wxPdfDocument allows wxWidgets applications to generate PDF documents. The code is a port of FPDF - a free PHP class for generating PDF files - to C++ using the wxWidgets library. Several add-on PHP scripts found on the FPDF web site are incorporated into wxPdfDocument.

Embedding of PNG, JPEG, GIF and WMF images is supported. In addition to the 14 standard Adobe fonts it is possible to use other Type1, TrueType or OpenType fonts - with or without embedding them into the generated document. CJK fonts are supported, too. Graphics primitives allow the creation of simple drawings.

• Installation
• Execution of sample applications
• Acknowledgements

Starting with wxPdfDocument version 0.9.0 build support is provided separately for wxWidgets version 2.8.x resp. 3.0.x. Subdirectory build contains the build files for wxWidgets 3.0.x; subdirectory build28 contains the build files for wxWidgets 2.8.x.

For autoconf-based systems the root directory of the distribution contains

• configure28, Makefile28.in for wxWidgets 2.8.x
• configure30, Makefile30.in for wxWidgets 3.0.x

Rename the files appropriate for you to configure resp. Makefile.in.

For makefile-based systems please inspect the makefile appropriate for your environment. At the beginning of the makefile you find several configurable options. Adjust them to match the wxWidgets build you plan to build the component for.

When building on win32, you can use the makefiles or one of the Microsoft Visual Studio solution files in the BUILD folder.

While the wxWidgets version for which the component should be compiled can be set via the option WX_VERSION for makefiles, this doesn't work for Visual C++ project files. You have to edit the version number in the names of the wxWidgets libraries manually or you could recreate the project files using bakefile setting explicitly the wxWidgets version number.

If you build wxPdfDocument as a DLL you may need to copy the DLL from the lib folder to the samples folder to be able to execute the sample program. Another solution is to add the lib folder path to the Windows search path (PATH environment variable).

When building on an autoconf-based system (like Linux/GNU-based systems), you can use the existing configure script in the component's ROOT folder or you can recreate the configure script doing:

  cd build
  ./acregen.sh
  cd ..

  ./configure [here you should use the same flags you used to configure wxWidgets]
  make

Type ./configure --help for more info.

Note: Recreating the configure script requires the following prerequisites:

• automake 1.9.6 or higher
• bakefile 0.2.5

The autoconf-based systems also support a make install target which builds the library and then copies the headers of the component to /usr/local/include and the lib to /usr/local/lib.

If you build the wxPdfDocument library as a shared object resp. DLL you have to take different measures on different platforms to execute the sample applications. The sample applications try to locate themselves using relative paths, but this might not work under all circumstances.

Copy the wxPdfDocument DLL to the samples' directories or change the PATH environment variable appropriately. Set environment variable WXPDF_FONTPATH:

set WXPDF_FONTPATH=<wxPdfDocument-path>\lib\fonts

Set environment variables before starting the applications, i.e.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<wxPdfDocument>/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH WXPDF_FONTPATH=<wxPdfDocument>/lib/fonts ./application

You should set environment variable WXPDF_FONTPATH:

WXPDF_FONTPATH=<wxPdfDocument>/lib/fonts

If wxPdfDocument has been built as a shared object you have to make it accessible, for example by copying it to /usr/local/lib.

I'm very grateful to Bruno Lowagie, the main author of the iText Java library, for allowing to take lots of ideas and inspirations from this great Java PDF library. Especially the font handling and font subsetting was influenced in that way.

Many thanks go to Ben Moores who provided code for layers and patterns he wrote for his PDF extension for Mapnik (http://www.mapnik.org). This code has been extended based on ideas from the iText Java library and was incorporated into wxPdfDocument.

Support for Indic scripts is based on the efforts of Ian Back, creator of the PHP library mPDF; special thanks to K Vinod Kumar of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Mumbai, for clearing license issues of the Raghu font series.

Kudos to Mark Dootson for contributing major enhancements of wxPdfDC and it's integration into the wxWidgets printing framework.

Since wxPdfDocument is based on the great FPDF PHP class and several of the contributions to it found on the FPDF website I would like to thank

• Olivier Plathey (FPDF, Barcodes, Bookmarks, Rotation),
• Maxime Delorme (Sector)
• Johannes Guentert (JavaScript)
• Martin Hall-May (WMF images, Transparency)
• Emmanuel Havet (Code39 barcodes)
• Shailesh Humbad (POSTNET barcodes)
• Matthias Lau (i25 barcodes)
• Pierre Marletta (Diagrams)
• Laurent Passebecq (Labels)
• David Hernandez Sanz (additional graphics primitives)
• Valentin Schmidt (Transparency, Alpha channel)
• Jan Slabon (FPDI)
• Klemen Vodopivec (Protection)
• Moritz Wagner (Transformation)
• Andreas Wuermser (Clipping, Gradients, Transformation)