History of PDFsharp

Here are the news and improvements of PDFsharp.

See general history for changes that affect PDFsharp and MigraDoc.

What’s new in version 6.2

Breaking changes

Page orientation now works as expected
See Issues below.

Features

Improved access to CropBox, ArtBox, BleedBox, TrimBox
PdfPage now has new properties that make access to those boxes easier. These are HasBleedBox, BleedBoxReadOnly, and EffectiveBleedBoxReadOnly.
Same applies to ArtBox, CropBox and TrimBox.

Loading images: Improved access to buffer of MemoryStream
LoadImage from MemoryStream now works with a buffer that is not publicly visible.
For better performance, set 'publiclyVisible' to true when creating the MemoryStream.

MD5 replaced where possible
The ImageSelector class needs hash codes for internal use. We now use SHA1 instead of MD5 because MD5 is not FIPS-compliant and not supported everywhere. Early PDF encryption uses MD5. So PDFsharp must use MD5 when opening files created with such early encryptions. And PDFsharp must use MD5 when creating files with such early encryptions.

Inefficient reading of object streams
Reading files with many objects in many object streams now works much faster.

Ignore incorrect "/Length" entry on streams close to EOF
PDFsharp 6.2.0 Preview 1 failed if a PDF contained a stream close to the end of file with an incorrect /Length attribute. PDFsharp 6.2.0 Preview 2 can correct the /Length attribute even for streams close to the end of the file.

ImageSelector improved
We fixed incorrect handling of identical images with only different masks.

Issue with Google Slides
PDFsharp can now open PDF files created from Google Slides.

Size of digital signature may vary without timestamp
PDFsharp 6.2.0 Preview 1 took into account that the size of digital signatures with timestamp could vary from call to call. PDFsharp 6.2.0 Preview 2 now takes into account that the size of digital signatures without timestamp can also vary from call to call.

Option to read images from non-seekable streams
PDFsharp is now able to read images from streams that are not seekable.

Issues

Lexer.ScanNumber and CLexer.ScanNumber
Based on a bug that crashed PDFsharp if a number in a PDFfile has too many leading zeros, we revised the code of Lexer.ScanNumber and CLexer.ScanNumber.

No more commas allowed in XUnit
An old hack allowed XUnit to be assigned from a string that uses a comma as decimal separator. This was introduced for languages like German that use a comma instead of a point as decimal separator. Now you get an exception. Applies also to XUnitPt.

Bug fixes in PNG reader
Fixed issues with reading PNG files in Core build.

Correct datetime format in XMP meta data
Time zone was missing.

Handle Reverse Solidus without effect correctly
The reverse solidus was handled incorrectly for invalid combinations of reverse solidus and other characters.

Fixes with encrypted PDFs
Fixes for issues with encrypted PDFs.

Improved behavior or better error messages for streams with limited capabilities
PDFsharp now shows better error messages when trying to read a PDF from streams that cannot seek, cannot report their length, or are otherwise limited.

Corrected bug with page orientation
When opening and modifying existing PDF pages, there sometimes were issues due to page rotation and page orientation. Behavior has changed for page format Ledger and apps supporting Ledger format must be tested and may have to be updated. This is a breaking change.

BeginContainer issue fixed
BeginContainer and EndContainer can now be used even in GDI build when drawing on PDF pages.

Bug in parsing object referenced
Lexer now supports white-space within object references.

Page orientation now works as expected
The connection between page Width, Height, PageOrientation, and PageRotation was weird. It was replaced by a consistent concept. This is a breaking change.

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What’s new in version 6.1

Font handling was improved and this should lead to smaller PDF files in some cases.

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What’s new in version 6.0

Core builds now can be used everywhere

With version 1.51, the Core builds were still limited to Windows. Beginning with version 6.0, the Core builds can also be used under Linux and other platforms.

Security updated

Earlier PDFsharp versions support only encryption introduced with the third PDF specification (PDF ???) or earlier. PDFsharp now reads and writes PDF files with AES 256 that comes with PDF 1.7 and crypt filters that came with PDF 2.0.

SharpZipLib removed

Earlier PDFsharp versions used SharpZipLib for compressed content streams. This library was replaced by equivalent functionality that comes today with .NET. This should make compression and decompression much faster.

Update from older versions

For information about the transition from PDFsharp 1.5 or PdfSharpCore 1.3 to PDFsharp 6 see Upgrade to PDFsharp 6.