| Virtual Print Engine Is
Available In Three Editions |
The editions differ in price and functionality. Each edition is fully
downwards compatible, i.e. all features and functions of the Standard Edition are also
included in the Enhanced Edition, and so forth.
All editions are available as fully programmable Trial Versions for
download on this site.
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| Introduction |
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VPE is a fast and reliable engine made for professional
applications |
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Over 14 years running in the development process, has
been re-worked multiple times |
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The flexible concept, which has been evolved during this
long-term development process, provides you total control about what's happening at any
time |
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Very easy to use, saves man-years of
development work |
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Introduces Dynamic Layouts: an incredibly simple but
powerful method of positioning and sizing objects (like text, bitmaps, etc.) relative to
their contents and relative to each other; so the management of complex dependencies
between objects is child's play |
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Unlimited royalty-free distribution
to end-users! |
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| The Preview (all
Editions - Windows platform only) |
- The preview is optional, you can print or generate PDF documents without displaying it.
- While the document is created by your application, you can open
the Preview and let the user zoom and scroll through it.
- 11 Languages: VPE selects for all
tooltips and dialogs automatically the right language (depending on the country setting in
the control panel). Supported languages are: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian,
Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese. Optional you can select the
language by code. Furthermore you can define all text of the GUI elements by code, so you can use any language.
- The measuring for the rulers can be switched between cm or inch units.
Screenshot on Windows Vista (Whidbey Theme):
The user interface is themeable, here the Office 2000
theme on Windows 2000: 
The Whidbey Theme on Windows 2000:
The Office 2003 Blue Theme on Windows XP: 
Each theme can be used on any supported Windows version, except the
Office 2003 Blue, Olive und Silver themes, which are especially adapted
to the predefined themes of Windows XP.
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| e-Mail and Internet /
Intranet Publishing (all Editions) |
- With the eMail-Button your users can send documents via
Internet or by Fax. You may specify in
advance by code optional receiver(s), CC's, BCC's, title, text and any attachments. As
with printing, you can send e-mails without showing a Preview.
- Additionally the VPE SDK contains "VPE
View", the Royalty-Free Document Viewer for VPE-Documents (very
useful, if documents are sent by e-mail).
- For the previewing and printing in the Internet / Intranet you can bind the VPE ActiveX
into the Internet Explorer web-browser.
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| Facts - Standard Edition |
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includes .NET component, ActiveX, Delphi / C++ Builder VCL
and DLL all together in one single package (on non-Windows platforms
currently only available as shared object, Java JNI interface being
prepared). |
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Includes the PDF Export Module
Standard Edition |
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Support of lines, polylines, polygons, frames, boxes,
circles, ellipses, pies, text, true-color and hatching |
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incredible fast device-independent vector
graphics |
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Automatic wordbreak |
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Can optionally break long text automatically over multiple pages |
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Imports the image formats:
- Windows Bitmaps - BMP (2 / 16 / 256 / HiColor / True Color)
- Windows Placeable Metafile Format - WMF
- Windows Enhanced Metafile Format - EMF
Independently manages image files within a self-optimizing
dynamic cache. Therefore multiple used images are held only once in memory. In
contrast less often used images are loaded dynamically from the hard disk. |
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Rendering: the dimensions of images and text (using the
current font settings) can be computed during runtime to create layouts accordingly. |
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Virtual Processing: while generating a document, you may
move at any time to any page to insert new objects |
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Unlimited number of pages per document and unlimited number of open
documents at the same time - limited only by available memory. Optional VPE is able to use
with nearly no loss of performance SmartPaging to swap all pages
of a document into a file. Thererfore even the creation of documents with 10,000 pages or
100,000 pages and more is no problem. |
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Considers the unprintable margins of the output devices. So, everything
appears on any printer at exactly the same position. This is IDEAL for
printing or filling in forms and labels. |
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The product ships with an extensive help guide in english
language (over 850 print-pages), and detailed sample sources for Visual Basic, Delphi,
Visual FoxPro, Progress and C / C++ |
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VPE is able to manage the Preview window itself, or you can embedd it into the windows
of your applications - this will also work for MDI applications. |
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Additional Load and Save buttons in the toolbar |
