Everything the library does, said in plain words

Text and typefaces

• Put your own typeface into the document, so it reads the same on every screen and every printer, even where nobody installed that typeface. See it
• Only the letters the document actually draws travel with it. A typeface holds thousands of shapes and a letter uses a few dozen, and it is the few dozen that are carried. See it
• The text stays text: whoever opens the file can select it, copy it and search it, and so can a search engine. See it
• Ask how wide a piece of text will come out before drawing it, so nothing overruns the box you meant it for. See it
• Ask for the biggest size at which a title still fits across a given width: it shrinks rather than spills. See it
• Turn a block of text to any angle, around any point of the page. See it
• Spread the letters, the words or the lines apart, lift a figure above the line, or draw the text hollow.

Paragraphs, lists and columns

• Hand over a paragraph and a width, and the engine works out where every line breaks. See it
• Line the text up on the left, on the right, centred, or flush against both edges, with the last line treated in its own way. See it
• Indent the first line, indent the whole block, and leave air above it and below it. See it
• Decide what becomes of a word too long for the column: let it stick out, or cut it and carry on underneath. See it
• Break after a slash or a dash, so a long web address or a double-barrelled name fits where it should. See it
• Honour the hyphen a writer marked as optional, and the space that must never be broken. See it
• Fill the gap before a page number with a row of dots, the way a table of contents does. See it
• Set the stops a tab jumps to, lined up left, centre, right or on the decimal point. See it
• Bulleted lists, numbered lists and lists inside lists, the text hanging neatly under its marker. See it
• Ask how much of a text fits in a given height, and pour what is left into the next column or onto the next page. See it
• Change typeface, size, colour or underlining in the middle of a sentence, and the line still sits properly. See it
• Lay a word across the page like a rubber stamp, scaled to the space it is given and set at an angle. See it

Tables

• Set a column's width outright, as a share of the table, or let the engine measure the widest thing standing in it. See it
• A table longer than the page carries on over as many pages as it needs, asked for once. See it
• The heading rows, and the rows at the foot, come back at the top and the bottom of every page. See it
• Keep a group of rows together, so a total never lands alone at the top of a page. See it
• Merge cells across several columns and down several rows. See it
• Choose which lines are drawn at all — the frame, one row, every other row — and how thick and what colour each of them is. See it
• Give a single cell its own border, side by side, each side with its own thickness and its own colour. See it
• Colour the background of the heading, of the foot, of every other row, of one row or of one column. See it
• Line figures up on the decimal point, so a column of amounts reads straight down. See it
• Put a picture in a cell, fitted whole and never squashed. See it
• Cut a cell's text at the edge of its column rather than let it spill over its neighbour. See it
• Ask afterwards where a row, a column or a cell ended up, and draw or link on top of it. See it

Images

• Place a JPEG, a PNG or a BMP anywhere on the page, at any size. See it
• Fit a picture into a box: at its own size, contained inside it, covering it, stretched to it, or shrunk only if it is too big. See it
• Anchor it in that box — a corner, a side, the middle — turn it a quarter, a half or any angle at all, and mirror it. See it
• Read the resolution the file declares, and place the picture at the size it will actually print. See it
• Respect the way round a camera recorded a photograph, so one taken sideways is not shown sideways. See it
• Keep a picture's transparency, knock one colour out of it, or paint its shape in a colour you choose. See it
• Carry the picture's own colour description with it, so its colours still mean the same thing on a press. See it

Colour and printing

• State a colour in shades of grey, in screen colours, or in the four inks a press lays down. See it
• State it as a measurement instead, owing nothing to any particular screen or press. See it
• Carry the description of your colours inside the file, so what you chose is what comes out at the other end. See it
• Name a special ink — a house colour, a varnish, a metallic — printed on a plate of its own. See it
• Name several inks at once, each at its own strength. See it
• Declare which press or which screen the document was made for. See it
• Mark the trim, the bleed and the useful area a printer needs in order to cut the sheet. See it
• Force a document to print at its true size, and take the shrink-to-fit option away from whoever opens it. See it
• Ask for double-sided printing, a paper tray, a number of copies and the pages the print box offers by default. See it

