PDFlib 8 Windows COM/.NET Tutorial

1.3 What’s new in PDFlib/PDFlib+PDI/PPS 8?
The following list discusses the most important new or improved features in PDFlib/
PDFlib+PDI/PPS 8 and Block Plugin 4. There are many more new features; see the PDFlib
API Reference for details.
1.3.1 PDF Features for Acrobat 9
PDFlib supports various PDF features according to Acrobat 9 (technically: PDF 1.7 Adobe
extension level 3).
External graphical content. Pages in PDF documents can contain references to pages
in another PDF file, so-called Reference XObjects. The original file contains only a placeholder,
e.g. a low-resolution version of an image or simply a note which mentions that
the actual page contents are missing. Using this technique repeated content (e.g. for
transactional printing) does not have to be transferred again and again. Reference
XObjects are a crucial component of PDF/X-5g and PDF/X-5pg.
Layer variants. Layer variants (also called layer configurations) can be considered
groups of layers. The grouping makes layers safe for production because the user can no
longer inadvertently activate or deactivate the wrong set of layers (e.g. enable a particular
language layer but forget to activate the image layer which is common to all languages).
For this reason layer variants are the basis for using layers in the PDF/X-4 and
PDF/X-5 standards.
PDF Portfolios. PDF Portfolios group PDF and other documents in a single entity
which can conveniently be used with Acrobat 9. If no hierarchical folders are used for
organizing the file attachments, the resulting PDF collections can be used with
Acrobat 8 as well. PDFlib also supports predefined and custom metadata fields to facilitate
the organization of file attachments within a PDF Portfolio. New actions can be
used to create bookmarks which directly jump to a page in an embedded document.
Georeferenced PDF. Georeferenced PDF contains geographic reference information
for the whole page or individual maps on the page. Acrobat 9 and above offer various
features for interacting with Georeferenced PDF. PDFlib can be used to assign geospatial
reference data to images and partial or full pages.
AES-256 encryption and Unicode passwords. PDFlib supports AES-256 encryption for
improved security. AES-256 encryption has been introduced with Acrobat 9 and also allows
Unicode passwords.
Import Acrobat 9 documents. PDFlib+PDI and PPS can import and process Acrobat 9
documents. The pCOS interface can also analyze Acrobat 9 documents.
1.3 What’s new in PDFlib/PDFlib+PDI/PPS 8? 17