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
Meet us on Google+
pdf created using pdfinclude crashes foxitreader
Wed, 2008-10-01 03:08 — ray73864I have a PDF file that i am creating using PDFInclude, the resultant PDF opens fine in Adobe Reader 8, however everytime i try to open it using Foxitreader (latest version) it crashes the program.
The code i have for creating the pdf is as follows:
getQuote does nothing more than stick the session tables back into their respective temp-tables.
RUN getQuote. DEFINE VARIABLE Vold_Y AS INTEGER NO-UNDO. DEFINE VARIABLE vStateBook AS INTEGER NO-UNDO. DEFINE VARIABLE vCustBook AS INTEGER NO-UNDO. DEFINE VARIABLE vNullBook AS INTEGER NO-UNDO.
using PDFInclude in subprograms?
Thu, 2008-09-25 22:13 — jmyers1956I have a need to open a stream using PDFInclude in a main procedure, but actually build the document in a subprocedure. Can this be done with the standard PDFInclude files, and if so, what include files do I need to include in the subprogram? Please let me know ASAP folks! Thanks!
- Login to post comments
What to use when creating PDF File for form completion in Progress
Fri, 2008-09-05 08:28 — JonathanStarkeHi All,
I have tried using Professional PDF Convertor to add fiels toan Existing PDF File, so that I can populate these fields from PDFInclude...
Well now I get an error (Progress) Invalid Character in Numeric Input T Before I added the field(s), the File could be include in PDFInclude, without any problems.
What is everyone using to create PDF Files with fields? PDF Convertor allows conversion from .doc files etc.
Thnx
Jonathan
Problems reading PDF Files created in version 7 in Adobe version 8
Wed, 2008-05-14 20:57 — sbunchI have received notification from users that files created with PDFInclude in PROGRESS using PDF version 7 could not be opened in Adobe Version 8.
Has anyone else encountered this problem, and how was it resolved?
- Login to post comments
Month Dropping From Date When Using PDF_TEXT_CHARXY
Tue, 2008-05-06 14:08 — Jon RansomDoes anyone else have this issue? When using a date from the database with this statement it seems to drop the month so instead of getting 12/31/2008 I only get /31/2008. If I output the same thing within quotes it seems ok but not when it is a field. Here is the statement I am using,
RUN PDF_TEXT_CHARXY(sPdf,STRING(Order.OrderDate,"99/99/9999"),005,548).
PDF form field dissapear after using pdf_use_PDF_page
Tue, 2008-04-22 11:57 — TyronHi,
I'm trying to simply figure out how to use dynamic forms. I created a form in acrobat and wanted to test it. Unfortunately the resultant form has no fields or filled in values.
Can some one please explain what I am doing wrong?
This is my code with the template and the resultant pdf file attached.
{inc/pdf_inc.i "NOT SUPER"}
RUN pdf_open_PDF IN h_PDFinc ("Spdf","c:\Temp\template.pdf","Inv"). /* Open Template PDF*/
RUN pdf_new IN h_PDFinc ("Spdf","c:\temp\filled-form.pdf").
RUN pdf_new_page IN h_PDFinc ("Spdf").
Font registering
Fri, 2008-03-14 10:44 — charlesvcMay i know is it possible to register the font with an existing pdf document
Font Exception
Fri, 2008-03-14 10:40 — charlesvcI used staroffice/open office api to convert word document to pdf, you know my project needs the converted pdf to be converted once again to images, using acrobat viewer bean(com.adobe.acrobat.*) but failed to do so with FontException as Arial and TimesNewRoman fonts are not registered with the converted pdf, fonts are with word document.
So can ;you tell me is it able to convert a word document to pdf using ur product
- Login to post comments
Can't find /lib/libz.so.1
Thu, 2008-02-21 19:09 — tariqjamalOS: HP-UX
ZLIB: Version 1.2.3
PROGRESS: 9.1D
I am getting the following error when running pdfinclude and trying to use an existing PDF page.
Could not open Dynamic Library: /lib/libz.so.1 (8013) Could not load DLL procedure /lib/libz.so.1. (3258)
The find doesn't exist, and is NOWHERE on the server. I have a libz.sl.1, but this doesn't work.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Tariq Jamal
OpenOffice
Fri, 2008-01-18 02:18 — stuartrichlerCan someone point me to some documentation that describes how to create form templates using OpenOffice. The pdfinclude documentation that I have describes how to do it with Adobe and mentions that it can be done with OpenOffice but doesn't elaborate or provide examples.
Thanks
Stuart Richler
stuart@gtrdata.com
How to Print PDF Files with System-dialog Using 4GL?
Thu, 2008-01-10 09:31 — redskienzHi, Im using PDFInclude in my project.
My problem is, I want the generated PDF File be printed on a printer "directly" but with system-dialog
using 4Gl code or any shared procedure/s.
Please reply for any possible solution.
Thanx for help,
redksienz
Disable Printing in PDFInclude
Thu, 2008-01-10 09:25 — redskienzHi guys, I have situation here using PDFInclude.
The report should be able to be viewed by the users but should not be printable.
Is this possible with PDFInclude?
Please Help,
redskienz.
Error compiling PDF Include
Mon, 2007-07-16 21:02 — alex10Hi,
Can you help me, im using progress Version 9.1E and the PDFinclude3.3.3. When i compile it i get:
mfgus 07/16/07 15:57:50
Compiling procedure pdf_inc.p.
** Unable to understand after -- "PUBLISH". (247)
** /xxxx/yyy/mfg74g/us/xrc/pdf_inc.p Could not understand line 5448. (198)
** Unable to understand after -- "PUBLISH". (247)
** /xxxx/yyy/mfg74g/us/xrc/pdf_inc.p Could not understand line 5454. (198)
| 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 |
