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1. How is activePDF Toolkit licensed?
2. What is "stitching"?
3. What is the difference between merging and appending?
4. Can you output PDF directly to the browser?
5. What is "form flattening"?
6. Does Toolkit offer PDF to Text conversion?
7. Is source code available?
8. What is the difference between the Standard and Professional
Versions of activePDF Toolkit?
9. What is linearization?
10. What is encryption and decryption?
Q. How is activePDF Toolkit licensed?
A. activePDF Toolkit is licensed to an individual entity (individual or company)
on a per server basis. There are no penalties for multi-processor machines. Runtime
licenses have currently been suspended pending an overhaul to the licensing process.
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Q. What is "stitching"
A. Stitching is the process of taking multiple PDFs and combining them on the
same page to create a new PDF. A good example is a newsletter. The newsletter
consists of a header, columns and a footer. The developer can take their individual
PDF files and using a simple API call, "stitch" them together to create
a new PDF page. All fonts and graphics are copied over, but annotations are not.
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Q. What is the difference between merging and appending?
A. There really is no difference between the terms merging and appending when
you use Toolkit. If you want to merge pages 1-3 of one PDF ("filea")
after page 4 of another document ("fileb"), you can do so by combining
the append (or "MergeFile") operations as follows :x = Toolkit.MergeFile("fileb",1,4)
x = Toolkit.MergeFile("filea",1,3)
x = Toolkit.MergeFile("fileb",5,0) ' 0 means the rest of the pages
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Q. Can you output directly to the browser?
A. Yes. activePDF Toolkit has support for in-memory PDF generation.
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Q. What is "form flattening"?
A. Form flattening is the process of filling in form fields and then stripping
out the field definition, leaving just the content behind. The benefit to this
approach is that the resulting PDF is a fraction of the size of the original and
the user cannot easily edit the document.
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Q. Does Toolkit offer PDF to Text conversion?
A. At this time, no it does not. There are several vendors that do offer such
products and they can be found on resources such as PlanetPDF and PDFZone.
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Q. Is source code available?
A. Source code for activePDF Toolkit is not available, but you can purchase an
escrow agreement to protect your
company's investment in activePDF.
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Q. What is the difference between the Standard and Professional
Versions of activePDF Toolkit?
A. Both versions of activePDF Toolkit permit stamping, appending and form-filling
of existing PDF files. The difference is that the Professional version of Toolkit
includes support for stitching, text to pdf, linearization and encryption
and decryption. Additionally, the Professional version permits stamping and
form filling with over 40 image types. If you don't require any of those features
the Standard version of activePDF Toolkit will work just fine for you.
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Q. What is linearization?
A. Linearization is the process of preparing a document for "byte-serving".
Byte-serving permits individual pages to be downloaded by performing byte range
requests to the web server. The benefit is best illustrated when an extremely
large PDF document is downloaded. Instead of waiting for the entire document to
stream down to the browser, byte-serving allows for the first page (or any desired
page) to load almost instantaneously. For byte-serving to work, both the web browser
and the web server must support HTTP 1.1 Byte Range requests. Most modern browsers
(e.g. IE 4.x and higher and Netscape 4.x and higher) and servers (e.g. IIS 4.x
and higher) support this functionality. There are PERL scripts available on the
Internet for those web servers that do not support byte range requests.
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Q. What is encryption and decryption?
A. Acrobat 3.0 introduced the concept of security to PDF files. This security
is two-fold : 1) Secure the document from being opened by unauthorized users ("Open
Password") and 2) Secure the document from having certain functions such
as printing, selecting and modifying from being performed ("Owner Password").
Until recently, the size of the encryption key was limited to 40 bits. Acrobat
5.0 introduced keys consisting of 128 bits which generally produces a more secure
document. activePDF was the first company to provide any level of security to
server-side PDF generated products and was the first to provide the 128-bit level
of encryption.
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