Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :)
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I was originally going to use a mix of PdfSharp and MigraDoc to generate some PDFs in C#, but the last beta release was two years ago, the last production release was five years ago, and let's be honest, things have moved on.
Does anyone know of a .NET PDF generation library that's actually being actively maintained and isn't a total clusterfuck?
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There's iText but I don't think there's a free version for .net.
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@RaceProUK Just install a PDF printer along with your application, and then you can use any printing library that lets you specify which printer to use. :P
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@anotherusername said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@RaceProUK Just install a PDF printer along with your application, and then you can use any printing library that lets you specify which printer to use. :P
Great! How do I do that in an Azure WebJob? :P
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@RaceProUK no problem, just install the PDF printer on the server and add a dash of creative scripting.
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Aspose have a pdf generator. I think it's actively maintained but for raisins my company can't upgrade beyond a 10 year old version so I couldn't tell you if it's any good in the current version.
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@anotherusername You mean do the needful?
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I usually just turn to Ghostscript when I need PDF functionality. Quick search brought this up:
https://ghostscriptnet.codeplex.com
It's under Mozilla Public Licence, I'm not familiar with it myself, you should probably look into that first.
On the funcionality bit, as long as the wrapper itself is sane you should be good, I never had any real problems with ghostscript itself (the library, there are truly atrocious GUIs related to it though, but you won't have to use those).
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@Jaloopa said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
Aspose
OUCH!
...think I might try to find something a bit cheaper...
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an interpreter for the PostScript language and the PDF
I am a girl for coding
Edit: They've moved to GitHub: https://github.com/jhabjan/Ghostscript.NET
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@RaceProUK said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
...think I might try to find something a bit cheaper...
Oh wow.
Yeah, we already have the license and I doubt we're paying annually since we're on such an outdated version so I never saw that
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@RaceProUK said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
an interpreter for the PostScript language and the PDF
I am a girl for coding
Give the man some slack, he's sadly affected by the horrible disease of being Slavic (actually, given last name he's either my countryman or a close neighbor).
Filed under: Yeah, I notice names when they are local, I guess that's what passes for my version of "nationalism"
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Bad news. I do PDFs professionally. Everything out there at the free price point is shit.
At the "not brutally expensive" end, buy iText.
The first satisfactory stuff starts at about half a million bucks.
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ColdFusion does PDFs.
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@RaceProUK said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
an interpreter for the PostScript language and the PDF
I am a girl for coding
Edit: They've moved to GitHub: https://github.com/jhabjan/Ghostscript.NET
Well, that was an utter failure: I can install the .NET wrapper, but of course it doesn't have a dependency on the native DLLs configured, and trying to install those simply doesn't work. It doesn't even say why.
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@Karla said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
ColdFusion
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@RaceProUK said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@Karla said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
ColdFusion
LOL
I had the
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@Karla said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
I had the
And that's why you got a reaction GIF ;)
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Fun fact: "PDF" is actually not one of the 3 words that come to mind when I read this topic's title.
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@hungrier said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
There's iText but I don't think there's a free version for .net.
There is a "free as in cholera" AGPL version to get you started...
Their licensing is not really cheap, but then what enterprisey software is?
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@JBert said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
Their licensing is not really cheap
Still cheaper than everyone else who isn't free
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@JBert said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
free as in cholera
Are you a girl for football?
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@JBert said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@hungrier said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
There's iText but I don't think there's a free version for .net.
There is a "free as in cholera" AGPL version to get you started...
Their licensing is not really cheap, but then what enterprisey software is?
I prefer Free as in HIV to describe AGPL.
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So why do you want to print Putrid Disgusting Foul documents in the first place? That file format's been a painful mess from the user side since Day 1; is it any surprise that they're painful to generate as well?
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@masonwheeler said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
So why do you want to print Putrid Disgusting Foul documents in the first place?
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Really though. What kind of document are you building? It actually drives your choice a lot.
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@Karla said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
ColdFusion does PDFs.
Shit, P
CHP does PDFs.
