PDFinclude is an open source Progress utility for dynamically generating reports in Adobe PDF file format without having to use third-party tools or utilities.
PDFInclude is a Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), distributed under the Eclipse Public License.
PDFinclude is a stand-alone component that defines a toolset of Progress functions and procedures that aid in the output of a PDF file directly from 4GL/ABL, without having to generate a separate text file first (as in text2pdf.p).
Open Source does not always mean free as in free beer. In order to be able to spend more time on PDFInclude, I need some sponsors. Also, if you wish to see a new or improved functionality, you can offer me a bounty. Lastly if this software is of some use for you and your company, then I'd like to hear from it, and you could consider to donate (via Paypal in USD or Euros). Thanks in advance!
Welcome in the PDF Include group. When you are using PDF Include, you are encouraged to subscribe to this group where you find the on-line tools to collaborate and discuss PDF Include. There is a discussion forum, you can submit issues (for bugs and enhancement requests), you can add new pages and other content, and best of all: there is an e-mail list. So subscribe, and then don't forget to go to your subscription details to enable the e-mail notification!
The PDF file format is an industry-standard for electronic document viewing. The PDF format allows for documents that can be accessed by a broad range of hardware and software devices (including PDAs and Internet browsers).
PDFinclude utilizes Progress code that is compliant with versions 8 and 9 of the Progress 4GL and the same source code can be used on multiple OS platforms - including Windows, AIX, Unixware, Solaris etc. - while running in different application environments (eg: GUI, CHUI, web-enabled and n-tier).
New!
- 5th of may 2017: a new web site for pdfInclude has been published :)
- 20th of June 2016: pdfInclude v5.1 is available from me, please contact me using OEHive private messages. All the short comings of the 3.3 version about the pdf parser and filling forms have been corrected, and a lot of new functionality added. See readme.pdf, itself generated using pdfInclude.
- 16th of January 2011: I finally found the time to publish the last fixes and evolutions! The big news is the support for filling OpenOffice.org generated forms! Acrobat (latest versions were not supported anyway) is not needed anymore in order to create forms to be filled with PDFinclude! Among the other news, you can now rotate text at any angle, skew ans scale text.
- 2nd of March 2010: The SVN repository has just been updated. This is the very last version of pdfinclude, containing all patches gathered from the PEG, lots of bug fixes, plus new exciting functionalities. Please test before I publish 3.3.4! You can download the last development version.
Main features
• supports international characters (East Europe, Cyrillic, Turkish) for variable width base fonts only (Times and Helvetica). To be published in next version - see SVN version meanwhile. For courier (or if you wish to embed fonts in the pdf file), you can use a font specially defined for the code page as described there.
• supports custom True Type fonts (including Bar Coding fonts), and all 14 pdf base fonts
• supports remapping of characters
• supports ISO page formats A0,A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,A6,B5,LETTER,LEGAL,LEDGER
• supports portrait or landscape, and custom page formats, custom margins…
• supports document encryption (requires procrypt.dll)
• supports compression (requires zlib1.dll)
• includes graphic (geometric) procedures: lines, circles, eclipses, Bézier curves
• includes procedures to set Bookmarks show a Table of Content
• includes procedures for automatic page header and footer management
• include procedure to add watermarks
• supports text rotation
• supports html-ish tagged text for bold , italic and colour
• supports underline
• supports automatic pg line break and text justification
• supports JPEG images (GIF & PNG support in development)
• supports annotations (links, notes, stamps, mark-ups)
• supports rotating text at any angle, skewing and scaling it
• supports loading an Adobe Distiller or OpenOffice PDF generated file to be used as a template (with limitations) – the file might contain images or embedded fonts To be published in next version - see SVN version for images and font support
• supports filling OpenOffice.org generated forms
• supports filling Adobe forms - Adobe version max = 5 ; see previous point...
• tools to create tables, calendars, matrices
• no external libraries are required except for compression and encryption
• comes with a lot of code examples
Downloads
See "attachments" at the bottom of this page for the downloads, including a download of a PowerPoint presentation from the Michigan PUG.
The big .zip download includes a Word document, which is the PDF Include documentation. I've also attached a PDF of that. Thanks Peter Frederick for sending the PDF!
You can always download the last development version from the SVN repository.
Contributions
- Pro-Sys Consultants are the original authors of PDF Include.
- jice is the current maintainer. I do it in my free time, so please do not expect too much!
You are welcome to submit patches through the mailing list. After review and discussion, they will be included in next release.
If you have to add functionality and/or modify PDFInclude for your own project, you are encouraged to submit the source code (although it is not required by the license) so that we can all improve the software and bring it to next level.
Also see:
License (Eclipse Public License)
Project page for issue tracking
Forum
Post a new Forum Topic
Last updated
jice 20th of june 2016
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Generating PDF with images
Thu, 2011-08-04 23:16 — lfmsanchesHi everybody.
I have been working trying to generate PDFs with a lot of images on it.
I am running with some issues.
The file generates all right, but it really takes a while to generate it, probably because I am using JPEG images. I had tried to use GIF images, although the new version was supposed to work with GIF and PNG, I was not able to make it work.
The other problem I am facing is with the file size of the generated PDF, probably, again, I am using JPEG images, the resultant PDF gets really big.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Expression Get-Bits
Fri, 2011-07-29 18:34 — caueporIn line 370 of pdf_inc.p when I run the program, i receive a message telling that the progress can`t understand after get-bits...anyone can help me?
