creating TIFF Class F Images

The BFO PDF Library can create TIFF images from PDF using a number of compression algorithms, including Group 4. If for some reason you want to use Group 3 compression you'll need to use a third party library like JAI. This article shows you how.

Tags : jai affinetransform fax tiff pdf

Responses[1]

Posted by Mike Bremford on 17 July 2009 17:48:51 BST #

Logging with BFO

The release of 2.11.6 of the BFO PDF library sees the introduction of a consolidated logging API that can be integrated into customer's existing logging systems. Read on to find out how to configure BFO products to log with Log4J or java.util.logging.

Tags : log4j pdf logging pdflibrary

Add a comment

Posted by Jim Crossley on 07 July 2009 16:38:31 BST #

JPEG2000, Java and PDF

Adding support for JPEG2000 compressed images

The JPEG 2000 compression algorithm was designed in 2000 as a successor to the venerable JPEG algorithm, which dates back to 1992. It's designed to compress "continuous tone" images such as photographs, and supports both a lossy (like JPEG) and a lossless format. We covered a bit on image compression in in a previous article.

Adobe added support for JPEG 2000 compressed images in Acrobat 5.0, (calling it JPX compression), and it's becoming more and more common to find PDF Documents containing photographic images compressed with this algorithm.

Tags : jai jpeg2000 pdflibrary

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Posted by Mike Bremford on 27 May 2009 14:32:00 BST #

Using version 2.0 of the BFO Graph Library with BFO Report Generator

BFO Report Generator by default includes the BFO Graph Library, but the older version 1.0 library. While this is adequate for many users, people may want to use the new graphs and features available in version 2.0 of the Graph library. This article will show how to achieve this.

Responses[2]

Posted by Jim Crossley on 01 May 2009 11:59:00 BST #

Funnel Charts

With the release of version 2.4 of the BFO Graph library it is now possible to create 'funnel charts' This blog article will explain how to use the new chart type and provide examples of the different styles that can be created.

Add a comment

Posted by Jim Crossley on 25 March 2009 15:43:00 GMT #

Creating PDF/A documents with the BFO library

PDF/A is a standardised subset of PDF used for long-term archive storage. The PDF/A format ensures that documents can be correctly rendered hundreds of years from now in the absence of standard frameworks we take for granted today. Read more to find out how to author PDF/A documents with the BFO PDF library.

Tags : pdfa pdflibrary

Responses[1]

Posted by Chris Burdess on 20 February 2009 10:21:00 GMT #

Gotchas when reading and writing PDF to files

Reading and writing PDF documents to and from the same disk file can have unexpected consequences. This article covers what to watch out for if you do this, and details a few ways to get around the problems it can cause, including the new features added in 2.11.2 for this problem.

Add a comment

Posted by Mike Bremford on 26 January 2009 16:49:12 GMT #

BFO releases Java PDF library 2.11.2

BFO have released a new version of their Java PDF Library.

Version 2.11.2 fixes an issue with IBM versions of Java that was introduced in the previous release - a change of obfuscator clashed with a bug in some releases of the JRE supplied with Websphere. There are fixes for Customers reading and writing PDFs to the same File, a memory leak in the Viewer has been fixed, and a number of bugs have been fixed, including a Swing screen corruption issue that sometimes occurred on Windows.

The full changelog is available here, and the new release is available to download at http://bfo.co.uk/products/download.jsp

Tags : news pdflibrary

Posted by Mike Bremford on 22 January 2009 17:57:00 GMT #

New features for Java applets

Sun have rewritten the Java browser plugin in Java 6 Update 10 to address many of the issues that people have experienced with deploying Java applets, and to add new features such as dragging applets out of the browser. We have updated the PDF Viewer Applet to take advantage of these features, and we'll show how you can update your own deployment of the PDF Viewer Applet, or any other applet, to do the same.

Tags : jnlp applet pdf pdflibrary

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Posted by Jim Crossley on 05 January 2009 10:39:00 GMT #

BFO releases Java PDF Library 2.10.6 and Report Generator 1.1.40

BFO have simultaneously released new versions of their Java PDF Library and Java Report Generator tools.

The 2.10.6 release of the PDF Library includes a vastly improved JavaScript environment with numerous bug fixes for the Library and the PDF Viewer extension. Version 1.1.40 brings the Report Generator up to speed with the improvements made to the PDF Library with the last few releases. The Report Generator is built on Graph Library 1.1.6 and PDF Library 2.10.6. Please see the PDF Library Changelog for more details.

Download the latest releases from BFO website

Tags : news

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Posted by Jonathan Cookson on 13 November 2008 16:30:00 GMT #

Big Faceless releases Java PDF Library 2.10.4

BFO are pleased to announce the 2.10.4 release of their PDF library. Several months in the making, it contains a large number of changes, mostly under the hood.

For the end user, the primary new features will be the new single column display in the Viewer; improvements to allow the library to work with XFA-only PDFs and the addition of the new USPS "IntelligentMail" BarCode. There was also a large rewrite of the font-subsystem, improving the ability of the library to render unusually constructed PDFs and paving the way for future enhancements. The full list of changes is in the PDF Library Changelog

As always, the latest release is at avilable for download at the BFO website

Tags : viewer xfa news pdflibrary

Posted by Daniel Wilson on 14 October 2008 01:13:00 BST #

BFO Technical Support 'second to none' says top Adobe provider

BFO are pleased to add 4Point, the world's largest Adobe consulting practice, to its enviable client base.

A spokesman for 4Point said, "We used (BFO's) PDF Library to meet our client's need for rich inter-document navigation. With (the) PDF Library we were able to stitch together flat PDFs, create a set of inter-document linking bookmarks, and hyperlink inter-documents via existing and built table of contents and index pages. We chose Big Faceless' PDF Library because it is feature-rich and user-friendly—the API is very coherent and intuitive."

For more information read the full press release

Tags : news

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Posted by Jonathan Cookson on 06 August 2008 11:15:00 BST #

Converting PDF to TIFF, PNG and JPEG

Smaller, faster, better: The importance of choosing correctly

We're asked some questions more than others at BFO, and one of the most common concerns conversion of a PDF to a bitmap image format - typically TIFF, but sometimes JPEG or another format. This process is called "rasterization" and while it's very easy to do with the "extended plus viewer" version of our PDF Library, it's worth going over in more detail.

Responses[6]

Posted by Mike Bremford on 31 July 2008 16:20:47 BST #