Discussion

In iText in Action: Creating and Manipulating PDF, author Bruno Lowagie walks through everything PDF, Adobe's Portable Document Format, from a Java developer's point of view. Lowagie covers how to use iText in a Java/J2EE application for the production and/or manipulation of PDF documents. Along the way, Lowagie describes interesting PDF features and explains more obscure e-document functionalities. In addition to many small code samples, this book includes XML-based, ready-made solutions that can easily be adapted and integrated into projects.

In chapter 3 of this book, titled "PDF: why and when," Lowagie takes a close look at the PDF. The first section of this chapter explains why PDF was invented and how it evolved into a de facto standard. In the second section, Lowagie describes the different PDF "flavors," some of which are described in an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard. Lowagie uses a table listing different versions of the PDF specification to focus on specific features such as compression and encryption. He also uses "Hello World" examples to show how to compress/decompress and encrypt/decrypt PDF files.

Download Chapter 3 - PDF: why and when

Published by Manning Publications; ISBN: 1932394796; Published: December 2006; Pages: 688

For more information on iText in Action: Creating and Manipulating PDF, go to www.manning.com.

About the Author

Bruno Lowagie is the original developer and one of the current maintainers of iText. He works for Ghent University and lives in Ghent, Belgium with his wife and two sons.

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