The recent PD4ML builds (both v3 and v4) refactor RTF output logic to improve conversion performance by bulky input HTML documents.
Now, even in extreme situations, the performance is comparable with PDF output and very often outperforms it.
Month: May 2019
Creating PDF documents from IBM Notes with PD4ML
v3.x.x v4.1.0
PD4ML can be used to convert IBM Notes documents to PDF (as well as to RTF or to a raster image) a variety of ways.
The most straightforward method is to capture HTML documents, returned by Notes Domino via HTTP: an URL like one of the following is to be passed to render() method of PD4ML.
http://Host/Database/PageUNID?OpenPage
(i.e. http://www.acme.com/discussion.nsf/35AE8FBFA573336A852563D100741784?OpenPage)
http://Host/Database/View/DocumentUniversalID?OpenDocument
(http://www.acme.com/leads.nsf/By+Rep/35AE8FBFA573336A852563D100741784?OpenDocument)
http://Host/Database/FormUniversalID?ReadForm
(http://www.acme.com/products.nsf/625E6111C597A11B852563DD00724CC2?ReadForm)
More IBM Notes URL syntax info…
If you run JSP infrastructure on IBM Domino server, another online method of PDF generation would be to use PD4ML JSP custom tag library (TODO).
If an online document generation method (involving HTTP, JSP etc) is undesired, there is a possibility to generate PDF documents from their XML representations (so called DXL).
DXL is an adaptation of XML used to describe, in detail, the structure and data contained in a Domino database. It describes data and design elements such as views, forms, and documents and provides a basis for importing or exporting XML representations of data to and from a Domino/Notes application.
Schematically a process of Notes document conversion to PDF can be seen like that:
All conversion steps can be implemented at once as a IBM Lotus Notes Java agent, or can be implemented as two-step batch: DXL export request followed by a conversion with Pd4Cmd command-line tool
java -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx512m -jar pd4ml.jar test.dxl 1200 -xsl notesdefault
The command line overrides the default Java memory heap size limit with -Xmx512m. Here it is set to 512Mb.
On UNIX platform -Djava.awt.headless=true allows to run the application on non-graphics-enabled servers or from remote ssh/telnet sessions.
test.dxl 1200 are DXL location and htmlWidth (virtual “browser” frame width) parameters.
On Win32 the path is enclosed, if needed, to double quotes, on UNIX – to single quotes.
-xsl notesdefault applies XSL stylesheet to the input document. In the case it refers to the built-in default DXL-to-HTML XSL, but it can be an URI of an arbitrary external stylesheet.
The default PDF document format: A4 / PORTRAIT
In the example 1200px width of rendered document will be mapped to 595pt widths of A4 page format.
As long as an output file path omitted, the output is sent to STDOUTand can be piped to another application.
See more command line arguments…
PD4ML as Notes Agent…
PD4ML Integration with Macromedia® ColdFusion®
Please follow the link to the corresponding section in the Reference manual.
2. Integration of PD4ML with ColdFusion Standard edition
Unfortunately not all runtime modes of ColdFusion allow to use JSP tag libraries. In that case the only way to
integrate PD4ML is to use PD4ML Java API.
