Dreamscape - Makers of PDFReport

PDFReport ZeroAdmin is the version of PDFReport dedicated to Visual Basic 5/6 users (and of course users of Excel, Word and Access VB for Application!).

PDFReport ZEROADMIN has a Runtime which can be redistributed Royalty Free, just like PDFReport XP!!! You can deploy your applications using PDFreport to unilimited customers without fees or royalties.*

It doesn't require the DLL to be registered on the target system with regsvr32 or other tools; to use it you just copy it with your exe. Hence the name "ZeroAdmin": you drop it in your application folder, and it simply works! Installing an application can be done just copying a folder, uninstalling the DLL is easy as deleting it.

This DLL kills admin costs, and makes sure that installations from network etc are a breeze, allways easy and reliable.

Also, the DLL doesn't leaves anything behind when uninstalled (well, to uninstall it you just need to delete the DLL file, as the registry isn't touched!). We also don't use weird protection schemes so the deployed DLL works without hassles.

Finally, even if there are dozens of different versions of this DLL on the same system, they will work perfectly: every program will use its own version, and the programs won't ever conflict as the DLLs are private to them!

A Visual Basic class file is provided for free so you can use the same commands of PDFReport XP (the ActiveX DLL); the wrapper also gives you autocompletion in the VB IDE, so you won't have to type much code.

Sample code looks like this:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
  Dim x As New PDFRpt
  x.NewPDF "Hello World in the title..."
  x.TextOut "Hello World!", 20, 20
  x.AddPage
  x.TextOut "Hello World Again in page 2!", 30, 50
  x.TextOut "Another line...", 30, 150
  ' draw some rectangles....
  x.DrawRect 2, 1, 1, 30, 40, 30, 10
  x.SavePDF "c:\MyPDF.pdf"
End Sub

The differences between the "PDFReport ZeroAdmin" (traditional DLL) version and "PDFReport XP "(the ActiveX version):

Feature	PDFReport ZeroAdmin	PDFReport XP
Zero Admin Installation	YES: there isn't a real installation, just copy DLL!	YES/NO: You just copy the DLL, but the DLL will be registered inside the registry.
Accessible from ASP pages	No, as ASP doesn't support traditional dlls	Yes
Accessible from .Net applications	No, as .Net doesn't support traditional DLLs by design	Yes
Scales well with multiple users/requests	No (also VB isn't thread safe so it should not be a problem, theorically)	Yes

Easy To Use

PDFReport is very easy to use. It gives you a virtual PDF paper sheet on which you can write with very simple and intuitive commands like "ImportImage". If you need elaborated reports, you can iterate on every row of your database choosing the position of the text, the alignment, where to place logos, when to create a page break.

All the commands are expressed on a unique unit of measure of your choice: millimeters, centimeters, inches, pdfunits (1/72 inches). It is very intuitive to recreate a form or an invoice, as you must only measure with a ruler the original paper and create a few lines of code - no calculations required!

Here it is a sample snippet of code, the classic "Hello World!" example:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
  Dim x As New PDFRpt

  x.NewPDF "hellooooo"
  x.TextOut "yahooooo", 20, 20
  x.SetFillColor 255, 255, 0
  x.SetLineColor 255, 0, 255
  x.DrawRect 2, 1, 1, 30, 40, 30, 10
  x.SavePDF "c:\mynewpdf.pdf"
End Sub

EASY TO DEPLOY

PDFReport is very easy to deploy. We have tested it with almost every version of Microsoft Windows, from Win98 to WinME, from WinNT4 to WinXP to Win2003. It is a single, self contained DLL: as it doesn't rely on other libraries or runtime, the installation is just a matter of copying a DLL. You also don't need to register it in the registry so you are sure not to corrupt the registry!

PDFReport is very stable, so it is unlikely that you have to change the DLL; should it happen, we usually try to keep the old DLL methods so you can upgarde just by overwriting the old DLL.

To deploy the runtime you just have to copy the DLL with your program, no other operation is required! This is what we mean when we speak about ZERO MAINTENANCE.

EMBED PDFREPORT FOR FREE IN YOUR APPLICATIONS !

PDFReport comprehends a runtime license so you can embed the component inside your applications without royalties of any kind - you can sell your products with PDF generation facilities from PDFReport.

The main limitation is obvious: you cannot use PDFReport inside a product whose main aim is to generate PDF, otherwise I would see tons of clones made incapsulating it in other dlls. Some examples of fair/unfair use:

Fair: accounting software like MS Money, with functions like generation of invoices in PDF, online creations of reports and invoices..

Unfair and forbidden: Scan2PDF software, Tiff2PDF, "Whatever2PDF", printer drivers...

ROCK-SOLID PDF GENERATOR

When we developed PDFReport we took special care in the Quality Assurance. We test every single release by generating thousands of pdf files in the same process, to be sure it is reasonably free from problems and memory leaks. This is why many customers love ot use PDFReport when generating enormous quantities of PDF files like invoices, and why many customer have choosen PDFReport for use with their unattended, heavy duty applications!

Not only: we took special care so that even if you make a mistake in using the component: for example you may try to write a text to page 9, but there are only 7 pages; in this case PDFReport automatically uses the last page available instead of giving an Access Violation for having referenced a wrong page.

FAST AS THE LIGHT

PDFReport is REALLY fast and lightweight.

With PDFReport you can fully leverage old servers or old computers, with a few MB of RAM and old processors. Unlike other programs, it requires less then a couple of megabytes of HD, the size of the PDF you are generating in RAM, and any 486 or better processor.

In our test we were able to create thousands of files in a minute: it is faster than a printer driver of a factor of 20. Also, it scales well with multiple users/requests, unlike a simple printer driver, so you can use the processor fully and you can program without problems on a server process, like ASP pages (using a printer driver from ASP pages is, if not impossible, at least impractical).

*see license for details and limitations - for example of course it is forbidden to sell products made with PDFReport XP that:
- are developer tools or components theirselves
- whose main aim is to create PDF files, like printer drivers or converters etc

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