Is there a way to draw lines on a graph for an existing PDF? I have a custom graph that I need to plot the lines for and I wanted to see if there was anyway to do it with itext or any other open source PDF software. Thank you for your consideration of this matter.
First take a look at the StampText example. It shows you how to create a PdfStamper and how to obtain a PdfContentByte object. In this example, we stamp text on the existing PDF.
You want to draw lines, which also requires a PdfContentByte because that class has an abundance of methods to draw paths and shapes. These methods are all explained in chapter 14 of my book. See for instance paths.pdf and the code that was used to draw these paths, PathConstructionAndPainting.
Related
I'm trying to create a PDF using iText library. The PDF has to embed an animation, which is a set of bitmaps. And there are buttons to control the animation. To understand it, see the following file:
http://www.texample.net/media/tikz/examples/PDF/wankel-motor.pdf
How can I create such a file from iText?
I know that I can embed a video file with this code:
http://itextpdf.com/examples/iia.php?id=188
But here I don't want to embed a video file, but a set of bitmaps and to add the control buttons.
Thanks in advance,
V. Henley
The document doesn't have any images. Instead it has a large series of Widget annotations inside a rectangle of which the lower-left and upper-right corners have the following coordinates:
llx = 4.981
lly = 287.238
urx = 322.053
ury = 542.754
These widget annotations are buttons that overlap each other and of which the appearance is defined using PDF syntax (paths consisting of straight lines and Bézier curves).
There are also a number of smaller buttons with arrows and other symbols. When clicking them, some JavaScript is executed:
The animations is actually JavaScript alternating the visibility of the different buttons. If you want to know more about the JavaScript that is used, you have to dig into the document using iText RUPS (which is what I did to create the above screen shot).
The principle that is used to create this PDF is identical to the principle that was used in the Calculator example, which is an example that was distributed with the same book you refer to.
Finally, I've been able to create such a PDF using latex code:
This is the latex code:
\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{animate}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{media9}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\AtEndDocument{%
\label{lastpage}%
}
\animategraphics[width=9.54cm,height=6.36cm,controls]{2}{C:/Users/casa/Documents/programacion/tex/construc_}{0}{3}
\end{document}
So after compiling such code with a latex compiler, it produces a pdf similar to the one I posted.
Kind Regards
I'm looking to automate filling out a pdf contract by putting variable text in predefined locations(such as a date or dollar value). I've been trying to wrap my head around iText as a solution but am having trouble actually stamping text onto a pdf. I would really appreciate an example snipped that simply stamps a piece of text on a specific (x,y) coordinate of a pdf file.
If there is a better solution than iText to my problem I would also love to hear other possible solutions.
First I have created a pdf using itext and java and put a table and tableCell
PdfPTable table = new PdfPTable(2);
table.setWidths(new int[]{1, 2});
PdfPCell cell;
table.addCell("Address:");
cell = new PdfPCell(new Phrase(""));
cell.setFixedHeight(60);
table.addCell(cell);
I have another Program Which read this pdf File
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader("path_of_previously_created_pdf");
Now i want to get TableCell cell and want to Change cell height cell.setFixedHeight(new_Fixed_Height);
It is possible... if Yes .
How??
Thanx in advance
If your PDF contains just that simple 1x2 table, it of course would be possible to implement something that gives you the PDF with a cell hight of you choice.
But I assume it eventually is meant to contain more. Already the code you provided via your google drive included more (more table cells plus form elements), and that code, too, does look unfinished concerning the PDF construction. Thus,...
The direct answer
It is not possible.
First of all the table and cell objects you have while creating the PDF are not present as such in the resulting file, they merely are drawn as a number of lines and some text (or whatever you put into the cells).
Thus, you cannot even retrieve the cells you want to change, let alone change it.
The twisted answer
You could, of course, try and parse the page content stream to find the commands for drawing lines, find those ones among them which were drawn for the cell you are interested in, and try to derive the original cell dimension attributes from the line coordinates. Afterwards you can attempt to move everything below the cell down to create the extra space you want.
Depending on the information you have (Do you know the approximate position of the cell? If not, do you at least know some unique content of it?) reading the current cell height will include some guesswork and much coding because unfortunately the iText parser framework does not yet support parsing path operations.
Essentially you have to enhance the classes in the PDF parser package to also process and emit events for PDF path operators (if you know your way around in iText and the PDF specification that should not take more than a week or two) and create an appropriate event listener to find the lines surrounding the cell position you already know (not more than one day of work). Some iText code analysis will show how the fixed cell height and the distance of the surrounding lines relate.
Most likely, though, this is the smaller part of your work. The bigger part is actually manipulating the page content:
If you are lucky, all your page content is located in a single content stream. In that case you merely have to analyse all the page content again but this time to actually change it. The easiest way would be to enhance the classes in the parser package once again (because they already do much of the necessary math and book-keeping) to signal every command from the content stream with normalized coordinates (this might take a week or two). Based on this information signaled to you built an all new content stream in which you leave everything above your cell, move down everything below, and stretch everything crossing the line on which the bottom border of your cell lies (another week maybe).