Drawing

• Lines, rectangles and curves, filled, outlined, or both at once. See it
• Cut the drawing to a shape so nothing paints outside it — even to the shape of the letters themselves. See it
• One colour fading into another, along a line or outward from a circle, through as many steps as you like. See it
• Fill a shape, or a word, with that fade. See it
• Draw one small motif and have it repeat over any area. See it
• Make anything partly see-through, and blend it into what lies under it in sixteen different ways. See it
• Fade one drawing out using another as its mask. See it
• Draw something once and place it again and again, without the file growing each time. See it
• Layers whoever opens the file can switch on and off, each with its own state on screen and on paper. See it

Barcodes and square codes

• The striped kind, for a shop till or a warehouse scanner: Code 128, EAN-13, UPC-A and EAN-8. See it
• A QR Code holding a web address, a payment, or anything else a telephone should pick up in one go. See it
• A DataMatrix, for a label with almost no room on it. See it
• A PDF417, the wide flat one on a driving licence or a boarding pass. See it
• An Aztec, the one on a train ticket read off a lit screen. See it
• A payment code a banking application reads, so an invoice is settled without anybody retyping an account number. See it

Links, and the way a document opens

• Clickable areas leading to a web address, or to another page of the same document. See it
• Put the link on a line of text or on a table cell the engine has already placed, with nothing to measure yourself. See it
• A list of bookmarks down the side, with sections and sub-sections, open or closed to begin with. See it
• Page numbers that are not the count of pages: roman numerals for the foreword, then figures, or a prefix of your own. See it
• Decide what happens the moment the file opens: which page, how zoomed, bookmarks out or not, even full screen. See it
• Turn the document into a slideshow, with an effect between the pages and a delay on each one. See it

Forms

• Boxes a reader types into, boxes they tick, lists they pick from, and sets of round buttons where only one may be chosen. See it
• Each with its own frame and colour, what it says to start with, and whether it may be left empty. See it
• An area set aside for a signature, framed on the page or leaving no mark at all. See it
• A form that still looks right in a reader that draws nothing itself, because every box carries its own picture. See it

Archiving and accessibility

• Write a file made to be opened in twenty years' time, carrying everything it needs inside itself. See it
• Mark the text up so a reading aid tells a heading from a paragraph and says the page in the right order. See it
• Describe a picture in words for somebody who cannot see it, and say which cell heads which column of a table. See it
• Attach any file inside the document — an invoice's figures, a spreadsheet, a source file — and say what it is there for. See it
• Write the electronic invoice: one file, a page for a person and the same amounts for a machine. See it
• Say who made the document, when, and what it is about, in the block archives and search engines read. See it
• Describe facts of your own — a batch number, an internal reference — in a way an archive checker still accepts. See it

Reading a PDF you already have

• Open a PDF that already exists and count its pages. See it
• Take a page out of it and put it into a new document, its typefaces and its colours exactly as they were. See it
• Lay your own text over that page, so an invoice lands on the headed paper your printer supplied. See it
• Make sense of a file whose index is broken, by reading it through from one end to the other.

Signing

• Seal a document with your own certificate, so whoever receives it can prove who sent it and that nothing has changed since.
• Seal a PDF that already exists, and add a second signature after the first without disturbing it.
• State what the seal still allows afterwards: nothing at all, filling in a form, or adding notes.

The file itself

• Every usual page size, from the largest poster down to a postcard, plus any size you name, upright or on its side. See it
• The same pages at about half the bytes, because nothing that nothing reads is carried.
• Choose how hard the file is squeezed, or leave it unsqueezed to read it with your own eyes. See it
• Choose which version of the PDF format is written, or let the engine ask for the oldest one that can carry what you used. See it
• The same figures give the same file, byte for byte, every time: the engine never looks at the clock.
• Nothing ever reaches the network. There is no connection to make, no account to check and no licence server to wait for.
• Write to a file, into memory, or straight down a stream that is already open. See it

What it does not do

Nobody is served by a list that only says yes. The engine writes PDFs and can take pages out of one that already exists; it does not pull the text or the pictures back out of somebody else's file, it does not put a password on a document, and it will not open one that already has a password on it.

See the prices See the examples