PDFlib Block Plugin and PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS)

The PDFlib Block Plugin is used to prepare PDF documents for Block filling (personalization) with the PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS).

Preview PPS Block processing in Acrobat. The Plugin can generate previews of the Block filling process with PPS directly in Acrobat. The immediate preview allows designers to quickly review the results of PPS-filling their Block documents before submitting them to the server for processing. The preview PDF contains bookmarks, layers, and annotations with possible error messages as debugging and development aids. The preview feature speeds up development cycles and can also be used as an interactive test framework for trying PDFlib features.

Redesigned user interface and snap-to-grip. The user interface of the PDFlib Block Plugin has been restructured to facilitate access to the large number of existing and new Block properties. The new snap-to-grid feature is useful for quickly laying out out Blocks according to a design raster.

Additional Block properties. More Block properties have been added to the Block Plugin and PPS, e.g. for specifying transparency of text, image, or PDF contents placed in a Block.

Clone PDF/A or PDF/X status of the Block container. When generating Block previews based on PDF/A or PDF/X documents, the Block Plugin can clone all relevant aspects of the standard, e.g. standard identification, output intent, and metadata. If a Block filling operation in PDF/A or PDF/X cloning mode would violate the selected standard (e.g. because a default image uses RGB color space although the document does not contain a suitable output intent) an error message will be displayed. This way users can catch potential standard violations very early in the workflow.

Leverage PDFlib 8 features with Blocks. Relevant new features of PDFlib 8 such as text output for complex scripts and OpenType layout features can be activated directly with Block properties. For example, Blocks can be filled with Arabic or Hindi text.