Multipage TIF to PDF

Recently I’ve continued the porting of iText adding the support for a new image type: multipage tif.

The only problem with this update is that actually it’s really slow and probably with very complex image files it can hang the player for too long. Probably I should modify the ImageElement.getInstance method and make it asynchronous in order to prevent flash player to freeze…

Anyway, the current trunk version of purePDF can handle TIF image and here a simple code example:


package
{
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.net.FileReference;
import flash.utils.ByteArray;
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.utils.getQualifiedClassName;

import org.purepdf.elements.RectangleElement;
import org.purepdf.elements.images.ImageElement;
import org.purepdf.io.RandomAccessFileOrArray;
import org.purepdf.pdf.PageSize;
import org.purepdf.pdf.PdfDocument;
import org.purepdf.pdf.PdfViewPreferences;
import org.purepdf.pdf.PdfWriter;
import org.purepdf.pdf.codec.TiffImage;

public class TestTIF extends Sprite
{
[Embed( source="assets/foxdog_multiplepages.tif", mimeType="application/octet-stream" )]
private var cls1: Class;

private var document: PdfDocument;
private var writer: PdfWriter;
private var buffer: ByteArray;
private var filename: String;
private var index: int;
private var pages: int;
private var stream: RandomAccessFileOrArray;

public function TestTIF()
{
super();
addEventListener( Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAdded );
}

private function onAdded( event: Event ): void
{
stage.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick );
}

private function createDocument( subject: String = null, rect: RectangleElement = null ): void
{
buffer = new ByteArray();

if ( rect == null )
rect = PageSize.A4;
writer = PdfWriter.create( buffer, rect );
document = writer.pdfDocument;
document.addTitle( getQualifiedClassName( this ) );

if ( subject )
document.addSubject( subject );
document.setViewerPreferences( PdfViewPreferences.FitWindow );
}

private function onClick( event: Event ): void
{
filename = getQualifiedClassName( this ).split( "::" ).pop() + ".pdf";
var byte: ByteArray = new cls1();
stream = new RandomAccessFileOrArray( byte );
var image: ImageElement = ImageElement.getInstance( byte );
createDocument( "Multi page TIFF Image Example", PageSize.A4 );
document.open();
// add the first page to the document
document.add( image );
// get the total number of pages
pages = TiffImage.getNumberOfPages( stream );
trace("number of pages: " + pages );
// next page index to add to document (first page is 1)
index = 2;
var timer: Timer = new Timer( 100, 1 );
timer.addEventListener( TimerEvent.TIMER, onTimerComplete );
timer.start();
}

private function onComplete(): void
{
stream.close();
document.close();
save();
}

private function onTimerComplete( event: TimerEvent ): void
{
if ( index > pages )
{
onComplete();
return;
}
document.add( TiffImage.getTiffImage( stream, index ) );
index++;
Timer( event.target ).reset();
Timer( event.target ).start();
}

private function save( e: * = null ): void
{
var f: FileReference = new FileReference();
f.save( buffer, filename );
}
}
}


Here you can see the result PDF file.
And here the input TIF image.

PdfReader for purePDF

Recently I’ve update purepdf adding PdReader.

Using PdfReader an existing pdf document can be opened and parsed. Later I will also port the PdfStamper which will allow to modify existing pdf documents.
Currently I’ve posted 3 simple examples about the PdfReader:
  1. Extract bookmarks
  2. Extract text
  3. Extract images
  4. ExtractTextPDF.air (air application): browse for local pdf documents and display pages contents
Currently the reader has some limitations (such as it cannot open crypted documents) and it’s not fast enough, but I hope to optimize it in the future.

Flash alpha GradientMatrix to PDF using purePDF

One of the most hard thing to traslate when creating pdf documents from existing flash movies is indeed the gradient matrix.