If you are less lucky you have to fight with multiple included form xobjects crossing the line. As those xobjects may be used from other streams also, you cannot change them but have to either change a copy or include the xobject content in your newly created stream.
Then what about images crossing the line? or interesting patterns? In that case stretching the cell will utterly distort everything.
And then there are annotations, e.g. your form fields. You need to shift and stretch them, too.
Thus, while this approach is possible to follow, please be aware that (depending on how generic the solution has to become) its implementation will take someone knowing iText and PDF some months.
An alternative approach
You say in a comment
I am working on Pdf Form.I have created itext form using TextField(MULTILINE TEXT) once. After read this pdf and fill up the form but when the content increases it shows scroll Bar and content hide. My problem is Once i print the pdf it did't print hide content.
Why don't you simply for each set of data build an individual PDF with all the cells big enough for the form contents of the respective data set and copy the field values into this new PDF. This is a fairly simple approach, yet flexible enough to not waste too much space but at the same time not hide content.
I'm working on application in Java that will maintain database of song lyrics in plain text and print out some songbooks/chordbooks(that is create PDF file from selected songs). I was planing that the Java application will generate source code for pdflatex and after compiling this source user will get PDF file.
Lately I've run into a lot of problems because of latex limitation: fixed memory size (some pictures will also be drawn to PDF) - error when exceeded, no way to query end of line or and of page dynamically, it's very hard to override latex placement algorithm in a complex way,... see also some my other questions regarding latex. I come to conclusion that latex is not good option for automated PDF generation.
So I need replacement. I need to be able to typeset:
Chords over lyrics when the lyrics are in variable char width so I need to be able to measure text width
Chord diagrams that means I'll have to draw quite complex pictures
Each song on separate double page
Different fonts etc.
Thanks for all answers
Here are some PDF open source APIs
http://java-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries
This has been asked many time, You might want to look at this post
IText is a free library which offers lots of capabilities for creating PDFs programmatically.
Rather than try to manage/calculate the complexities of the desired layout, you could try Docmosis. It will let you layout a document as a template using doc or odt formats. This means if you could make a doc or odt look like you want, you can turn it into a template and get Docmosis to render it as a PDF. Text and images can be placed inside or outside tables which makes layout fairly easy to manage.
ConTeXt is another TeX system, but it is easier to control the layout than with LaTeX. For drawing you could use PGF/TikZ or MetaPost. Support for both is available in ConTeXt. With ConTeXt's built in Lua scripting you could draw the chords automatically, assuming you have them stored in some sort of data structure.
why not just use lilypond with latex? it's meant for typesetting music.
Alex explained what I'm looking for much better than I have:
You want an existing program that
allows you to draw a picture, captures
what you do as you draw, and writes
each action as a Java command. When
you click the "Drawl Oval" tool and
click at 0,0 and then at 50,50, it
would generate the line
g.drawOval(0,0,50,50).
If anybody knows of a program such as this, let me know. Thanks.
Original question:
I've been working with Java and custom drawing using the java.awt.Graphics library lately, but find it is taking too much time to write manually. Is there any simple graphics editor (like mspaint) which generates source code?
Example:
Drawing this:
Would generate:
public void update(Graphics g) {
g.translate(0, 0);
g.drawOval(0, 0, 50, 50);
}
Thanks.
If they are vectors, you could use an SVG Editor (eg, Inkscape) along with Kirill's SVG to Java2D Transcoder to simplify this. It isn't perfect, but Kirill is very responsive in responding to requests for enhancement.
It's unclear what you are asking. Two guesses:
You want an existing program that allows you to draw a picture, captures what you do as you draw, and writes each action as a Java command. When you click the "Drawl Oval" tool and click at 0,0 and then at 50,50, it would generate the line g.drawOval(0,0,50,50).
I do not know of any such tool. But the above might help you reword your question so that others can share their knowledge.
You want a program that takes an existing bitmap and converts it into a series of commands that will replicate the bitmap. Other than simply outputting pixels, such a tool is nearly impossible to write; attempting to decompose an arbitrary picture into simple drawing commands is very hard.
In this case, I would recommend simply importing the bitmap as a JPG, PNG, whatever, and using drawImage() instead of using Graphics calls.
While not what you were looking for, I should mention that XPM (X Pixmap) format is basically a subset of C programming language. XPM2 simplified it more by removing the trappings of C syntax. XPM3 brought them back again.
In a sense XPM image converters are source code generators and translators.
You are looking for something similar to output Java AWT, but for many real images or photographs it would be complicated to do analysis on the image to find oval,etc and create the code for drawing them with lines and shapes (well unless the image had filters applied to simplify it, or was an SVG as someone pointed out). It would probably have to convert to a bitmap of some form and keep it in an array in the generated Java source.