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Everything You Must Know about Android PDF Library

So many developers and users have been at pains finding out a product that will help with the use of PDF on Androids. In this article we avail the much needed information on Android PDF Library to help you ease your usage of PDFs on Androids.

Part 1Differences between Android PDF Library, Android PDF Writer and Android PDF SDK

An Android PDF Library is a high quality Android innovation with Java APIs that allows the developers and user to seamlessly integrate PDF generation or creation, annotation, searching, manipulation, viewing, rendering and printing of PDF files in Android.

While an Android PDF Library is a complex innovation from Android, An Android PDF writer (APW) is a simple Java library that enables users of Android devices that were released under the BSD license to generate simple PDF documents. It is free and is open-source software for performing library tasks. You can download it at your convenience for personal or organizational use.

What is the relationship between Android PDF Library and Android PDF writer

android-pdf-writer

So what is the relationship between the two; Android PDF writer performs simple functions that Android PDF library undertakes at a higher level but also with addition of other functions. They share the basic function of generating PDF documents but PDF library goes on to offer editing, annotation, manipulation, viewing and rendering among others.

What is the difference between Android PDF Library and Android PDF SDK

android-pdf-sdk

There is minimal difference between Android PDF Library and Android PDF SDK; they perform almost the same function and provide PDF solutions for Androids.

Android PDF SDK enables Android users and developers to add PDF functionality to their Android apps. They can add the integrated PDF reader and viewer capabilities among others. Android PDF library enable users to create, modify, manipulate, render, view, merge and split PDF documents among other functions.

Part 2Top 5 Android PDF Library/SDK

1. PDFTron Mobile PDF SDK

pdftron-mobile-pdf-sdk
  • Great PDF rendering on Android: Rendering PDF is accurate, optimized, proven, high quality and robust and all these is done at very high speed. These benefits are based on the renown, advanced and proven PDF engine, PDFNet PDF library.
  • JAVA binding: The complete JAVA bindings that come with Android PDF library enable for impeccable integration with Android Apps. This is as a result of the user friendly JAVA interfaces and utility controls that are ready to use.
  • Standout performance: The Android PDF library offers great zoom factors of up to 500x magnification, excellent viewing in continuous mode of complex PDF files and documents.
  • Robust graphic support that is rich: It supports all forms of PDF files.
  • Avails easy and ready to use tools for innovation and development: Android PDF library offers support needed for advanced features like full text search, links, text selection, manipulation, bookmark navigation, interactive forms, annotations, PDF markup like underline, strikethrough, rectangle, line, arrow, free-hand-tool, ellipse, and sticky notes.
  • The ability to highly customize Android widgets; every user has a fine-grained control to each of their experiences as the Android PDF library includes widgets which have full-source codes for access.
  • It complies fully to quality standards: It supports all versions of PDF formats including ISO32000.
  • It supports all versions of Andorid 2.2 as well as higher versions like ginger bread and honeycomb.

2. qPDF Toolkit - PDF SDK for Android

qPDF Viewer

PDF SDK for Android adds viewer and reader support to any of your Android applications. You are able to create an application by an integrated PDF reader. For now, PDF SDK is under very active development and is in beta form. The developers are currently focusing on implementing rendering and parsing components that are missing currently on the Android PDF SDK. They are also working on the reader UX and UI. On a good note, developers of Android PDF SDK want to incorporate features that users have requested for.

Android PDF SDK has managed to implement the following features:

  • Browsing PDF pages.
  • Zooming in and out.
  • Very high optimized rendering and parsing performance.
  • Very highly optimized memory management.

Challenges of Android PDF SDK:

  • Not all shader types can be used at the moment.
  • Files with a password cannot be used on the Android PDF SDK.
  • Android PDF SDK does not render filing and gradient painting.
  • With the exception of Grayscale, RGB, CMYK, ICC color spaces are not yet implemented.
  • The JPEG 2000 image decoder is not also implemented.

3. PDF JET

pdf-jet

PDF JET is an extremely powerful tool that provides for complete PDF generation library for any of your needs and allows for creation of very complex PDF documents by the advanced features of drawing and text classes. This is much more intuitive than other product. It is dynamic and very flexible in handling very simple reports to such highly complex work like dynamic brochures with lots of graphics. The customer care of PDF Jet is on point. You could have features that you need incorporated just overnight. The other advantage of PDF Jet is that it allows for writing PDF to a stream. It has very, simple, logical, clean and easy PDFjet source Code. It also has a liberal open source license with no royalties.

4. FOXIT Embedded PDF SDK for Android

foxit-sdk

FOXIT Embedded PDF SKD is a fast, secure and affordable PDF solution. With this toolkit, PDF Android platform developers will be able to create PDF apps for uses to view, annotation and search of documents and filling in of PDF forms. With a modular package, users will be able to get all advanced PDF features. FOXIT has a cross platform library through which you can easily extend support to other platforms like iOS. This FOXIT PDF SDK is mainly used for Android. Users can also get an account to learn all the features easily. Sample codes enable developers to see how to setup FOXIT Embedded PDF SDK for Android. Its Java user interface as well as the user-friendly utility make it easy to use.

5. Apache PDFBox

pdfbox-apache

Apache PDFBox is an open source Android PDF library tool that enables users to create new documents, manipulate PDF documents and also allows for extraction content from PDF documents.

Some of the highlight features for Apache PDFBox include;

  • Apache PDFBox allows for developers to extract text from all PDF files.
  • With PDFBox, a developer is able to either split existing single PDF document into two or multiple documents or better still merge the existing PDF documents into one document.
  • It allows conversion of PDFs form images
  • With a PDFBox, a developer can insert Java printing API to enable users finally print from Android phones.
  • The forms filling feature allows users to either extract data from forms or prefill a PDF form.
  • It has solid validation against the ISO PDF/A standard.
  • After developed with this SDK, end users will be able to sign on PDF.
Wondershare Editor

Posted by to PDF Knowledge | Follow @AudreySGoodwin
Published: May 14,2015 11:34 am / Updated: Jul 11,2016 15:57 pm

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