General Info
Overview
PDF-XChange SDK is our latest and most ambitious product offering to date - allowing 3rd party MS Windows software developers to incorporate Portable Document Format (PDF) creation and manipulation within their own software applications for provision to client End Users. Providing a wide range of features and functions such as PDF creation, printing, viewing and even page and object editing - the possibilities are almost endless and limited only by the developers imagination and creativity.
With over 17 years of experience offering solutions to both End Users and Software Developers - specifically for Imaging and PDF file manipulation - few companies have a better pedigree and our PDF-XChange range of products has been satisfying client needs for since 2001, winning the plaudits of developers and client end users alike from the very first product releases.
This document is intended to act as resource for experienced developers and some basic knowledge of the PDF format will be required to fully benefit from the extensive features and functions available. We strongly recommend all developer to use this document in tandem we the PDF reference available freely from Adobe (see Online PDF-Reference) or the latest PDF specification from the ISO standards (for a fee). Please also note this product contains 1000's of functions, methods and properties - all listed here, but documented on varying degree's of detail due to the sheer volume of options and it is not possible to create an online help going into minutia of detail - so we have instead concentrated on those area's likely to be of interest to the majority and will expand as time and demand justifies us doing so. Where this document does not go into detail the Adobe reference document will in many cases act as a viable alternative and thus we have not duplicated - allowing us to concentrate most where we believe help is most needed.
That toolset includes features for creation and editing, searching, rendering and printing, importing and exporting PDF documents, decoding, viewing and saving images. Using your favourite programming environment with the SDK you can create your own application that would be able to work with PDF files and images – easily viewing existing documents, create new ones, etc.
The full PDF-XChange Editor SDK License provides functionality in 2 specific libraries:
- PDF-XChange Core API SDK (soon to be available under a separate, reduced fee license and replacing our PDF-Tools SDK)
- PDF-XChange Editor SDK itself which always includes the license and use of the PDF-XChange Core SDK, as well as the extended functionality of the Editor SDK itself.
PDF-XChange Core API SDK – this library provides all available features to work with files in the PDF format and some additional extensions. Unlike the PDF-XChange Editor SDK this library has no UI layer and just one DLL - but in 2 versions - the PDFXCoreAPI.x86.dll for 32-bit Windows systems and the PDFXCoreAPI.x64.dll for 64-bit Windows Installations.
The PDF-XChange Editor SDK – itself also includes the entirety of the PDF-XChange Core API SDK functionality and additional layers that provide functionality similar to our own end-user version - the PDF-XChange Editor. As this SDK has an ability to optionally load of Editor’s plugins (with some possible limitations, dependent on the plugin itself and the plugin authors licensing) the set of features provided by the SDK may be dramatically increased by the use of plugins.
This library consists of one DLL module (again offered in both 32 and 64 bit versions -: PDFXEditCore.x86.dll for 32-bit and PDFXEditCore.x64.dll for 64-bit use) and a mandatory resource file named Resources.dat that should always reside in the same folder as the afore mentioned library DLL being distributed.
Please see the diagram below showing the relationship between PDF-XChange Editor SDK and PDF-XChange Core API SDK and illustrating the internal arrangement and use of the API-layers:
Both of these libraries are developed and offered as COM-servers, so, they provide a set of ActiveX object and COM interfaces which may be accessed via standard COM technology as well as using other methods:
- using registration of the COM-server on destination system;
- using COM-server via Click-Once technology: the standard registration of the COM-server isn't required, only special two manifest files must be added during installation on the client's machine;
- using a special function exported by libraries DLLs, that creates and returns a main object of the libraries; the standard registration of the COM-server isn't required and additional manifest files are not necessary too;
For more information about redistribution, please refer to Redistribution to Clients.
For more information about licensing, look to Licensing.
Installation
The latest version of the SDK is available from there. The SDK installer will install SDK files, and will register COM-server (on 64-bit OS, both 32- and 64-bits COM-servers will be registered). That will allow starting using of the SDK easy and quick. In addition, sample projects, created on different programming languages, will be installed. These samples will help make the process of learning new SDK more productive.
All samples are also available on a github repository.
Development
PDF-XChange SDK provides you access to ActiveX Objects, and consists of several infrastructure API-layers:
- PDF Editor Library
- PDF Core Library
- PDF Structures Library
- UI Layer
- ImagesCore
- File Systems Library
- Auxiliary Layer
Full index of PDF-XChange SDK types : IndexTypeLibrary