The following is the integration example .cfm contributed by David REYNAUD:
<html>
<head>
<title>PD4ML under CFMX 6.x Std Edition</title>
</head>
<body>
<!---
BEFORE RUNNING :
Idea 1 :
put the JAR file : pd4ml_demo.jar
in the same folder as current CFM page
Idea 2 :
maybe you can put the JAR file : pd4ml_demo.jar
into the ColfdFusion's CustomTags directory
Idea 3 :
use the ColdFusion Admin to configure classpath to use the jar
--->
<cfscript>
// The source file to convert (http:// or file:)
inURI="file:n:/web/tests/pd4ml/test.html";
// The pdf file to generate (full pathname)
fileOut="n:/web/tests/pd4ml/test.pdf";
unnitsvalue="mm"; // Millimeters
// A4 'vertical' in mm
format = createObject("java","java.awt.Dimension").init(210,297);
topValue = 10; // mm
leftValue = 10; // mm
rightValue = 10; // mm
bottomValue = 10; // mm
landscapevalue="yes";
userSpaceWidth=780; // px
splitValue=0;
patchValue=1;
authorName="";
// PD4ML Object instantiation
pd4ml = createObject("java","org.zefer.pd4ml.PD4ML");
// Format, orientation, insets
if (landscapeValue) format = pd4ml.changePageOrientation(format);
insets = createObject("java","java.awt.Insets")
.init(topValue,leftValue,bottomValue,rightValue);
if (unnitsvalue EQ "mm") {
pd4ml.setPageSizeMM(format);
pd4ml.setPageInsetsMM(insets);
} else {
pd4ml.setPageSize(format);
pd4ml.setPageInsets(insets);
}
if(authorName NEQ "")
pd4ml.setAuthorName(authorname);
if (userSpaceWidth NEQ "") pd4ml.setHtmlWidth( userSpaceWidth );
pd4ml.enableImgSplit( splitValue );
pd4ml.enableRenderingPatch( patchValue );
fos = createObject("java","java.io.FileOutputStream").init(fileOut);
pd4ml.render(inURI,fos); // Start rendering
</cfscript>
<cfoutput>File '#inURI#' converted to '#fileOut#'</cfoutput>
</body>
</html>
.NET port of PD4ML
PD4ML.NET is a 100% managed code port of PD4ML v3 conversion library, which allows you to create Adobe PDF documents on the fly from HTML documents or templates.
Key features available to managed code applications include:
- Built-in security by using code access security and avoiding buffer overruns, which is very critical for server-side applications.
- Performance benefits gained from executing all code in the Common Language Runtime with use of the Just-In-Time compiler. Calling unmanaged code decreases performance because additional security checks are required.
- Ease of deployment
- Improved versioning.
- Implicit lifetime control of objects and garbage collection.
PD4ML.NET is encapsulated in an easy-to-deploy set of DLLs and it does not rely on any unsafe native components (like MS Internet Explorer renderer): it is based on proprietary HTML rendering engine, optimized for PDF layout generation. The rendering engine implements most of HTML4/CSS2 standard features plus a number of custom PDF-generation-specific functions: pagination control, headers/footers generation, watermarking, TOC generation etc.
PDF reporting does not require an utilization of complex report generators anymore. You create an HTML/ASP based report with images, charts, form elements and PD4ML.NET does the rest for you.
PD4ML.NET allows you to easily embed word processor documents, spreadsheets, and rich media content as attachments to the resulting PDF documents.
The component can be used from any .NET 1.1/2.0/3.x application (Windows forms, ASP.NET Web sites or command line tools), even if the application run under Mono framework on Linux platform.
Main features:
- Convert an URL or HTML string to a PDF file or byte stream.
- Set PDF page format and orientation
- Control page margins
- Define PDF headers and footers in HTML (including images and page numbers)
- Embed and use True Type and Open Type fonts.
- Support most of Asian, Middle-East, European and Latin character sets
- Generate external and internal hyperlinks
- Control header/footer appearance on selected pages
- Embed attachments
- Switch PDF encryption on and assign document security restrictions
- Generate PDF bookmarks
- Generate table of contents based on <H1>-<H6> structure
- Customize page background
- Watermark pages
- Override hardcoded document style with additional CSS style sheets
- Provide basic support for PDF forms
The rich set of features and the robustness of the managed code makes PD4ML famous as a perfect PDF generation solution for server-side and desktop applications.
Additional info:
How to configure PDF fonts
PD4ML PRO, DMS and UA allow you to use all UNICODE characters space of custom TTF/OTF fonts in PDF.
The way TTF embedding is implemented by PD4ML may look complicated at first glance. On practice it is not so; also there are reasons why TTF usage is not as transparent as in regular Java applications.
