Over the past 10 years, we have always made it a habit to listen to our customers, especially when kicking off the development of a new release. Once you receive a request, or bug, more than once, you'd better do something about it.
However, during the last 3 to 4 years things have changed. Naturally we still listen to our customers, but Muhimbi is now its own biggest customer. What!?
Indeed, to the best of our knowledge, no one carries out more operations in a real-word production environment than we do in-house. Why is this? Well, our popular cloud based services, the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint Online, and the Muhimbi PDF Converter API and Server Platform, use the exact same engine that we ship alongside our on-premise products.
Because our Online customers fully depend on us, our data centres and our software, the responsibility to keep things up and running has shifted from our customers' IT departments, to our own operations team. Although our products have always been very stable and scalable, there were plenty of minor hiccups that we did not know about because it wasn't too much of a problem to our customers. However, when you run your own software at a very VERY large scale then all small things add up.
To cut a long story short, we monitor our online services like a hawk. Each and every issue, no matter how big or small, is recorded and analysed. If we can help it, we fix it. As a result we have improved and fixed dozens of issues in the new 8.4 release of the Muhimbi PDF API and Server Platform (on-premise).
Naturally we added some new functionality as well. The key changes are as follows:
- Support for PDF/A-3b in addition to existing support for PDF/A-1b and 2b.
- Support for 3rd party OCR engines.
- Support for TLS 1.2 throughout.
- Automatically generate named destinations based on PDF Bookmarks.
- Support for merging of PDF Portfolio files.
- Optionally unhide hidden Excel columns and rows during PDF conversion.
- PDF Conversion of Outlook contacts (in MSG Format).
- PDF Conversion of delivery and read receipts (in MSG Format).
- Support for targeting 'last page' when watermarking documents.
- Many improvements to Email, AutoCAD, MS-Word and HTML converters.
- New unattended installer.
A quick introduction for those not familiar with the product: The Muhimbi PDF Converter Services is an ‘on premises’ server based SDK that allows software developers to convert typical Office files to PDF format using a robust, scalable but friendly Web Services interface from Java, .NET, Ruby & PHP based solutions. It supports a large number of file types including MS-Office and ODF file formats as well as HTML, MSG (email), EML, AutoCAD and Image based files and is used by some of the largest organisations in the world for mission critical document conversions. In addition to converting documents, the product ships with a sophisticated watermarking engine, PDF Splitting and Merging facilities, an OCR facility and the ability to secure PDF files. Separate SharePoint and Cloud-based Subscription services are available as well.
When upgrading from a previous version, read this Knowledge Base article first.
The main changes and additions in the new version are as follows:
4145AutoCADFixUpgrade AutoCAD Converter3033AutoCADFixCad drawings converted into PDF have syntax issues2941AutoCADFixWhen AutoCAD conversions are running in parallel they sometimes fail1902AutoCADFixHebrew Font Rendering doesn't work for AutoCAD conversions3977ConversionNewAdd support for XLT and XLTX3610CoreFixPrint Spooler service is not started on DocumentConverterService startup3449CoreImprovementIncrease default file size limitation to 100MB3889CoreImprovementSuppress info logging for diagnostic requests1560CoreImprovementImprove Debug logging for PDF Splitting3517CoreImprovementExtract OCR text action does not log into the DocumentConvert.log file2140CoreImprovementImprove cleaning up of old Temp Files2934CoreImprovementMove Conversion Service to .net 4.04369CoreImprovementAdd support for TLS1.2 in Core Web Service4031CoreNewImplement Windows / System Temp and cache Folder cleaner3903CoreNewImplement Request specific regional settings (Date format, time zone etc)4407DocumentationImprovementUpdate