eDocEngine VCL
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Home » Newsletter » July 2010

PDF is an open specification and a very popular document format. That is why there are so PDF tools and applications to cater to every PDF-related need. The consumer is truly spoilt for choices. In this crowded landscape, it can be difficult to make an informed choice. So, how do you make a decision? Let's begin with a checklist.

1. Can it handle non-Latin, mixed-language, right-to-left, or Unicode text?
2. Does it automatically find the best fonts for a particular language?
3. How compact is the PDF file after font embedding?
4. Does it allow text to be copied by users and applications such as screen readers?

Unicode Support

As mentioned in another article, eDocEngine v3 can handle all text that can be supported in Unicode. Its PDF engine can render non-Latin languages ranging from pictorgraphic Mandarin to right-to-left Hebrew.

File Size

Arial Unicode MS is a large polyglot Unicode font weighing over 20 MB. Ideally, it should be used as an Unicode font of last resort. Indiscriminately loading it into memory or embedding it in PDF documents comes at a price. Using it will definitely be an overkill if a smaller and better optimized font is installed on the Windows system.

eDocEngine v3 does not rely solely on Arial Unicode MS for Unicode support. Its PDF engine uses whichever Windows font that contains the glyphs it needs to render. The PDF engine does this automatically. As a result, the aplication built using the PDF engine is faster.

Subset embedding of PDF fonts in Version 3 is also very well optimized when rendering Unicode text. The PDF documents it creates are also very light, no matter which method of font embeddding was used - no embedding, subset embedding or fully embedding.

Accessibility

Althought PDF supports some accessibility features, many PDF documents are built as final-form documents.