Free Divide PDF Page Online-Another Google App Engine Application

Today, RubyPDF released another Google App Engine Application, Freely Divide PDF Page Online, also bases on iText.

the main feature is Split a PDF page to two half size Pdf Page, for example, Split a A3 Page to two A4 pages.

btw, RubyPDF also released desktop version before.

Bruno Lowagie maybe write a new iText Book

Bruno Lowagie is the orgianl developer of iText and the author of iText in Action, said in the maillist on  Jul 23, 2009,

Hello all,

it was a nice surprise to log in, and to discover that all the iText
questions were already answered by other people. I’m very busy for the
moment because I have a phone call with Manning (the publisher of iText
in Action) in about 7 hours.

They want to talk about writing a revision for “iText in Action”, but
I’m not really interested in doing a makeover of that book. “iText in
Action” already has 600+ pages. I have plenty of ideas for new examples,
I no longer like the Foobar examples, and I fear that I’ll end up with a
900+ pages book.

To make a long story short: I’d prefer writing a new book from scratch.
Or rather: instead of writing a book with 900 pages, I’m thinking of
writing 3 books of about 300 pages (of which only 2 would need to be
available in print).

1. “Introducing iText”: a book that would introduce iText for people who
don’t want to be confronted with PDF too much. It would explain the
basics of PDF creation and manipulation without too much theory (to
avoid readers to be distracted from the main goal: getting something
done with iText). “iText in Action” didn’t have any examples using a
real database (all the data was in XML files). For “Introducing iText”,
I would use a real SQL database and use that database to create PDF
(with more stress on ColumnText and PdfPTable; and less “reference
material” on the other “basic building blocks”). I’d also fill out forms
with data from this database.
The code samples would be very similar to the “Film” examples that are
available here: http://1t3xt.info/examples/classroom.php

2. “Understanding PDF”; a book that would cover the most important parts
of ISO-32000, but from the point of view of the iText developer. For
instance: whereas “Introducing iText” would simply explain how to use
AcroFields.setField(key, value); “Understanding PDF” would explain the
difference between AcroForm technology (dictionaries) and XFA (XML
forms). The code samples would be similar to the “Hello World” examples
in the “iText Classroom”; but the PDF syntax would be more important
than the iText source code.

3. “Mastering PDF with iText”; this book would cover selected topics.
For instance: RichMedia and PDF, OCSP and Timestamping, Portable
Packages,… This “book” probably shouldn’t be available in print; maybe
it could be offered for free for those people who have bought book 1
and/or 2.

Ideally, I should be able to combine writing these books with the
development of new functionality. That was possible when I wrote “iText
in Action”; I hope I find the time to do the same thing now.

Regardless of what the publisher says about these ideas, I’m starting to
write new tutorials on http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/tutorial.php
However, as the end result could be a set of books, the content of these
“tutorials” won’t be available for free. That’s why those pages are
protected with a password.

For the moment, there’s nothing to see yet (so please don’t ask for a
password right now). As soon as I’ve finished an outline, the core
developers will receive an account to have access to the new tutorials.
I’ll also need some other readers to review what I’m writing (for
instance: Alexis, you’d make a good reviewer).

Please let me know what you think about this. Suggestions are more than
welcome. I’ll keep you up to date on this list, and if I’m asked to
write a “book proposal“, I’ll probably post different versions of the
“Table Of Contents” for you to discuss.

best regards,
Bruno

Download Free PDF Samples of iText in Action

Manning offers two free PDF samples of iText in Action for download, enjoy it and have a preview.

• Sample Chapter 1
• Sample Chapter 3

What Chapter 1 said,

1 iText: when and why   3

1.1 The history of iText 5

1.2 iText: first contact 10

1.3 An almost-true story 14

1.4 Summary 29

What Chapter 3 said,

3 PDF: why and when   73

3.1 A document history 74

3.2 Types of PDF 79

3.3 PDF version history 85

3.4 Summary 95

How to use iText in Action

About iText in Action

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iText in Action will teach you about PDF, Adobe’s Portable Document Format, from a Java developer’s point of view. You’ll learn how to use iText in a Java/J2EE application for the production and/or manipulation of PDF documents. Along the way, you’ll become acquainted with lots of interesting PDF features and discover e-document functionalities you may not have known about before.

In addition to the many small code samples, iText in Action includes lots of XML-based, ready-made solutions that can easily be adapted and integrated into your projects.

If you’re a .NET developer using the C# or J# port of iText, iTextSharp or iText.NET, you can also benefit from this book, but you’ll have to adapt the examples.

How to use iText in Action

You can read this book chronologically, starting with the introductory part 1. Part 2 describes useful basic building blocks, and part 3 gets into iText’s core PDF functionality. You’ll finish with part 4, which discusses the interactive features of PDF.

If you haven’t convinced your project manager yet that PDF is the way to go, you’ll certainly benefit from reading chapters 1 and 3. It sums up some reasonable arguments that will help you help your manager make policy decisions regarding e-documents. Section 1.3 contains a roadmap to the ready-made solutions that are demonstrated throughout the book. The main function of this section is to offer you a menu composed of a series of screenshots, showing all kinds of documents: documents with flowing text, graphics, bookmarks, and so on. If you see something you like, you can use this book as a kind of ‘cookbook’ and jump to the ‘recipe’ that was used to create a similar document.

Readers who are new to iText will need to take the “Hello World” crash course in chapter 2. This chapter shows that iText can be used in many different ways. The first three chapters often refer to sections in parts 2, 3, and 4, where you’ll find an in-depth explanation of the specific functionality that is being introduced in one of the many “Hello World” examples.

You can also read iText in Action in random order or thematically, starting from the table of contents or the roadmap in chapter 1. Once you’re well acquainted with iText, you’ll probably use iText in Action as a reference manual, browsing for the many small standalone code samples that can be applied directly to your own code.

for details, please visit here.

P.S.

if you want to buy it online, please visit iText in Action on Amazon.

PDF Books-iText in Action: Creating and Manipulating PDF

iText in Action: Creating and Manipulating PDF (Paperback)

Imagine a publisher who wants to “stamp” his ebooks on the fly with the name of the buyer (to discourage sharing). Such a publisher would (and we know one who does) use iText for the task. Developers looking to enhance web- and other applications with dynamic PDF document generation and/or manipulation will find this book unique in content and readability. Based on ongoing examples that encourage learning “in action,” they will finally understand PDF and learn how to build applications that produce professional, high-quality PDF documents. While the basic functionality of iText is easy to acquire, this book lowers the learning curve for more advanced functionality. It explains how to use iText to create/manipulate PDF documents on-the-fly in one or more of the following situations:

Due to time or size, the PDF documents can’t be produced manually

The content of the document must be calculated or based on user input.

The content needs to be customized or personalized.

The PDF content needs to be served in a web environment.

Documents are to be created in “batch process” mode.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (December 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932394796
• ISBN-13: 978-1932394795
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches

All the examples are written in Java, but they can be easily adapted to .NET by developers using one of the .NET ports: iTextSharp (C#) or iText.NET (#J). While iText is a free Java library and the examples are written from the point of view of the Java developer, nine out of ten examples can be run by .NET developers with only minimal changes.

About the Author
Bruno Lowagie has been programming since he was twelve years old. He has a degree in civil architectural engineering and is the initial developer and one of the current maintainers of iText. He works at Ghent University, Belgium.