James Bott wrote:Richard,The only product i have found at a "fairly reasonable price" for unlimited licensing is image2pdf that installs either a dll file or a executable run time. No special printer needs to be installed and the price is 250 Us dollars for unlimited users.
It seems the price for a developer license has gone up. The lowest price license I could find on their site is US$799.
http://www.verypdf.com/tif2pdf/tif2pdf.htm
James
http://www.utilitywarrior.com/Image-to-PDF-Dynamic-Link-Library.htm
James Bott wrote:Enrico,
OK, now I see from a previous message that you said PDFCreator was free, so I am assuming you meant this one on Source Forge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
James Bott wrote:The thing about Source Forge is that I never can find any documentation about the product like a simple description of it and it's features. It seems you have to install the application in the hope that the feature list will be in the install.
Is there a feature list somewhere?
James Bott wrote:It also seems to be a print driver and also requires Postscript. So, don't both of these have to be installed on every PC?
James Bott wrote:How do you do this with a commercial application? Wouldn't it be a support headache since each time a new PC was added, users would be wanting to know why they can't create PDF documents.
James Bott wrote:After thinking about this some more, it seems that we have to use a print driver to get report output (from TReport and/or TPrinter) from a FW app into a PDF file as text. But that is compilcated by all the installation and licensing issues previously discussed.
There is a PDF class but the reports have to be built using that class which is very tedious, so I don't think that is a good solution either.
PDF is currently an external component and most users can install the needed software without problem.
James Bott wrote:Richard,http://www.utilitywarrior.com/Image-to-PDF-Dynamic-Link-Library.htm
OK. Now doesn't this just put the EMF files into a PDF? Isn't a EMF file an image? Therefore you have a graphic image in a PDF rather than text, so the viewer (person) would not be able to copy text out of the PDF. Also, the PDF file size would be much larger than one containing text.
After thinking about this some more, it seems that we have to use a print driver to get report output (from TReport and/or TPrinter) from a FW app into a PDF file as text. But that is compilcated by all the installation and licensing issues previously discussed.
There is a PDF class but the reports have to be built using that class which is very tedious, so I don't think that is a good solution either.
James
James Bott wrote:Ideally, it would be nice to have the PDF generation capability built into the app so print driver installation wouldn't be an issue. Then it would just be one install and that's it.
Usually when we save a report to a PDF, we do not want users to retreive data from it...
...and most users do not have the tool to retreive from pdf, they just have acrobat readers.
EnricoMaria wrote:James Bott wrote:Enrico,
OK, now I see from a previous message that you said PDFCreator was free, so I am assuming you meant this one on Source Forge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Exactly.James Bott wrote:The thing about Source Forge is that I never can find any documentation about the product like a simple description of it and it's features. It seems you have to install the application in the hope that the feature list will be in the install.
Is there a feature list somewhere?
Yes, there is a help file that comes installed with the package.James Bott wrote:It also seems to be a print driver and also requires Postscript. So, don't both of these have to be installed on every PC?
Yes, but it is a single auto-installing package.James Bott wrote:How do you do this with a commercial application? Wouldn't it be a support headache since each time a new PC was added, users would be wanting to know why they can't create PDF documents.
If your user wants to open PDF documents then he will have to install Acrobat Reader, right? PDF is currently an external component and most users can install the needed software without problem.
EMG
James Bott wrote:Richard,Usually when we save a report to a PDF, we do not want users to retreive data from it...
OK, good in some situations....and most users do not have the tool to retreive from pdf, they just have acrobat readers.
Perhaps you didn't know you can copy from Acrobat Reader? There is a Text Select button on the toolbar (T with small dotted line box next to it). Select the text, then on the right-click menu select Copy.
James
I know you can copy from Acrobat reader but this is an option you can forbid in any tool creating a pdf file.
James Bott wrote:Richard,I know you can copy from Acrobat reader but this is an option you can forbid in any tool creating a pdf file.
Understood. My point is that if you create PDFs from EMFs users cannot copy the text out even if you want to give them that capability.
James
Richard Chidiak wrote:
I guess you should be very careful about licensing if you are distributing software. None of the above stated programs is "free for commercial use". You need a license for all of them. I have spent quite a time on the subject and emailed all the authors including cutepdf, pdf95 ...etc and many others. If you use inhouse, no problem. But we all sell "commercial software" outside
Richard
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