This is the list of frequently asked questions for jPDFWriter. If you don't find the answer to your question, don't hesitate to ask us at info@qoppa.com.

Licensing Questions

What is the difference between server license and distribution license?

Our library pricing has two models according to where the software is running, either on a server, or on clients computers.

You need to purchase a server license if the library is running on a server (one copy of the library servers many users)

You need to purchase distribution license if the library is running on your user computer. Please contact us for distribution pricing.

What is your policy for annual support-renewal / upgrades? If we were to have a production issue, how quickly are you able to address it?

When you purchase the library, 3 months of free support is included. This is normally enough to get the library integrated into your application and to work out any issues that may come up. Support includes answers to any questions that may come up, priority bug fixes and free upgrades during the 3 month period.

Additionally, we also offer extended support renewable on a yearly basis. The extended support includes the same items as the initial 3 month support and is priced at 18% of the purchase price per year.

Is there an expiry date for the license?

There is no expiration on the license.

Technical Questions

Why is jPDFWriter displaying only 4 pages of the PDF document?

The evaluation version of the software has a 4 page limit. To get around the 4 page limit you would have to purchase the software.

Does jPDFWriter support printing of an existing PDF document to a printer?

No, jPDFWriter does not support sending an existing PDF document to a printer.jPDFWriter only allows you to create PDF files using a standard Java PrinterJob. The same code used to create the PDF document can be reused to send the output to a physical printer.

If you only wish to print existing PDF documents, you can use one of our other product jPDFPrint that handles printing only.

If you wish to modify existing PDF documents and then print them, you would use another one of our product jPDFProcess.

In what PDF format does jPDFWriter save PDF files?

jPDFWriter saves PDF files in 1.3 format.

Do you have any sample code that takes an html document and outputs it as a PDF file?

We provide a static method to load HTML document in jPDFWriter. To create a PDF file from an HTML url, your code would look something like:

URL url = new URL ("http://www.somewebsite.com");
PageFormat pf = new PageFormat();
PDFDocument pdfDoc = PDFDocument.loadHTML (url, pf, true);
pdfDoc.saveDocument ("c:\\output.pdf");

A word of warning though, the library uses standard Java classes to load and render the HTML page, specifically HTMLEditorKit and HTMLDocument. This means that HTML support only goes as far as Java supports it in their classes.

Can jPDFWriter be used to print MS-Word or rtf document to PDF?

Yes, you can use jPDFWriter to do this.Take a look at the loadRTF document method in the PDFDocument class. As for HTML support, the library uses standard Java classes to load and render the rtf document (RTFEditorKit, StyledDocument, etc). This means that rtf support only goes as far as Java supports it in their classes. jPDFWriter does not do the actual rendering of the RTF files.

Is there any way to specify a file name for the PDF without going through a dialog. My program needs to operate without any user interface.

Yes, there is a way to specify a PDF file name without going through a dialog.

After you get the PrinterJob object from PDFPrinterJob, you need to first cast it to a PDFPrinterJob and then when starting the job, instead of calling the print method with no arguments, you'll need to call the print method with the file name as a parameter. PDFPrinterJob will not prompt for a file name when the print job is started using this method.

I’m using your jPDFWriter library and whenever I open a generated PDF document in Acrobat 5.0.1, I get this message: “There was an error processing the page. There was an error while trying to parse an image”.

This problem happens with Acrobat Reader Version 5.0.1 only. Please upgrade your Acrobat Reader to a latest version: 5.0.5, 5.1 or 6 and the problem will go away.

I am using custom fonts in my PDF content. However, I noticed that the font is not being embedded within the PDF document.

Depending on the font that you're using, jPDFWriter will do one of two things:

- If the font is a 'known' font, jPDFWriter will tell the pdf viewer to use that font by name. jPDFWriter recognizes dialog, dialoginput, serif, sansserif, monospaced and times new roman. These fonts should be supported by all PDF viewers.

- If the font is not any of these, jPDFWriter uses java to actually draw the characters out using vectors. When the PDF viewer reads this, there is no concept of font or text, there is only a set of vector commands. This should make the file completely system independent and should work regardless of any fonts installed in the system.

If you're using custom fonts, jPDFWriter should be using the second case.

Can jPDFWriter be used as a PrintService?

Currently, jPDFWriter does not support the PrintService architecture, printing is done using a PrinterJob or directly by creating pages in a document object, getting a Graphics2D object for a page and drawing on to it. We are planning to add support for print services in a future version.

Does jPDFWriter optimize (compress) PDF files?

When jPDFWriter creates PDF documents, the output is automatically compressed.

When I am printing to a physical printer, the print method in my Printable gets called several times. When I am printing to jPDFWriter, the print method only gets called once. Why is this?

When printing to a physical printer, the Java API can call the print method several times, sometimes more than twice. This was put in place to accommodate printer buffers that can not handle a whole page at once, hence Java can send the data to the printer one 'buffer-full' at a time. This can be very inefficient, but it's Java.

As I understand it, your print method should draw the full page every time that it is called. This is necessary as Java might be using different parts of the page on different calls. The print method should be coded to use the pageIndex value passed into it to determine which page to draw.

jPDFWriter doesn't need to do this convoluted buffering, so it only needs to call the print method once for every page. As long as you draw the full page on each call, your code should work properly for both physical printers and jPDFWriter.