In Java you can easily instantiate java.awt.Font object for any font face name, obtain the font metrics and to set the font for text output. By PDF generation PD4ML needs an access not only to java.awt.Font object, but to the corresponding physical .ttf file (to parse them and to extract a subset of used glyphs). Unfortunately Java does not offer a way to locate TTF file for a particular java.awt.Font object.
The most straightforward solution was to use font face -> font file mapping file. PD4ML’s default file name for it is pd4fonts.properties
Below are available options how to create and deal with the mapping file or how to avoid a creation of it.
Creation of pd4fonts.properties for a selected set of fonts
- create fonts/ directory (i.e /path/to/my/fonts/) and copy desired TTF files into it.
- run pd4fonts.properties generation command
java -Xmx512m -jar pd4ml.jar -configure.fonts /path/to/my/fonts/
As a result it should produce /path/to/my/fonts/pd4fonts.properties.
Now you can refer to it from Java application
pd4ml.useTTF("/path/to/my/fonts/");
// or identically
pd4ml.useTTF("/path/to/my/fonts/pd4fonts.properties");
Creation of pd4fonts.properties for system fonts
In the example above pd4fonts.properties file is stored to the same folder where TTF files are. If you run the command to index system fonts, in most of the cases it fails, as it has no write permission to the system font folder.
A solution is to write pd4fonts.properties to another location:
- run pd4fonts.properties generation command
java -Xmx512m -jar pd4ml.jar -configure.fonts c:/windows/fonts/ c:/path/to/my/config
As a result it should produce c:/path/to/my/config/pd4fonts.properties with an internal reference to the original font folder c:/windows/fonts/.
Now you may refer to it from Java application
pd4ml.useTTF("c:/path/to/my/config");
// or identically
pd4ml.useTTF("c:/path/to/my/config/pd4fonts.properties");
Creation of pd4fonts.properties on-a-fly
Set generateFontMappingFileIfMissing parameter of useTTF() to true
pd4ml.useTTF("/path/to/my/fonts/", true);
Creation of in-memory font mapping on-a-fly
Typically the method is used, when there is no preconfigured fonts directory available, and a use of the system fonts directory seems to be a good option. An obvious drawback of the idea is a potentially long indexing time of a big number of system fonts.
PD4ML allows to reduce the indexing efforts by limiting a scope of used fonts. fontFileNameFilter parameter can be set to a comma-delimited list of font name patterns:
pd4ml.useTTF("c:/windows/fonts/", "arial,times,courier");
The above code forces PD4ML to index only fonts, whose names contain arial, times or courier.
Creation of a JAR file with fonts
As a rule in Web application contexts you are not allowed to refer local file system resources. That makes the above methods not usable. PD4ML’s solution is to pack the fonts to a JAR file and deploy it with the Web application resources.
- create fonts/ directory (i.e /path/to/my/fonts/) and copy desired TTF files into it.
- run pd4fonts.properties generation command
java -Xmx512m -jar pd4ml.jar -configure.fonts /path/to/my/fonts/
which produces /path/to/my/fonts/pd4fonts.properties
- pack to JAR
jar cvf fonts.jar /path/to/my/fonts/
After deployment you can refer to it from Java application
pd4ml.useTTF("java:fonts/");
The “java:fonts/” URL addresses fonts/ folder within the JAR.
Web fonts
The @font-face CSS at-rule adds a custom font to a list of available ones; the font can be loaded from either a remote server or a locally-installed font on the user’s own computer.
The approach requires no API calls. All configuration is to be done in HTML/CSS sources.
@font-face {
font-family: "Consolas";
src: url("java:/html/rc/FiraMono-Regular.ttf") format("ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Open Sans';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 400;
src: url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/lato/v11/qIIYRU-oROkIk8vfvxw6QvesZW2xOQ-xsNqO47m55DA.woff) format('woff');
}
Font kerning
Kerning is an addition or reduction of space between two characters (glyphs) of a proportional font. As a rule a rendered text is visually much more pleasing when the kerning is applied.
Font kerning can be enabled with PD4ML API call:
pd4ml.applyKerning(true);
If you run PD4ML as a standalone command line tool, you may force it to apply kerning with -kerning parameter.
