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PD4ML v4.0.24 is out. It brings multi-column output back from PD4ML v3, image output without JAI, much smaller PDFs with CJK fonts and a long list of layout fixes found by converting a large corpus of real-world documents. All of these changes are also part of PD4ML v4.1.2.

New and improved

  • generateMulticolumn() (and the -multicolumn command line option / multicolumn taglib attribute) produces multi-column PDF output as in PD4ML v3.
  • Tag library 1.2: new descriptor URIs https://pd4ml.com/tlds/4.2 (javax) and 4.2-jk (Jakarta); new <pd4ml:transform> attributes (documentTitle, initialPageNumber, kerning, ligatures, protectPhysicalUnitDimensions, formFont, proxy, basicAuthentication); outputFormat accepts docx, pdfua and the TIFF variants; new <pd4ml:metadata> and <pd4ml:property> tags; <pd4ml:permissions encryption>.
  • Image output no longer needs JAI: renderAsImages() works on any Java version (TIFF needs Java 9+), format names are accepted in any letter case, TIFF_COMPRESSED is PackBits-compressed; Pd4Cmd -outformat png.
  • OpenType fonts with CFF outlines (.otf, e.g. Noto Sans CJK) are embedded as a subset: a PDF with a 15 MB CJK font is a few hundred KB instead of 23 MB.
  • Robustness from a run over a large real-world document corpus: documents that failed with an exception now convert; pathological input no longer hangs or runs out of memory.
  • New method PD4ML.addMetadata(namespaceURI, prefix, key, value): custom XMP metadata properties in a namespace of your own, for example the W3C TDM Reservation Protocol properties tdm:reservation and tdm:policy. In PDF/A output the namespace is declared in a PDF/A extension schema.

Layout

  • Tables: rowspan rows no longer grow to the whole span; colspan cells over fixed-width columns no longer overlap; width: 100% tables inside padded boxes; max-width in cells, fixed-width columns; collapsed borders next to rowspan cells; structural selectors (:nth-child()) on rows wrapped in misplaced elements; quirks-mode tables no longer inherit font and white-space; a table’s height is shared out among its rows as in browsers (no extra height from the border spacing, no empty rows added by a rowspan reaching past the last row), so fixed-height rows line up with background images.
  • Floats, inline-blocks, absolutely positioned boxes and auto-width cells are no longer stretched by percentage-width content (blocks, tables, images, form controls, floats); flex items sized to content likewise.
  • Pagination: no blank trailing page from the body’s bottom margin; textareas taller than a page split between lines; absolutely positioned content taller than a page is paginated; page-break-after: avoid headings move with the next block; a fieldset moves to the next page with its legend; <pd4ml:page.break ifSpaceBelowLessThan> and late <pd4ml:page.footer>/header definitions are honored; headers/footers given as full HTML documents keep their page scope.
  • Text: no line break before a superscript/subscript glued to the preceding word; words continuing across an inline element boundary are not split at the line end; white-space: nowrap in table cells; fractional percentage lengths are not rounded; RTL/LTR spacing in mixed paragraphs.
  • Form controls: browser default sizes and style for text inputs; inputs inside absolutely positioned elements keep their width; non-Latin input values use the useTTF() fallback; buttons of different heights in one line are aligned on the baseline of their text, as in browsers, instead of on their top edges.
  • Small or zero-height blocks are not stretched to a line height; rounded cell backgrounds without seams.

Fonts and text

  • Thai, Lao and Arabic (fonts without presentation forms) are shaped with the font’s layout tables.
  • Built-in Helvetica/Times/Courier text sits on the browser’s baseline.

SVG

  • Inline <svg> without xmlns is rendered; SVGs Batik cannot process fall back to the built-in renderer; decimal viewBox values; stroke-dasharray; text-anchor on text without x.

RTF and DOCX

  • RTF: body background, block padding and shading, list bullets with several blocks, blocks in table cells and headers/footers, paragraphs in cells and list items, empty anchors, styled <hr>, web-font icons as images, zero-width empty cells (Word showed one page).
  • DOCX: list items containing blocks are well-formed and open in Word; no zero-width grid columns.

PDF, PDF/A and PDF/UA

  • MathML formulas in tagged output (PDF/UA, PDF/A-a) are tagged as Formula with alternate text instead of artifacts.
  • /Lang from <html lang>; custom metadata keeps PDF/A valid; setting only pd4ml.document.date sets the XMP dates; PDF and XMP dates include the DST offset.
  • merge() handles indirect /Info and outline objects; encrypted PDFs without /ID are decrypted correctly; v3 API page background/watermark on PD4PageMark; header/footer title alignment is not overridden by document CSS.
  • XMP metadata values containing &, < or > (title, author, keywords, custom properties) no longer get a stray \u before the character.