While PDFTable and PDFDataTableSource ease the way to render tables in your PDF documents on Desktop, Web, Raspberry Pi and Console projects (iOS to come!) and are the big new features for PDFDocument in Xojo 2022r3, that’s not all that improved. There are additional features added to PDFDocument you might find helpful such as more control while using PDFForm and improvements to dealing with TOC indexes. Learn more about how to get advantage of these additions!
More Control with PDFForm Controls
It is possible to add forms to your PDF documents using controls as text fields, text areas, list boxes, radio buttons, check boxes, popup menus, combo boxes, etc. Starting with Xojo 2022r3 you’ll be able to set if the items of PDFComboBox, PDFListBox and PDFPopupMenu are displayed sorted or as they were added using the Boolean IsSorted property.
As for the PDFTextArea and PDFTextField controls, there is a new property AllowSpellChecking so you can set if these will enable spell check or not. And in the case of the PDFTextField, it is also possible to set the HasPassword property so the text typed by the user is substituted in the PDF document with the usual replacement character, hiding what the user is typing from prying eyes!
Dealing with TOC Indexes
Lastly, there are also improvements to dealing with TOC creation in your PDF documents. For example, you can get now the Parent instance from a PDFToc entry through the Parent property; and there are new methods to get all the child items hanging from a PDFTOCEntry —Entries() As PDFTOCEntry()— and to remove existing entries from a PDFTOCEntry instance: PDFTOCEntry.RemoveEntry(ParamArray entries As PDFTOCEntry) and PDFTOCEntry.RemoveEntry(entries() as PDFTOCEntry).
Javier Menendez is an engineer at Xojo and has been using Xojo since 1998. He lives in Castellón, Spain and hosts regular Xojo hangouts en español. Ask Javier questions on Twitter at @XojoES or on the Xojo Forum.