LEADTOOLS Version 19 is here! It is one of the most highly-anticipated and feature-packed releases ever. LEAD Technologies is once again raising the bar with unique and innovative imaging technologies, frameworks and solutions, and continues to prove why they are The World Leader in Imaging SDKs.

Since there are so many new features in this new release, we will highlight the new and improved technologies in each engine over the next few days. Today, we will be starting with the Document Imaging SDK Technology in LEADTOOLS, which is headlined by the new Document Viewer and Document Converter frameworks for .NET and HTML5/JavaScript.

For July, we have published a white paper on using the LEADTOOLS Virtual Printer Driver to extend existing applications. The LEADTOOLS Virtual Printer Driver is one of the solutions LEADTOOLS provides to help developers streamline business processes and reduce human error. Additionally, the Virtual Printer Driver enables developers to connect legacy applications to new systems that reside either on location or in the cloud, even when the existing application does not include an API.

Extend Existing Applications with the LEADTOOLS Virtual Printer SDK

A common problem that faces many developers is extending existing applications when changing the underlying source code is not a possibility. As needs and systems change, there has to be a mechanism to add new functionality and maintain efficient workflows for end-users. The LEADTOOLS Virtual Printer SDK is one of several solutions LEADTOOLS provides to overcome this problem.

A Visual Studio console application project written in C# to implement a task printer based on the LEADTOOLS Virtual Printer is also available for download: LEADTOOLS V19 Virtual Printer Driver Sample

After reviewing the forums and responses to some surveys we recently send out, I noticed that many developers are looking for the best way to convert an image to a black & white PDF file. LEADTOOLS offers at least two solutions:

LEAD is continuously updating and adding new features to LEADTOOLS. One feature that was rolled into Version 19 after the initial release includes enhanced SVG support. This enhancement allows users to load document and vector formats as SVG, which can then be handed off to other parts of LEADTOOLS such as the Document Writers. In other words, you can convert from formats such as DOC, PDF, DWG, DXF, etc. to other document formats such as PDF/A, HTML, and SVG without rasterization or OCR.

In Convert a Word Document to PDF (C#), I attached a project to show how to do the conversion in .NET. Now I have attached a C/C++ version of the project that will convert vector and document formats to PDF.

Do you develop mobile apps for iOS or Android? If so, read up because this is pretty exciting stuff. Even if you aren't currently a mobile app developer, chances are you've thought about it and this might pique your interest even more. LEADTOOLS 19 has been released for Android, iOS, and OS X development platforms!

Below is a summary of the big stuff included in this release. We'll go into more details on some of the features in the coming weeks, such as the improvements we made to the OCR and Barcode engines.