Not only because pdf and flash have 2 different coordinates system and because the gradient matrix is applied in 2 different ways, but also if you want to convert gradient with transparent colors inside.
Let me say that I’ve encountered the same issue Mario posted here, even if I made a little modification to his solution: GradientMatrix.as
This is the swf example. Click on the sprite to start the animation. It will rotate and translate both the sprite and its gradient matrix, then click again to stop the animation and create the pdf file at that frame.
SWF HERE
In order to create the correct gradient matrix with the right position and rotation in purePDF I’ve used the PdfShading.complexAxial static method in this way:
var cb_shading: PdfShading = PdfShading.complexAxial( writer, top_left.x, top_left.y, top_right.x, top_right.y, cb_colors, cb_ratios, true, true );

then for the alpha masking I’ve created a PdfTransparencyGroup applied to the alpha mask.

You can see my solution (which probably is not the best one, but it’s the one I discovered for now) in the code below.
[kml_flashembed movie=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ExampleColorGradient2.swf” height=”300″ width=”400″ /]

Continue reading

purePDF, a complete actionscript PDF library

PurePDF is a complete library for creating PDF documents using actionscript 3 ( targeted for flash player 10 ).
The project is actually hosted on google code.

This is is a porting I’ve made of the famous java iText library ( version 4.2 ) by Bruno Lowagie into pure actionscript 3.0 (with some little modifications).
iText ( and purePDF ) has tons of features for create and manipulate pdf documents. A quick list of the features actually implemented into purepdf:

  • pdf viewers display options
  • alpha transparency, blend modes
  • layers
  • arabic RTL writing
  • support for pdf text rendering ( example )
  • tables ( nested tables, page split tables, table with images, etc…)
  • slide show ( page transitions )
  • annotations, comments, file annotations
  • patterns, shadings patterns (linear and gradient), spot colors, rgb color and cmyk color
  • linear and radial gradients with alpha ( example or example 2 )
  • forms (user input forms, textfields, combo box, list, checkbox)
  • paragraphs, phrases, chunks for text manipulation, chapters, lists…
  • images (jpeg, png, animated gif, tif, bitmapdata ) and image patterns
  • basic and advanced paths
  • afm, otf, pfm, ttc and ttf fonts (embedded and not embedded)
  • metadata, page header and footers
  • external, internal links
  • barcodes creation ( ean-ucc 13, ucc-12, ean-ucc-8, upc-e, pdf 417, ean supplements) ( example )
  • unicode, cjk fonts and text
  • file attachments
  • javascript ( example )
  • multi column text
  • Embedded movies ( example )
  • Vertical text ( see this example )
  • and many other features…

You can take a look at this PDF document (self generated using actionscript reflection) with the purePDF APIs.

Other actionscript libraries I’ve used for this project are: fzlib, as3corelib, ashashmap, alchemy, as3-commons.

You can both download the library from source code and compile it yourself ( see at the Installation guide ) or download the precompiled swc files from the project’s download section.

Moreover there are actually a lot of examples to explain all the library features and for a quick guide. You can find them listed and updated here. In General refers to the project wiki for all the updated examples/howtos and the project updates.

update: here you can find the updated online api documentation

From A to Web memories

Yesterday I attended the Italian Adobe conference, From A to Web, in Milan.
I like expecially the Mike Downey presentation, in which he showm us a sneak peak of the new Adobe project, codename “Apollo”.
A PDF+Flash+HTML plugin viewer for creating desktop applications (so, goodbye Zinc and similar?). Someone asked him which html engine was used in apollo, but without a precis answer, I think he was referring to Geko…
Also interesting the Mike’s explanation about the reason of the name “Apollo”.
That’s because the first Central codename was “Mercury” (early American program for launching humans into space) the second beta codename was “Gemini” (the second US manned spaceflight program), and Apollo was the first ship to land the Moon

Then he introduced also a preview of the new Flash9 IDE (currently in beta process, codename “Blaze”) and he shown some of the new IDE features. First of all the IDE has changed (like in almost new releases) and there are very cool workspace management cool features indeed.
A completely integrated Photoshop PSD import process. You can select which element of the psd file to be imported and how to do it, select one of the layers and import as movieclip, etc.. very nice for designers (There was a long applause).
Another features he presented was the Robert Penner export as ActionScript3 of timeline tweens. This should be for developers who need to transform the timeline motion tweens created by designer into code (Another long applause). For what I understand it creates an xml code which can be put into the timeline and which reproduce the original tween. But I also understand that the produced code can only be used into the same timeline (a timeline with the same number of frames)..,