For the first time, we are sponsoring the GOTO International Software Development Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The GOTO conference is an international series of events in Denmark, Netherlands and the United States.

GOTO Copenhagen is an international software development conference designed for developers, team leads, architects and project managers.

We are sending our European conference team to this great event to showcase our latest developments and products. If you are attending, stop by our booth and ask for a demo. We really look forward seeing you in Copenhagen.

Thanks to all attendees, TX Text Control users and speakers for stopping by our table. We really enjoyed the discussions and you obviously liked what we did in the past months. We presented the outstanding PDF import improvements and features of version 18.0.

Special thanks to our good frieds at ComponentOne and Twilio for the after party at Brick House. See you next year in Philly!

I was just able to get hold of the latest builds fresh out of our development labs. Our engineering is currently working on innovative new features for version 18.0 of TX Text Control. In this article, I will give a deep look into the drastically improved Adobe PDF import functionality.

Since version 15.0, the .NET versions of TX Text Control can import PDF files. While the first version was able to import text only, later versions already recognized paragraphs, fonts and positioned text using anchored text frames.

While these essential features describe the basement of such an innovative technology, version 18.0 is the next big milestone. Thanks to powerful new features in the TX Text Control core, the PDF import filter converts even complex pages into editable documents that can be easily modified and converted.

A very commonly used feature in PDF documents are layers. A PDF can consist of unlimited layers with a different z-order, so they can overlap each other. This z-order of objects was required in TX Text Control for images and text frames to enable the import of more complex PDF files. The following screenshots give an overview of what will be possible with the next version of TX Text Control.

Floating Text

This sample document shows how text is converted into floating text. On the right-hand screenshot, you can see that text can be selected like any other text in a TX Text Control document. Fonts, font weights, colors and paragraph margins are recognized and applied to the document. If a document contains more sections with different page sizes, they are converted to the proper landscape or portrait settings as well.

Original PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader	Opened in TX Text Control 18.0 (Beta)

Modify Text in Complex Forms

Form documents with complex tables and perfectly positioned elements can be imported 1:1. You can easily change each string using the editor interface or you can find and replace text programmatically using the powerful TX Text Control API.

Original PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader	Opened in TX Text Control 18.0 (Beta)

Import Postscript Vector Graphics

When importing business reports from PDF, they often contain charts or diagrams to visualize data. Using TX Text Control 18.0, these vector graphics can not only be imported, the included text can be changed as well.

Original PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader	Opened in TX Text Control 18.0 (Beta)

These are just a few samples that gives an impression of the power of our new PDF import functionality that will come with TX Text Control 18.0. In the next couple of days, we will publish a live preview demo that enables you to test this functionality on your own.

Stay tuned.

Next weekend, we are exhibiting at the Philly Code Camp which is held at the Penn State campus in Abington, PA. This new venue gives even more developers the chance to attend this high quality event.

If you are attending this community conference, stop by our booth and see the impressive improvements our developers made regarding our PDF document import filter. Get also a sneak preview of the other upcoming features in version 18.0:

Object z-order, a new Windows Forms RibbonBar mail merge template designer, transparent TextFrames and many more. Simply ask for a demo.

See you in Philly!

I am delighted to announce the extension of our existing partnership with GrapeCity.

From now on, Text Control will be a European sales partner for Spread.NET.

This spreadsheet processing component is the perfect addition to TX Text Control to embed programmable MS Excel and MS Word functionality into .NET based applications.

TX Text Control and Spread.NET gives .NET developers the essentials of business applications in a programmable form. MS Office compatible documents and spreadsheets can be edited, created or converted with an MS Office look and feel.

Users will enjoy combined technical support in the European time zone for both products in English and German. Developers get one source of help to efficiently integrate TX Text Control and Spread.NET into their projects.

To learn more about Spread.NET, please take a look at the new section of our web site:

• Spread.NET (incl. Windows Forms and ASP.NET)

While creating a sample application that shows the stunning improvements of our Adobe PDF import functionality, I thought to revisit how TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET can be used in a Windows Azure environment.

Windows Azure is the perfect environment to host, scale, and manage web applications. TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET is Azure Ready and can be easily used in Microsoft datacenters.

Tutorial: Azure Hosted Service with TX Text Control

1. Ensure that the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio are installed, start Visual Studio 2010 and create a new project. The Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio can be downloaded on this dedicated website:

   Get Started with Windows Azure

   From the installed project templates, choose Windows Azure Project from the Cloud category.

   

   In the next dialog box, choose an appropriate role for this new project. For this tutorial, we will select ASP.NET Web Role. Add this role to the solution and confirm with OK.

   

2. Select the web application (WebRole1) in the Solution Explorer and select Add Reference... from the Project main menu. Browse for the TXTextControl.dll and the TXTextControl.Server.dll from the Assembly folder of the TX Text Control installation directory.

   

   Select the added references in the Solution Explorer and set their Copy Local property to True.

   

3. Select the web application (WebRole1) in the Solution Explorer again and choose Add Existing Item... from the Project main menu. Browse for the TX Text Control installation folder (default: C:\Program Files\Text Control GmbH\TX Text Control 17.0.NET for Windows Forms\Assembly\bin64), select all files from the bin64 folder and confirm with Add.

   

   Now, select all newly added files in the Solution Explorer and set their properties Build Action to Content and Copy to Output Directory to Copy always.

4. A 'licenses.licx' file must exist in the 'Properties' folder (C#) or the 'My Project' folder (VB.NET). To build such a file, create a new text file in this folder and name it 'licenses.licx'. Open the file and add the following string:

   TXTextControl.ServerTextControl, TXTextControl.Server, Version=17.0.200.500, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=6b83fe9a75cfb638

5. Open the Split view of the Default.aspx page and remove the default content between the MainContent placeholder tags.

   Add a simple button to the page and double-click it to open the code-behind automatically. Add the following code to the button click event:

   using (TXTextControl.ServerTextControl tx = new TXTextControl.ServerTextControl())
   {
       byte[] data = null;
   
       tx.Create();
       tx.Text = "This is a sample text.";
       tx.Save(out data, TXTextControl.BinaryStreamType.AdobePDF);
   
       Response.Clear();
       Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
       Response.BinaryWrite(data);
       Response.End();
   }

6. Select the Windows Azure Project in the Solution Explorer and select Publish [tx_in_the_cloud] from the Build main menu.

   

   In the opened dialog box, select Create Service Package Only and confirm with OK.

   

   Visual Studio is opening a folder with two created files.

7. Open the Windows Azure Management Portal:

   https://windows.azure.com/

   If you did not create an account for Windows Azure yet, follow the required steps on their website.

8. Choose New Hosted Service from the Common Tasks. Complete the form fields in the opened dialog box describing the name and URL of the newly created application. Browse for the Package location and the Configuration file by clicking the Browse Locally... buttons. Choose the files that have been created by Visual Studio. Upload the project by clicking OK.

   

   The uploading and finalizing by Windows Azure might take some time. Depending on the size of the project up to 30 minutes or more.

   

9. If the upload process is successful, the hosted service is displayed in the list as shown in the following screenshot:

   

   Now, the application is available "in the cloud" using the given URL (e.g. http://txcloudtest.cloudapp.net/).