PDF Include

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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Error 5893 when trying to send PDF to printer

Hello

I would deeply appreciate it if anyone could assist me. This logic worked in previous version for update to Adobe xi seemed to break it.

I am getting error 5893 "The automation server for AcroExch.App is not registered properly".

I've googled this error repeatedly but cannot find an answer. The issue occurs during the create statement.

I am using OpenEdge version 10 - character mode.

DEFINE VARIABLE g_comhAcroExchApp AS COM-HANDLE NO-UNDO.

CREATE "AcroExch.App" g_comhAcroExchApp NO-ERROR.

full code attached.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide.


Barcode printing on Linux

Hi All,

I have been printing BarCodes on Windows based machines for years (Code39). Now I have moved the Progress code to a Linux Server, and the barcode font is giving issues.

The .PDF is generated, but when you try and view it, the PDF Viewer says there is a problem with the embedded font, and just displays the barcode in numbers, instead of the Barcode itself.

I have copied the .afm and .ttf files to the Linux Server, and PDFInclude is finding them all, and gives NO error at all, when generating, until you try and view the created .pdf file.


Encrypting an existing PDF file

Hi,
Good Afternoon.
I am trying to encrypt an existing PDF file using the below code that was part of the PDFInclude project i have downloaded from this site.

I assume, after the end of the program, the output file 'hello-encrypt.pdf' supposed to be encrypted. But the file can be opened without any password.

Can you please help me?

Also, Is there anyway we can open an encrypted PDF document using 4GL commands.

I greately appreciate anyhelp that you can provide.

Thanks,
Satish.

**************************
{ pdf_inc.i "NOT SUPER"}


Wrong codepage in the form fields

Hello,

I have discovered an issue with PDF include - when you use it to fill pdf forms using non-standard character set (CP1250 in my case), the character codepage in the form fields gets wrong. Also, character width is sometimes messed up.
I use most current SVN version of PDF include and OpenOffice 3.2 to generate forms (tried 3.1 as well, with same result).
PDF file structure is a kind of mystery for me, so it's possible that my analysis went in quite wrong direction, but there is what I discovered:


Barcodes have whitespace (gaps) between sections which parallel spaces between words in the text values

I have attached a program listing and output pdf to show what my issue is.

I used the Code39 font which was included with PDFinclude, but also had the same result with a Code128b font.

I need to know if there is a way to print the barcode without the gaps.

Also, is there a way to print the text value in the barcode (see sample.png attachment)?


use of pdfinclude with predefined templates on Solaris

hi, i just download pdfinclude v3.3.3 because i need to fill a pdf template in 4GL, but the next errors appers when i run a test.

** "/hop01/users/hopahv/BOL1.txt" was not found. (293)
Put/Get functions not allowed on uninitialized memory. (2914)

Could not open Dynamic Library: /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (8013)
DLL Error : ld.so.1: _progres: fatal: /usr/lib/libz.so.1: wrong ELF class:

The programa code:
{pdf_inc.i}
RUN pdf_new ("Spdf","/hop01/users/hopmfg/BOLFill.pdf").
RUN pdf_open_PDF ("Spdf","/hop01/users/hopmfg/POForm6.pdf","BOL").
RUN pdf_new_page ("Spdf").


Unable to get pdf_pageHeader to work

I've attached the pdf file the code below generates for me...notice there is no page header. Not sure what my code is lacking. I've copied from the examples...so I'm confused.

My program is as follows:
{pdf/pdf_inc.i }

RUN pdf_new ("Spdf", "tmp/pdfTest.pdf").
RUN pdf_set_Orientation ("Spdf", "Portrait").
RUN pdf_set_LeftMargin ("Spdf", "10").
RUN pdf_set_PaperType ("Spdf", "LETTER").
RUN pdf_new_page ("Spdf").


I can't get pdf_pageHeader to work - what am I doing wrong?

I took the example of how to implement page headers & footers directly from the PDFinclude PRO v1 Documentation and from the table.p sample program.

My code is as follows:
{pdf/pdf_inc.i }

RUN Create-pdf.
PROCEDURE Create-pdf:

RUN pdf_new ("Spdf", "tmp/pdfTest.pdf").
RUN pdf_set_Orientation ("Spdf", "Portrait").


Adding a hyperlink to a PDF document

Hi,

I have used PDFinclude to create PDF documents since last 6 years. I am using version 3.2. How do I add a hyperlink to a PDF document? For example, lets say I have the following paragraph:

"Microsoft releases Surface, a tablet that competes directly with Apple's iPad."

Now, I'd like to make Microsoft point to www.microsoft.com and Surface point to www.surface.com. How can I do that? Does PDFinclude support have that capabilities?

Thanks,
Joe


How to add a hyperlink to a PDF document

Hi,

I have used PDFinclude to create PDF documents since last 6 years. I am using version 3.2. How do I add a hyperlink to a PDF document? For example, lets say I have the following paragraph:

"Microsoft releases Surface, a tablet that competes directly with Apple's iPad."

Now, I'd like to make Microsoft point to www.microsoft.com and Surface point to www.surface.com. How can I do that? Does PDFinclude support have that capabilities?

Thanks,
Joe


Problem with pdf_user_PDF_Page

I have just started using PDF Include and I am trying to use a PDF Template. However, I am getting the error "pdf_use_PDF_Page Invalid Page #". The code I am using is:
RUN pdf_new ("Spdf", "TestInvoice.pdf").

RUN pdf_open_PDF("Spdf", "C:\InvoiceTemplate.pdf", "PO").
RUN pdf_new_page ("Spdf").
RUN pdf_use_PDF_page ("Spdf","PO", 1).
.....
I am sure there is something obvious that I am missing, but I would appreciate any pointers.
OE 10.2B on Windows 7.

Regards
Brian


Word Wrap in PDF_TOOL Matrix/Table

Is there a way where you can enable word wrap when using the matrix/Table if the string is greater than the width of the column then then there will be a new line in the cell.


How makes legal paper size pdf

I have use following cade for make legal size pdf but it doesnt work.
RUN pdf_set_PaperType IN h_PDFinc ("Spdf","Legal").

should I add more for generate my legal size pdf.


Do not flatten form fields

When using a PDF form with form fields as a template, and populating the form fields, is there a way to tell PDF Include not to flatten some or all the form fields in the generated PDF document ?

In other words, I would like to open the resulting PDF document with Adobe Reader and be able to fill the form fields.

Right now, after generating a PDF form, the form fields no longer exist.

PS: Using version 3.3.3 on AIX 6.1 64bit with OpenEdge 10.2B06


Opening Existing PDF sometimes gives errors

Good Morning,

I've found that this topic has been discussed numerous times online before, but I haven't come across anywhere that a solution has been given (assuming there even is one). Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

I frequently use pdf includes to generate reports for my company's clients. Lately, several of them have sent me pdf files that use their special forms as a background, requesting that I print my reports to them.


#
AttachmentSize
PDFinclude.ppt presentation from the Michigan PUG958 KB
PDFinfo.zip6.13 KB
PDFincludeV7-1.0.zip for v721.69 KB
PDFinclude3.3.3.zip for v9+3.06 MB
PDFInclude-PRO-Documentation.pdf600.13 KB
readme.pdf for pdfInclude v5.11.63 MB
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