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All buttons or button-groups and even the whole toolbar, the statusbar
and the rulers can be hidden. |
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Intelligent printer setup - manages an unlimited number of user-defined
printer setups for different document-types and printers in a network: setups can be
stored to file including all driver data - this allows to activate by
code any printer setup option the printer offers (for example output paper bins,
which aren't supported by Windows directly) |
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Provides hatching, gradients, rounded corners for
frames, boxes and text |
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Cache for image files: manages images within an
optimizing dynamic cache, so that frequently used images are held
only once in memory. Less frequently used files are reloaded from
hard disk. |
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Methods and properties to read and write special
settings of available printers (for example number of copies,
sorting of copies, duplex printing, enumerate available paper bins,
etc.) [Windows only] |
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The input paper bin, the page dimensions and
orientation (landscape or portrait) can be set for each page
separately. [Windows only] |
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Compression for the creation of native VPE document
files |
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Compression for the creation of PDF files |
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Embedding of True-Type fonts in PDF files |
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| Facts - Enhanced Edition |
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Enhanced Import of Image Files
Imports in addition to BMP, WMF und EMF all common graphics formats:
- OS/2 Bitmaps (2 / 16 / 256 / HiColor / True Color)
- TIFF 6.0 (2 / 16 / 256 / HiColor / True Color, LZW, PackBits,
Fax G3, Fax G4, Multipage, RGBA, CMYK, RGB and Grayvalue with 16
Bits/Sample, JPEG compression v7, not the old 6.0 specification)
- GIF (2 / 16 / 256 Color, Multipage)
- PCX (2 / 16 / 256 / True Color)
- JPG (256 / True Color, RGB / CMYK, Standard and Progressive
JPEG)
- PNG (all possible formats)
- ICO (Windows Icon)
- JNG (JPEG Network Graphics)
- KOA (C64 Koala Graphics)
- IFF/LBM (Interchangeable File Format - Amiga/Deluxe Paint)
- MNG (Multiple-Image Network Graphics)
- PBM (Portable Bitmap [ASCII])
- PBM (Portable Bitmap [RAW])
- PCD (Kodak PhotoCD, reads always the 768 x 512 pixel image)
- PGM (Portable Greymap [ASCII])
- PGM (Portable Greymap [RAW])
- PPM (Portable Pixelmap [ASCII])
- PPM (Portable Pixelmap [RAW])
- RAS (Sun Raster Image)
- TGA/TARGA (Truevision Targa)
- WAP/WBMP/WBM (Wireless Bitmap)
- PSD (Adobe Photoshop, only 24-bit RGB or 24-bit RGB RLE, no
layers / masks)
- CUT (Dr. Halo)
- XBM (X11 Bitmap Format)
- XPM (X11 Pixmap Format)
- DDS (DirectX Surface)
- HDR (High Dynamic Range Image)
- G3 (Raw fax format CCITT G.3)
- SGI (SGI Image Format)
Multi-Page TIFF
and GIF: query number of
pages contained in a file and load a selected page
Starting with VPE v4.0 DXF import is no longer supported. We
recommend the
Davinci
Image Import Library, in order to import DXF files and to export
them as EMF. The EMF files can then be processed by VPE. |
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Rotation of bitmap-images in 90 degree steps |
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Generates 38 different Barcode-Types
VPE is shipped with a sophisticated barcode library, which allows to create a total of 38
different barcode types. You can specify wether the labels (i.e. the barcode text in
clear) are printed or not and on what position (at the top or the bottom of the barcode).
The library supports automatic checkdigit generation for all barcode types that make use
of checkdigits.
Moreover you can specify the aspect ratio between thin and thick modules.
- EAN 13
- EAN 13 + 2
- EAN 13 + 5
- EAN 8
- EAN 8 + 2
- EAN 8 + 5
- EAN 2
- EAN 5
- UPC A
- UPC A + 2
- UPC A + 5
- UPC E
- UPC E + 2
- UPC E + 5
- CODE128 A
- CODE128 B
- CODE128 C
- EAN128 A
- EAN128 B
- EAN128 C
- CODABAR
- Industrial 2 of 5
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- Interleaved 2 of 5
- 2 of 5 Matrix
- CODE 11
- Telepen - A
- CODE 39
- CODE 39 EXT
- CODE 93
- CODE 93 EXT
- POSTNET
- RM4SCC
(Royal Mail 4 State Customer Code)
- MSI
- ISBN
- ISBN + 5
- Identcode of the Deutsche Post AG
- Leitcode of the Deutsche Post AG
- PZN (Pharma Zentral Code)
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| Facts - Professional Edition |
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Includes the PDF Export Module
Enterprise Edition |
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Rich Text Format (RTF)
Interprets RTF directly and imports RTF files.
VPE supports a subset of RTF.
Please click here for the detailed VPE RTF
Specifications |
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Charts
VPE supports all basic types of charts using SmartChart
technology.
Please click here for an overview |
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2D Barcodes
Generates all common 2D barcodes: PDF417, Data Matrix, Maxicode und
Aztec |
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HTML Export |
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Enhanced Layout Options
Pages can be cleared (i.e. all objects of a page are deleted),
pages can be removed and pages can be inserted between existing
pages (lower editions can only add new pages at the end of a
document). |
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UDO - User Defined Objects
Access to VPE's Device Context. This allows to print and preview any
kind of drawing or object, including OLE/COM objects!!! |
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Clickable Objects
Objects can be made clickable by assigning them a unique Object
ID. Moving with the mouse over such an object changes the cursor to a pointing hand. If
you click onto such an object your application receives an event containing the Object ID.
