After the iText 7.1.11 release which brought new features and improvements to the entire iText 7 Suite, we’re proud to release iText Core 7.1.12 with an equally significant set of changes and improvements.
New features:
- Expose image identification API in io module
- Add possibility to remove items from outline tree
- Initial support of linearGradient in SVG and in CSS
Of particular interest in this Core release is the initial support for <linearGradient> in SVG and linear-gradient() in CSS, which is something that both Core, and iText pdfHTML (3.0.1) will benefit from. SVG is an important topic for us, so be sure to check our future releases, as even wider support is coming.
As for the rest of the changes, expect the typical ongoing mix of yet more performance improvements and convenience additions.
As always, we try to synchronize the release with some of our other add-ons, so besides Core, be sure to also check out:
Release pdf2Data 2.1.8
This release brings improvements for automatic table recognition, particularly in the case of borderless tables.
If you find pdf2Data useful for document data extraction, be sure to also check out iText pdfOCR. We think it is a great tool to use in combination with iText pdf2Data.
Release pdfCalligraph 2.0.7
With the release of pdfCalligraph 2.0.7, we are bringing the support of Thai (the official language of Thailand), Khmer (the official language of Cambodia) and Lao (the official language of Laos) to a whole new level! Thanks to the ICU - International Components for Unicode project (and ICU4N!), we now support correct line breaks with these languages. Don't forget that aside from iText 7 Core, iText pdfHTML also benefits from these changes.
Release pdfHTML 3.0.1
A new feature in this release is the introduction of support for <linearGradient> in SVG and linear-gradient() in CSS. This is a commonly used element in both CSS and SVG frameworks allowing for progressive transitions between colors in graphical objects.
For those of you who are interested, we've produced a code sample demonstrating different implementations of linearGradient within our layout engine.
Besides this, we continue to improve our line-height property support that was added for pdfHTML 3.0.0 and added support for setting the background on HTML elements. Something that will continue to be improved (we'll keep you posted!)
Speaking of wider support, Shorthand properties can often improve your CSS code readability. As developers, there's no way, no how, that we'll stand in the way of code readability, so support for the text-decoration Shorthand is baked in too. We've also improved pdfHTML's <div> Tag processing to better handle splitting. See the linked articles for examples demonstrating these improvements.
Release pdfOCR 1.0.1
Hot on the heels of our initial release, we're releasing 1.0.1 already! We've made improvements to the way that the calculations for word bounding boxes are made, so that in languages where ligatures are required, we are able to properly detect the text and render each character correctly.
This change is especially for our pdfCalligraph customers, so that they can render advanced typography in their OCRed documents.
Release pdfXFA 2.0.7
In a nutshell, the flattening process supports a wider variety of scenarios. This is a bug fix only release, as no new features have been added. Having said that, we'd also like to point you to a couple of XFA-related blog posts that may be interesting to you:
Release RUPS 7.1.12
We always release RUPS together with iText 7 Core, as it is one of the most important dependencies it has (so all the goodies in Core, should make its way into RUPS). For this release in particular, we've also targeted and addressed the CVE-2020-10683 vulnerability. Happy debugging!
For full details on the improvements, bug fixes, and installation details, head over to the iText 7.1.12 Release notes on the iText Knowledge Base.
Highlight: pull requests
For this release we would specifically want to thank NightOwl888. He’s been very helpful over the past few months, and the updates to line breaks and word wrapping in pdfCalligraph would not have been possible without him.
Apart from NightOwl888, we also want to thank evileye-uk, tompecina and hady-malekpour for their pull requests! It is pretty amazing that after 20 years as an open source project, we still get contributions.
If anyone wants to help and contribute to our code, give us a shout.
Stay safe and take care of each other!
