iText is a

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

for creating and manipulating

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

files in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

and.NET. iText was written by Bruno Lowagie. The source code was initially distributed as open source under the

Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird The MPL license is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the conce ...

or the GNU Library General Public License open source licenses. However, as of version 5.0.0 (released Dec 7, 2009) it is distributed under the

Affero General Public License The Affero General Public License (Affero GPL and informally Affero License) is a free software license. The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002, and based on the GNU General Pu ...

version 3. A fork of the LGPL/MPL licensed version of iText is currently being actively maintained as the OpenPDF library on GitHub. iText is also available through a

proprietary license Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and inte ...

, distributed by iText Software NV. iText provides support for advanced PDF features such as PKI-based signatures, 40-bit and 128-bit encryption,

colour correction Color correction is a process used in stage lighting, photography, television, cinematography, and other disciplines, which uses color gels, or filters, to alter the overall color of the light. Typically the light color is measured on a scale kno ...

, Tagged PDF, PDF forms (AcroForms), PDF/X, colour management via ICC profiles, and

barcodes A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or on ...

, and is used by several products and services, including

Eclipse BIRT The Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) Project is an open source software project that provides reporting and business intelligence capabilities for rich client and web applications, especially those based on Java and Java EE. BI ...

Jasper Reports Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases,Kostov, R. I. 2010. Review on the mineralogical systematics of jasper and related rocks. – Archaeometry Workshop, 7, 3, 209-213PDF/ref ...

, JBoss Seam,

Windward Reports Windward Studios is a software development company based in Boulder, Colorado. The company began in 1996 with the release of Enemy Nations, a popular Real-Time strategy game, before focusing on its reporting software program Windward Reports. ...

, and pdftk.

History

iText (formerly ''rugPdf'') was developed by Bruno Lowagie in the winter of 1998 as an in-house project at

Ghent University Ghent University ( nl, Universiteit Gent, abbreviated as UGent) is a public research university located in Ghent, Belgium. Established before the state of Belgium itself, the university was founded by the Dutch King William I in 1817, whe ...

to create a PDF document application for the student administration. Preliminary versions lacked most modern functionality, initially only featuring the ability to read and write PDF files, and required developers to be knowledgeable of PDF syntax, objects, operators, and operands to work with the library. Leonard Rosenthol, PDF Architect at

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for '' mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of ...

, lists iText as one of the early milestones in the history of the openness of PDF. In 1999, Lowagie disbanded the rugPdf code and wrote the new library named iText. Lowagie created iText as a library that Java developers could use to create PDF documents without knowing PDF syntax and released it as a

Free and Open Source Software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

(FOSS) product on February 14, 2000. In the summer of 2000, Paulo Soares joined the project and is now considered one of the main developers. In late 2008, iText became available for proprietary license, and in early 2009, iText Software Corp. was formed to be the worldwide licensor of iText products. iText has since been ported to the . NET Framework under the name iTextSharp, written in C#. While it has a separate codebase, it is synchronised to the main iText release schedule. In 2020, iText celebrated 20 years of iText code with the release of iText 7.1.10.

ISO standards support

iText adheres to most modern day PDF standards, including: * ISO 32000-1 (PDF 1.7) * ISO 19005 (

PDF/A PDF/A is an ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for use in the archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents. PDF/A differs from PDF by prohibiting features unsuitable for long-term archivi ...

) * ISO 14289 (

PDF/UA PDF/UA (PDF/Universal Accessibility), formally ISO 14289, is an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard for accessible PDF technology. A technical specification intended for developers implementing PDF writing and processing ...

)

Licensing

iText was originally released under the MPL/LGPL. On December 1, 2009, with the release of iText 5, the license was switched to the

v3. Projects that did not want to provide their source code (as required by the AGPL) could either purchase a commercial license to iText 5 or continue using previous versions of iText under the MPL/LGPL. iText Group NV claims that during the due diligence process to prepare for iText 5, several IP issues with iText 2 were discovered and fixed.

Forks

* OpenPDF is an active open source project released under LGPL and MPL, that is based on a fork of iText.

Awards

In 2007, ''SOA World Magazine'' listed iText as one of the ten Open Source solutions enterprises should be using.

James Gosling James Gosling (born May 19, 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language. Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for the conception ...

praised the iText library, using it in a new edition of Huckster. ''The New York Times'' also used iText to create PDF versions of their

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

articles. In 2011, iText was featured at Devoxx (The Java community conference). In 2013, Deloitte nominated the iText Software Group for the Technology Fast 50 Award in the Benelux. The company was ranked 10th in the Benelux and Third in Belgium. In 2014, iText won the BelCham Entrepreneurship Award in the category "Most Promising Company of the Year" and Deloitte recognized iText Group NV as the fastest growing technology company in Belgium. Subsequently, the company was ranked #28 in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 in the EMEA region. iText was also featured on the PDF Days in Cologne, Washington DC in New York, on Java One in San Francisco, on Devoxx in Antwerp, and many other events. In 2017, iText won the international Business Awards - "Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year - under 100 employees 2017" iText is proud to be honored with a second Silver Stevie in the International Business Awards. This year we are recognized as the "Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year—under 100 employees". In 2017 IT person of the Year — 2017 For the second year in a row, our Founder, Bruno Lowagie, was selected as one of the nominees on the Long List of the Belgian IT Person of the Year Award by Computable In 2017, the American Business Awards For the third time in a row, iText has won a Bronze Stevie in the American Business Awards in the category "Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year." In 2017/18, the ITEXT GROUP won "The ELITE Award for Growth Strategy of the Year". In 2018 - Inc. 5000 Europe Award 2018 For the 4th year in a row, iText made the Inc. 5000 Europe list, which is made up of the fastest growing private companies in Europe. In 2019, iText won a Silver Stevie in the American Business Awards for "Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year - under 100 employees". In addition to the ABA win, iText was a National Winner of "Growth Strategy of the Year" at the European Business Awards.

References

External links

*{{official, https://itextpdf.com Free PDF software Free typesetting software Free software programmed in C Sharp Free software programmed in Java (programming language) Java platform Java (programming language) libraries C Sharp libraries Software using the GNU AGPL license