With iText Suite 9.7, we’re delivering a release that improves document layout flexibility, broadens format support, and expands multilingual PDF capabilities across the platform. Headlined by WebP image support in iText Core 9.7.0, dynamic page margins and footnotes for more advanced page composition, and three new writing systems in pdfCalligraph 5.1.0, this release helps developers create richer, more robust PDF workflows in both Java and .NET.
Alongside these flagship updates, iText Suite 9.7 also includes improvements to HTML-to-PDF conversion, OCR input handling, XFA form processing, digital signature workflows, resilience against malformed or hostile files, and a set of targeted compatibility and bug-fix releases across the add-on portfolio.
As always, you’ll find full details on all new features, improvements, and bug fixes in the release notes for iText Core and its add-ons in our Knowledge Base.
iText Core 9.7.0
Native WebP image support
Developers can now work with WebP images more easily in PDF generation scenarios. WebP was developed by Google and announced in September 2010. WebP typically produces files 25 to 35 percent smaller than JPEG at comparable quality, which matters a lot for web performance and mobile data usage.
As WebP becomes more common in modern web and content pipelines, native support helps reduce preprocessing steps and simplifies workflows, such as HTML conversion with pdfHTML.
Dynamic page margins and footnotes
A major layout enhancement in this release is support for dynamic page margins and footnotes. These features are closely related and make it easier to build more sophisticated document layouts where content flow and page structure need to adapt intelligently. This is especially useful for long-form publishing, legal content, technical documentation, and other formats where footnotes and responsive page composition are essential.
Make sure to check out the latest Showcase PDF to see these features in action, or scroll down for a screenshot.
Security and robustness improvements
iText Core 9.7.0 also strengthens reliability when handling untrusted or problematic input. The release enhances decompression bomb protection, helping safeguard applications against maliciously crafted PDFs or embedded resources designed to exhaust system resources.
In addition, the release includes several fixes and improvements around parsing, validation, and general document processing stability, helping developers build more resilient PDF workflows.
Digital signatures and append-mode fixes
For teams working with signed documents and regulated workflows, this release includes important fixes in digital signatures and append-mode behavior. These changes improve reliability in incremental update scenarios and help maintain document integrity in signing and post-processing pipelines.
Bug Fixes and Miscellaneous Improvements
We resolved a customer-reported NullPointerException during form field flattening, which occurred when a signature field contained an invalid appearance entry. iText now logs a warning and skips the invalid appearance instead of crashing.
A PDF/A-2 conformance validation bug was fixed when two Separation color spaces with different names were used. The checker was not properly comparing the color space names, treating all Separation spaces as having the same name. This fix also applies to PDF/A-3 and PDF/A-4 conformance checking.
We added a high-level mechanism to prevent infinite loops in the layout module. In rare edge cases involving complex combinations of keep-together, forced placement, and nested containers, layout could enter an infinite loop. The engine now detects such situations and forces placement after a configurable number of iterations.
An informational warning is now logged when text requires the pdfCalligraph add-on for correct rendering, but pdfCalligraph is not available. This helps developers identify rendering issues with complex scripts early in development.
pdfCalligraph 5.1.0
Stronger multilingual typography
pdfCalligraph 5.1.0 is one of the standout add-on releases in the suite. It adds support for Sinhala, Tibetan, and S'gaw Karen, expanding the set of writing systems that can be correctly shaped, positioned, and line-broken in generated PDFs.
In addition, this release delivers a significant Arabic script rendering overhaul, improving output quality for one of the world’s most widely used complex writing systems. For organizations generating multilingual documents at scale, these updates can have immediate impact on document quality and inclusiveness.
pdfHTML 6.3.3
Smarter CSS support and layout fixes
pdfHTML 6.3.3 improves HTML-to-PDF conversion with support for the CSS pseudo-class selectors :is(), :where(), and :not(). This brings iText’s CSS handling closer to modern web authoring expectations and reduces the need for conversion-specific stylesheet workarounds.
The release also improves tolerance for malformed CSS and resolves issues related to CSS Grid pagination, helping developers achieve more predictable output from complex HTML layouts.
pdfOCR 5.0.1
Following the larger changes introduced in pdfOCR 5.0.0, version 5.0.1 focuses on targeted improvements and fixes. Highlights include stream-based input support, a fix related to parSeq vocabulary handling, and a crash fix that improves stability in OCR workflows.
These may sound incremental, but they matter in production environments where OCR pipelines need to process diverse inputs reliably and efficiently.
pdfXFA 5.0.7
pdfXFA 5.0.7 addresses two issues related to table layout and overflow behavior. For teams converting dynamic XFA forms to static PDF, these kinds of rendering fixes can make an outsized difference in document fidelity.
Patch Releases for Compatibility
pdfOptimizer 4.1.4
Patch release to maintain compatibility with iText Core 9.7.0 dependencies.
pdfSweep 5.0.7
Patch release to maintain compatibility with iText Core 9.7.0 dependencies.
Pull Requests
For this release we've incorporated two pull requests. The first comes from iText alumnus Dmitry Radchuk to add support for the new CSS selectors to the styled-xml-parser module utilized by the pdfHTML add-on. You can find full details in the pdfHTML 6.3.3 release notes linked above.
The other pull request comes from Netliomax25 who proposed a way to increase security in iText’s PDF/UA accessibility checks, specifically for rich text inside annotations. The fix swaps in a hardened XML parser to block potential XML External Entity injection attacks.
As always, many thanks to our contributors!
Showcase PDF
As always, we’ve made the iText Core release notes into a PDF document generated with the help of the pdfHTML add-on. This document demonstrates several iText capabilities in addition to HTML conversion, including digital signing, MAC protection, SVG rendering, layout features, font optimizations, and more.
It meets the requirements for the latest PDF/UA-2 standard for accessible PDF documents, the PDF/A-4F archiving standard, and also for both the WTPDF accessibility and reuse conformance levels.
For this release, the showcase PDF demonstrates not only the new margin and footnote functionality, but also the WebP support - all on a single page!
You can find the source code and resources we used to create it embedded in the document. Alternatively, we have a public repository where you can find an example .NET project to automatically generate accessible PDF documents from suitable web pages, applying the correct fonts, injecting custom content, generating a table of contents, and more.
Have fun!
Get Started with iText Suite 9.7
If you’re completely new to iText, we highly recommend our free 30-day trial. This lets you try out the entire iText Suite: so not just iText Core, but also all our open and closed source add-ons, completely free.
And because the trial is covered by the terms of our commercial license, you can rest assured your intellectual property is safe. The AGPLv3 conditions do not apply to commercial license holders, so your code can remain closed-source if that is a concern for you.
