Delphi Load and Edit Pdf Documents

Question

Hi

Does anybody know of a product that allows loading and editing of PDF files into Delphi? We need to break apart a pdf document with multiple images (one per page) into single pdf's.

Regards, Pieter

Answer 1

GuangMing has a PDF Split Merge ActiveX component. It's not free, and it doesn't do much more than splitting and merging, but might give you what you need.

Answer 2

We use LEADTools. It's a high-end product. They're in a lot of markets, so they have a lot of optional packages (TIF conversion, etc.) (which may or may not interest you.)

Support from them has been great.

http://www.leadtools.com/sdk/pdf/default.htm

Later Edit: As I thought about this more, I wanted to qualify my answer above. We started using LEADTools years ago for their TIF editing and display capability, which include DCOM medical imaging files.

Years later, when we needed PDF capability, they had it. So, we didn't select them as a PDF tool originally, nor did we examine at other PDF tools in the marketplace.

The library is written in some sort of C-variant. They supply a Delphi wrapper you can call to access their DLLs. Although their documentation has examples of Delphi usage, the calls have the clumsy syntactical feel of translated C: e.g. This is, believe it or not, a Delphi call:

    L_LoadBitmap( _szFilename, @_hBitmap, sizeof(BITMAPHANDLE),
                  rFileInfo.BitsPerPixel, ORDER_BGR, @LoadOptions, @rFileInfo);

Their strength is not the splitting apart PDF pages kind of thing you mentioned, although they can do that. But perhaps because their focus is more image processing, the pdf piece isn't nearly as good as other parts of their library. Their library is probably more complicated than you need for what you are trying to do.

My apologies for the lengthy edit, but my OP sounded like an unqualified thumbs-up... which this is not. But, if you or others have imaging needs (which may or may not involve pdf files) they're worth looking into...

Answer 3

Gnostice has some native Delphi components that perform loading, and editing PDF files directly in Delphi.

If your looking for a library that just allows creating, there is also PDF-In-The-Box which I have used with great success to do some very complex PDF documents. We ended up using both products, Gnotice for stitching the final PDF, and PDF-In-The-Box for the interior PDF generation.

Answer 4

Possibly a late entry, but I shelled out to pdftk to split and merge, it's gpl so I shelled out to a batch file which in turn called pdftk - but it merges/splits/rotates etc.