We have hinted about it. We have shared bits of information here and there. And in at least one post we’ve said it was coming soon. The wait is over, LEADTOOLS 18 has been released! The new LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ native libraries for WinRT, iOS, OS X, Android and Linux are certainly the marquee update in this exciting release, but there are also many enhancements within the LEADTOOLS Document, Medical and Multimedia technology for Win32/64, .NET and HTML5.

LEADTOOLS Anywhere™

LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ extends LEAD Technologies' award winning LEADTOOLS Imaging SDKs to every major development platform. This initiative began last year with the release of SDKs for HTML5 and WinRT. The HTML5 SDKs made it possible to develop zero footprint web applications and WinRT laid the necessary foundation for porting LEADTOOLS to other native platforms. With LEADTOOLS 18, LEAD has further expanded the reach of its Imaging SDKs by offering native libraries for iOS, OS X, Android and Linux development. All core LEADTOOLS imaging technology is natively supported in each of these platforms, including viewing, annotation and markup, OCR, OMR, forms processing, 1D and 2D barcode, PDF, DICOM and support for over 150 file formats and 200 image processing functions.

The LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ cross platform libraries in LEADTOOLS V18 have been very popular since their release earlier this year. LEAD continues to expand its reach by adding new development platforms and interfaces for Windows Phone 8 and Linux.

Click on the headers below for more a more detailed list of all the features supported by each interface.

Displaying multi-page documents in a zero-footprint web application can be a challenge because of the limitations associated with the <img> tag, which can only display a single image. A common solution is to implement a separate thumbnail viewer and attach JavaScript listener events to change the displayed image in your main "viewer." A more advanced solution may involve detecting the scroll position and modifying the DOM to create a continuously scrolling viewer. Those are both great for any file with multiple pages, but what if you want to take full advantage of more advanced file format features such as PDF bookmarks and hyperlinks?

Many applications don't bother supporting the PDF file format and assume you want to use a third party plug-in to display it. However, the LEADTOOLS HTML5 SDK includes support for not only rasterizing the PDF into an image, but also reading the text, hyperlinks and embedded thumbnails so that you can develop a fully-featured, zero-footprint PDF viewer application! Our engineers are very proud of this functionality and have created the HTML5 PDF Thumbnails and Bookmarks demo so you can see the amazing technology LEADTOOLS has to offer. Additionally, it gives you a huge head start on developing your application since the source code for this demo (and all of our other HTML5 demos) is included with the free, fully-functional LEADTOOLS Evaluation download

Want to hear a cool fact? LEADTOOLS Version 18 was released one year ago (January 30th, 2013). So to celebrate V18's first birthday, LEAD is giving you a present! Today we released a major update to LEADTOOLS Version 18, highlighted by many new features and enhancements to the entire Document, Medical, Multimedia and Imaging product lines.

There is a lot to be said about this release, so your best bet is to check out the press release or see a list of all the new features and enhancements. We hope you enjoy this update and join us in saying "happy birthday LEADTOOLS V18!"

This month, we have published a white paper on the new LEADTOOLS HL7 SDK technology that was added in Version 19. A versatile and popular messaging standard for medical applications, HL7 truly broadens the scope of LEADTOOLS SDKs. Since HL7 is a messaging standard for interoperability between any healthcare application, this new library within LEADTOOLS V19 can be used across the board in imaging (PACS) and non-imaging (EHR, RIS, HIS, billing, patient tracking, etc.) applications alike.

If you are developing any kind of application for the healthcare industry, this white paper is especially relevant as HL7 is already the worldwide messaging standard for the exchange of patient care and clinical information. We hope you enjoy this informative read about such an important standard, its general uses and how customers are using LEADTOOLS to implement it.