documentation about FIPS 3907EmailFixMSG Converter - Content goes missing from beginning of line3324EmailFixMSG Converter - UTF-8/UTF-16 encoding issues2932EmailFixMSG Converter - Incorrect line spacing4135EmailFixOverflowException converting msg file4368EmailFixMSG Conversion - URLs containing # not converted correctly4376EmailFixSome embedded images in a MimeFile email are disappearing4308EmailFixMSG conversion - Image does not appear2117EmailFixFailed MSG Conversions leak files in Temp folder4174EmailImprovementMSG Converter - Fix 'sent date' when converting email drafts4377EmailImprovementMSG rendering errors when FitWidthScaleImagesOnly is used2802EmailNewMSG Converter - Make it possible to change page size and margins4066EmailNewMSG Converter - Add support for displaying of Contacts3976EmailNewConversion of MAPI report emails to PDF (Read receipts, delivery receipts)4364EmailNewReference error for msg file type containing excel attachment4067ExcelNewImplement facility to un-hide Excel Columns and Rows4217HTMLFixStrange letter spacing in pdf converted from html4210HTMLFixSome websites cannot be converted4304HTMLFixHTML based Email conversion is impossible for certain locales3397HTMLFixWebkit HTML Converter returns empty PDF when child process dies4289HTMLImprovementSystem crash under high HTML Conversion load4375HTMLImprovementAdd support for TLS1.2 in HtmlConverter4642ImageFixJPG files with invalid EXIF tags convert into blank PDF4032InfoPathFixInfoPath cache cleaner does not work on some systems4353InfoPathImprovementAdd support for TLS1.2 when fetching XSN files3187MergingFixMerged document cannot be saved3169MergingFixNamed destinations are duplicated in certain scenarios3152MergingFixNamed destinations are lost during merge3142MergingFixNamed Destinations with German 'umlaute' fail4069MergingFixPDLayoutDontCare error during merging3263MergingFixChinese character displayed incorrectly in merging error messages3148MergingFixPDF.ConvertAttachmentMode=RemoveAll doesn't appear to work4753MergingFixPdfNamedDestinationCollection exception during merging4745MergingFixLayering problems after merging certain documents4750MergingFixNullReferenceException in GetNodeCount while merging documents2791MS-WordFixDIP is not stripped for some MS-Word files2294MS-WordImprovementFix filename field in headers and footers when converting Word files734MS-WordImprovementFix conversion of Documents containing the ASK / FILLIN field3429OCRFixNullref exception in UnicodeTrueTypeFont.SetSymbols during OCR3428OCRFixNullRef Exception in ITrueTypeFont.GetCharWidth during OCR4245OCRFixGDI+' errors when carrying out OCR on certain documents4657OCRFixError while reading image's width during OCR3124OCRImprovementReturn PDF AND text in single OCR operation3082OCRNewAdd support for 3rd party OCR engines4317OCRNewCalculate and return number of pages for OCR operations2920PDFFixPDF/A Conversion - Validation Error - contains action of type launch1910PDFImprovementImprove support for merging Acrobat PDF Portfolio Files3109PDFNewAdd support for PDF/A-3B4737PHPImprovementFix PHP Soap libraries4143PHPImprovementUpdate PHP Proxies and sample code4138SetupFixDocument Converter Service installer does not open firewall port2632SetupImprovementReview and update unattended installer2555SetupNewAdd 'unattended (u)ninstallation chapter back to the admin guide.4734TOCFixToC generation fails if decimal separator is not '.' (period) for the locale3540TOCFixTable of Contents titles not respecting page-break-inside: avoid rule2860VisioFixVisio hangs on some files4187VisioFixSome Visio files are not converting3989WatermarkingFixFont errors when watermarking documents4236WatermarkingFixLayers' related problem when watermarking PDF3936WatermarkingImprovementAdd support for watermarking last page
For more information check out the following resources:
- Product Page.
- Brochure.
- FAQ & Knowledge Base.
- Release Notes.
- Administration Guide.
- User & Developer Guide.
- All PDF Converter Services related Blog Posts.
As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog, regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.
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Labels: News, pdf, PDF Converter Services