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@Weng I don't have exact specs yet, but it's basically for auto-generating credit/debit card chargeback response forms
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@RaceProUK said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@Weng I don't have exact specs yet, but it's basically for auto-generating credit/debit card chargeback response forms
So filling in a precomposed template PDF? For that you want iText or, if you're a masochist (or cheap), PdfLib with PDI.
If you are generating from scratch you can do just plain PdfLib for WAY cheaper, which may tip the balance to where dealing with the more awful library is worth it.
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Oh, and it's worth pointing out that GhostScript is AGPL now, so that wrapper library is crap.
You either pay for the commercial version or dig up an ancient GPL version.
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@lolwhat said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@Karla said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
ColdFusion does PDFs.
Shit, P
CHP does PDFs.I don't do PHP so I couldn't have suggested that.
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@RaceProUK we use ABC PDF by web super goo, not free or cheap, I think we have the enterprise license, just under $5K.
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@CHUDbert said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
ABC PDF by web super goo
/me has a look
The Professional license enables PDF display and rendering functionality which is not enabled in the Standard Edition.
Who makes a PDF library that omits basic functionality from the base edition?
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The more I look through this stuff, the more I fear that PdfSharp and MigraDoc are the best I'm going to find without the company spending thousands of pounds for something that won't be used often enough to justify the expense.
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@RaceProUK just write your own library, it can't be that hard
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Does it have to be rendered directly in C#?
Maybe generate HTML or Latex and render it with another program.
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@Weng said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
The first satisfactory stuff starts at about half a million bucks.
WTF? Pdfsharp is bad, but not I'll pay half a million bucks to avoid it bad.
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I've seen people use older versions of iText from before it turned GPL. Jaspeereports use one of these IIRC
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@Adynathos said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
Does it have to be rendered directly in C#?
Maybe generate HTML or Latex and render it with another program.Something like this? https://github.com/dscape/pdflatex-as-a-service
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@RaceProUK said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@CHUDbert said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
ABC PDF by web super goo
/me has a look
The Professional license enables PDF display and rendering functionality which is not enabled in the Standard Edition.
Who makes a PDF library that omits basic functionality from the base edition?
Why would display and rendering functionality be "basic functionality" for a PDF generation library? That's like saying that a compiler omits basic functionality because it can't disassemble compiled code...
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@anotherusername I may have misread it, but I took 'rendering' to mean the actual creation of the PDF file
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@RaceProUK said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@anotherusername I may have misread it, but I took 'rendering' to mean the actual creation of the PDF file
I took "display and rendering" to mean rendering a PDF to the screen ("display") or to an image file format ("rendering").
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@anotherusername Then I appear to have misread it
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We use reportlab for PDF things. They have a free version, but I believe that doesn't support RML (which is basically html).
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- Export it to a format you do support, like .doc using Office interop
- Print that .doc
- have a camera set up above the print tray, and take a snapshot of the printed doc, page by page
- import the camera pictures as images, sized to 8.5 x 11
- insert each image into a .pdf file
- save that file and make it ready for download
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@Lorne-Kates said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
have a camera set up above the
print traywooden table, and take a snapshot of the printed doc, page by pageFTFY
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DevExpress has a Document Server available for about $600 that supports creating various document types and exporting them. I use an older version of DevExpress and it works quite well.
DevExpress Support is also VERY good.
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@JazzyJosh said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
@anotherusername You mean do the needful?
That particular job's gonna require a whole hell of a lot of needful.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! Oh, and give me something I can use to generate them :):
- Export it to a format you do support, like .doc using Office interop
- Print that .doc
- have a camera set up above the print tray, and take a snapshot of the printed doc, page by page
- import the camera pictures as images, sized to 8.5 x 11
- insert each image into a .pdf file
- save that file and make it ready for download
stop sharing my company secrets!
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Technical Note: This file, pocorgtfo14.pdf, is a polyglot valid as a Nintendo Entertainment System
(NES) ROM cartridge, a PDF document, and a ZIP archive. We collided 9,824 MD5 block pairs
to place the hash of this document on its front cover and the title screen of the NES game, but only 609 of
them made it to the final release.