PDFsharp & MigraDoc Foundation

Hi

We are developing a windows-based .Net application for distribution. This application has spreadsheet controls that we allow the user to print (essentially like printing a excel worksheet).

Our requirement is for our application to create PDF's of these reports, and also to merge multiple pdf's into one file, without the end-user of our software requiring any other third party pdf creating tools, such as Adobe Acrobat, to be licenced/installed on their PC.

We don't mind having to purchase a development licence and integrate 1 or 2 DLL files, but we don't want the end-user having to purchase and install additional software packages to have pdf printing from our application working on their PC.

Would PDFSharp be suitable for this?

Hi!

PDFsharp can do that - for all files created by PDFsharp, but not for some files created by 3rd party tools.
All files from 3rd party tools will work as long as they are compatible with Adobe Reader 5 (or earlier, of course).

Our clients import PDF files they create themselves - and we haven't had any problems with this "limitation".

If that is an issue, then you can use the workaround described here:
viewtopic.php?p=2860#p2860

_________________
Regards
Thomas Hoevel
PDFsharp Team

Hi Thomas.

Thanks for the reply.

Will PDFSharp also allow me to print to pdf from my .net application?

Basically We want to be able to add a 'Create PDF' button in our application that will send the worksheet object to the printer.

So far, the other pdf toolD that we have found rely on .Net System.Drawing namespace to generate PDF reports OR rely on the user having Acrobat installed. We need a tool that will allow us to pass the entire formatted worksheet object to print to pdf.

Anthony

Hi,

If you're going to be creating large spreadsheets, or have any sort of nested table, this could be a problem. Nobody here seems to recall how to get MigraDoc to create nested tables properly. And the performance can be severe without some minor customizations.

As for the printing, Most installed systems these days at least have Adobe Reader installed. That should be good enough for handling the printing.
If you can't rely on AcroReader to be installed, then they're not going to be able to open/view the PDF you generate anyway.

Here's a sample that hints about how to print a pdf doc you generated. Maybe this helps some?
http://www.pdfsharp.net/wiki/PrintPdfFile-sample.ashx

-Jeff

Hi Jeff

Sorry for the confusion. When i meant 'Print to PDF', i didnt mean actually printing a pdf file that already existed, i meant sending a print job to a 'virtual pdf printer' to generate a pdf file.

Hi!

PDFsharp/MigraDoc is not a virtual PDF printer.

With PDFsharp you can use common low-level commands for printing, preview, and PDF.
If you combine new documents with existing documents, you'll need Adobe Reader to print the PDF files.

With MigraDoc you can create PDF, RTF, and printouts.

_________________
Regards
Thomas Hoevel
PDFsharp Team