Then you could for example open a separate dialog, showing more detailed information about
the clicked text or image. |
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Scale-To-Gray Technology
For the import of image files, especially black & white forms,
with the option of overlaying: a high resolution image (with for example 300 or 600 DPI)
scaled down to the screen preview (which is usually a 96 DPI device) is looking bad due to
the nature of the scaling algorithm. The reason is, that pixels are left out when drawing
such a high resolution image to the screen.
Example: If you draw a 300 DPI image to a 96 DPI screen, the image is scaled down by a
factor of 96 / 300 = 0.32. This means, only 32% of all pixels are drawn, the rest is left
out. (i.e. after each pixel that is drawn, 2 pixels are left out)
What the Scale-to-Gray Technology does:
The Scale-to-Gray Technology is especially useful for displaying forms on the screen,
because a grayscale image is scaled down to the low screen resolution, while the loss of
visual information (the pixels, that are left out) is transformed to gray-values of
different intensity (brightness). This produces perfect readability for the human eye.
Additionally, together with the Scale-to-Gray Technology you can use two different images
for the same page: one for the screen (preview) in low resolution (see VpeSetViewable),
and one for printing (see VpeSetPrintable) in the original high resolution. Therefore you
gain perfect readability on the screen as well as on the printouts.Example, normal scaled image:
Image scaled with Scale-To-Gray Technology:
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Image Export
Export of single pages or parts of pages as:
- BMP
- WMF
- EMF
- JPEG
- PNG
- TIFF
- GIF
For all bitmap formats you can specify the color depth and the
resolution (in DPI).
Additionally dithering is possible. |
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Character Placement
You can specify a constant offset from one character to another for
text objects in 0.1 mm resolution.
This is very good for filling in forms that have pre-printed columns for each letter. |
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Object Visibility
Objects (like text, images, barcodes, etc.) can be set
to printable only, i.e. they are not shown in the preview but they are printed. Vice versa
objects can be set to viewable only, i.e. they are shown in the preview (for example as
hint or comment) but they are not printed.
This is also very useful, if you display a bitmap form: for the preview you display a
Scale-to-Gray form for better readability (set to viewable only) and for printing you use
a 600 DPI hi-resolution bitmap for perfect printing (set to printable only). Both images
together can be put onto the same page in the VPE document. |
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Print-Scale
The printout can be scaled freely with a factor between 0.01 and 6.0 |
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| Facts
- PDF Export Module |
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The handling is trivial, you can create a
complete PDF file from a VPE document with only one line of source code: VPE.WriteDoc("My Document.pdf")
The PDF Export Module Standard Edition:
- Offers unrestricted 1:1 export of VPE documents to PDF. Gradients,
rounded corners, barcodes, etc. are written as true PDF vector
graphics.
- Optional creation of PDF files compliant to Acrobat Reader version 4 or 5.
Acrobat Reader versions prior to 4 are not supported.
- Optional creation of compressed PDF documents
- Optional embedding of True-Type fonts
- If one and the same image (i.e. a bitmap, metafile, enhanced
metafile) is used multiple times within a document, for example on
multiple pages, VPE will detect such multi-references and embeds the
image only once into the PDF file.
- Embedded images (except JPEG files) can be converted
automatically to a lower resolution to save space. JPEG files are
always copied with their original RAW binary data to PDF.
The PDF Export Module Enterprise Edition offers the
following additional functionality:
- Offers unrestricted 1:1 export of VPE documents to PDF. Rich Text,
charts and 2D-barcodes are written as true PDF vector graphics.
- Encryption with a variable key length between 40 and 128-bit.
- Selective protection of documents and password protection
(e.g. protect a document against printing, copy & paste, modifications, etc.)
- Creation of Linearized PDF ("Fast Web View")
An enhanced PDF file format especially for the Internet. It allows to view any given page
on a client site as fast as possible without downloading the whole document from a server.
- True-Type Font Subsetting
Font Subsetting means, that VPE assembles on-the-fly a new font from the source font, that
contains only the characters which are used in the document. A subsetted font is in
regular much smaller than the original font, which results in significantly smaller
documents.
- Font Substitution
Supports the optional usage of PostScript fonts by Font Substitution, e.g. the font
'Arial' can be used in VPE for the preview and for printing, but the PDF document will be
created using the PostScript font 'Helvetica' instead.
- If embedded images are converted to lower resolutions, their
quality can be increased by applying automatically the Scale2Gray
algorithm.
- Creation of Bookmarks
Bookmarks are displayed in the left tree-view of Acrobat Reader. They serve as a
"visual table of contents" and allow the quick navigation through the document.
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