RealObjects PDFreactor 8 Released

Saarbrücken The leading HTML to PDF conversion engine just got even better: PDFreactor 8 is now available.

PDFreactor 8 is a major upgrade with great new features:

  • Professional printing capabilities like:
    • Support for PDF/X (PDF/X-1a:2001, PDF/X-1a:2003, PDF/X-3:2002, PDF/X-3:2003 and PDF/X-4)
    • Spot Colors, incl. Pantone
    • CMYK colors now accept alpha values
    • Baseline Grids allow you to align text automatically to invisible grids which greatly enhances reading experience and overall look of your documents
  • A new and improved web service makes it even easier to deploy PDFreactor into the environment and architecture of your choice using one of the web service APIs. The web service now enables:
    • SOAP Web Service API
    • REST Web Service API
    • New service-based APIs for Java and JavaScript
    • New high-performance, service-based command line API with support for batch processing (incl. wildcards)
    • Asynchronous document conversion option (great for large documents) that do not block the client
  • PDFreactor now supports the following CSS3 features:
    • calc
    • box-sizing
    • background-size: contain/cover
    • New CSS length units including “rem”, “ch”, “vw”, “vh”, “vmin”, “vmax” and “q”
    • CSS media features (@media …)
  • Implemented new proprietary CSS page pseudo class ”:-ro-last” and “:-ro-nth” to address the last page or specific pages of a document
  • PDFreactor now includes an OSGi bundle for deployment in an OSGi environment
  • Improved JavaScript and charting library support
  • All PDF/A formats are now supported (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 2u, 3a, 3b and 3u)
  • Reduced memory footprint
  • Improved merging with existing PDF documents:
    • Pages from existing PDF documents can now be used like HTML/CSS images
    • When overlaying documents, the longer document can now be trimmed

For more information about PDFreactor 8, please visit www.pdfreactor.com. Make sure to check out the new samples, highlighting the new features.

For a full list of changes and corrections see the changelog.

Important release notes und upgrading information can be found in the readme.

The PDFreactor 8 installation packages are available for download in the download area.

Upgrading to PDFreactor 8

The new version is a free upgrade for all PDFreactor customers with a valid support and maintenance subscription. A version 8 license key is required and should be requested at support@realobjects.com when upgrading. PDFreactor 8 will not work with PDFreactor 7 or older license keys.

If you do not have a valid support and maintenance subscription, please contact support@realobjects.com to purchase an upgrade.

When upgrading to PDFreactor 8, you will have to update your integration code. Please make sure to consult our migration guide.

Web Service or Wrapper Integrations:

Since a new PDFreactor Web Service is introduced with this version, the old Wrapper APIs have been completely overhauled and integrations have to be adapted. Important: The PDFreactor 8 Web Service now requires Java 8 to run. Older Java versions are not supported for the Web Service. The PDFreactor Java Library can still be used with previous Java versions.

Java Library Integrations:

A new PDFreactor Java API has been introduced with which you can transition near seamlessly from and to the new Java Wrapper API. The previous Java API is still available under the com.realobjects.pdfreactor.legacy package, however you are strongly encouraged to migrate to the new API as soon as possible.

Command Line Integrations:

The legacy PDFreactor command line binaries are no longer included in PDFreactor 8 and were replaced with a new Python based command line interface that uses and requires the PDFreactor Web Service. The legacy PDFreactor command line interface can still be used as before by calling java -jar pdfreactor.jar on the command line. The legacy PDFreactor command line is no longer maintained in PDFreactor 8 and some PDFreactor 8 features might not be available using it.

If you have any questions about PDFreactor 8, please don’t hesitate to contact support@realobjects.com.

About RealObjects

Headquartered in Saarbrücken, Germany, RealObjects provides standards-based, cross-platform software solutions for both electronic publishing as well as content authoring.

The company ranks as a pioneering developer of easy-to-use, affordable and quick-to-deploy online HTML editor solutions, which enable content authoring in Web- and Java-based applications. They are a perfect fit for Content Management, Knowledge Management and e-Learning systems.

RealObjects’ W3C standards-based publishing solution PDFreactor is another industry-recognized flagship product, which is used for server-side conversion of HTML and XML to PDF whenever electronic and print output of business content in typset-quality is required. The latest RealObjects products emerged from Project MARTHA, an integrated application framework that enables enterprise developers to create powerful HTML and XML editing and rendering applications in pure Java.

Founded in May 2000, the privately held and self-funded software company has more than 2500 corporate customers in over 40 countries, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises, educational institutions as well as government and non-profit organizations. A strong network of key business alliances, value added resellers and OEM partners has been established.