(sorry for my english)
GIF and PNG Images
Sun, 2011-07-24 01:20 — jeephabit3I am trying to work with GIF or PNG images. It looked like the main page on PDFInclude said it was now supported but I cannot find any information on it. Do you have to use the template functionality to do this?
image size on pdfinclude
Wed, 2011-06-29 18:12 — r_martinez_lHi for all. I need calculate the original image size on pdfinclude, how find the size converted... inches, mm, or pixels?.
Regards
pdf file size - too big for email
Fri, 2011-06-17 14:56 — rsn444I am new to pdf include and new to OEhive. we have a custom module which attaches "invoices" in pdf format and sends it as an email. The problem that we are facing is that for some reason the size of the files increases to 2 - 6 MB even though based on the amount of information that is packaged the pdf file should be far smaller around 100k (as per the users ..).
has anyone faced this problem ..all helpful tips would be appreciated. (I am new to this functionality and am going through the code ...).
if more information is needed - please let me know.
Thanks in Advance !!
PDF Template - Could not open Dynamic Library /usr/local/lib/libz.so.1
Fri, 2011-05-27 21:33 — darceywOS: AIX 4.3
ZLIB: 1.1.4, downloaded from Bull AIX Freeware
Progress: 9.1D
I downloaded and installed the zlib library from Bull AIX Freeware site, installing it using the instructions they provided. I have verified that the correct files reside in /usr/local/lib (libz.a, libz.so.1.1.4, and symbolic links to libz.so.1.1.4 from libz.so.1 and libz.so.
Working version of pdfInclude for multiline field
Tue, 2011-05-10 13:37 — VaalenI have managed to download an older version of pdfinclude, because I want to use pre-defined fields (using OpenOffice) in a template pdf and fill them programmatically.
I cannot seem to get the multiline replacement to work.
Just looking for a working version.
Thnx in advance,
Karin
How to Print PDF Files in duplex mode ?
Mon, 2011-03-28 14:15 — fabien84000Hi,
Has anyone been able to print PDF files in duplex mode ?
I tried by "-o sides=two-sided-long-edge" option, and it's ok.
But i would like to set this option when creating PDF file.
Thanks,
Fabien.
TABLE - problem with column width/starting position
Thu, 2011-03-17 14:03 — klamb9I am new to PDF include but I'm re-writing all of my reports in it. I am very impressed and happy with this tool. I've always wondered by Progress doesn't do this natively. With the new .NET ultra tools you can do stuff in Progress as good as any other tool out there. As long as you don't want to print anything!
I am using the TABLE tool to write my reports because like most reports my outputs are mostly columns - in the old days I would have done it this way:
For each customer:
Display
customer.cust-name format "X(20)"
uninitialized MEMPTR error
Wed, 2011-03-16 18:11 — peteI am creating 800 invoices in a batch which inserts one external pdf page in each invoice. after about 250 I get the following error: "DLL procedure uncompress pdf_inc.p using an uninitialized MEMPTR. (3233)". After a ctrl-c it took a long time for it to go back to the login screen. I logged back in and got the error on the first invoice. I logged out of my terminal session, started a new one and could restart the process. It gets the error on the same invoice on a full run. I printed a small batch including the invoice it crashed on and it worked fine. Progress 91E on AIX.
Printing and Scanning BarCodes
Tue, 2011-03-15 12:19 — JonathanStarkeHi all,
Has anyone been able to print barcodes from PDFInclude, and then more importantly scan them?
I can print code39 and code128 barcodes, but once printed none of them will scan.
I have tried different sizes, rotation etc.
Just will NOT scan.
Any help please.
Thnx
Jonathan Starke
a Courier fixed font for Eastern Europe languages -- resolved
Fri, 2011-03-04 19:03 — larryFor those with a need to use this tool with a Courier font that works for Eastern European (Polish, etc), I have finally found one that works well with PDF Include and codepage ISO8859-2.
PDF Include 3.3.3
Got the write-up and replacement pdf_inc.p here:
http://www.tv.com.pl/stepbystep/pdfinclude/ (thank you so very much, Tomasz Judycki !!)
This took care of the Helvetica and Times-Roman proportional fonts.
I then downloaded this package of ISO8859-2 fonts:
http://www.slovo.info/Download/l2ttf003.zip
Password Protection
Mon, 2011-02-28 21:02 — sivaneshlIs there any way to password protect the pdf file generated through PDFInclude?
Last Line of File Printing Twice with PDF Include
Thu, 2011-01-13 21:52 — mikeba296If I use this code in a Progress program:
RUN pdf_new ("Spdf", "po5081.pdf").
RUN pdf_set_Orientation ("Spdf", "Landscape").
RUN pdf_set_LeftMargin ("Spdf", "10").
RUN pdf_set_PageWidth ("Spdf", 975).
RUN pdf_new_page ("Spdf").
INPUT FROM "/home/mbarnosk/marcs/pdf5081.txt" NO-ECHO.
REPEAT:
IMPORT UNFORMATTED v-line.
RUN pdf_text ("Spdf", v-line).
RUN pdf_skip ("Spdf").
END.
INPUT CLOSE.
RUN pdf_close ("Spdf").
The last line of the INPUT file comes out twice in the .pdf file.
To correct this I did this:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| PDFinclude.ppt presentation from the Michigan PUG | 958 KB |
| PDFinfo.zip | 6.13 KB |
| PDFincludeV7-1.0.zip for v7 | 21.69 KB |
| PDFinclude3.3.3.zip for v9+ | 3.06 MB |
| PDFInclude-PRO-Documentation.pdf | 600.13 KB |
| readme.pdf for pdfInclude v5.1 | 1.63 MB |
