This section describes how to upgrade from FormDirector 2 to FormDirector 3.  While generally you'll be able to replace  FormDirector 2 with FormDirector 3,   there are a few important changes you may need to consider. This section provides information about those changes.

Changes and New Properties/Methods

FormDirector 3 introduces changes to the its API as described in this section.

Required Changes

Licensing

The FormDirector runtime licensing scheme is changed completely in V3, but you can replace the existing with at most 3 lines of code. See Upgrading Runtime Licensing for code examples.

In addition, Accusoft.FormDirector.License property is renamed to Accusoft.FormDirector.Licensing, to provide a consistent interface with our other products.

Recommended Changes

Image Transfer

There are several different ways to import and export image data into the FormDirector class. In V3, in addition to the existing methods, we have provided new interfaces to achieve that between FormDirector and other applicable Accusoft components. These new methods are recommended for their ease of use to prevent memory leaks.

Export

void TemplateImage.CopyTo(System.Object Destination);

Import

Importing image data to a TemplateImage object is achieved by passing a TemplateImage object as the input of the same export methods called by another Accusoft object. The TemplateImage object has to be instantiated before passed in.

Note that although TemplateImage class supports exporting using CopyTo() only, it does support importing using TransferTo() and CopyTo() initiated by another object.

New Features

• The method GetTemplateHashCode() has been added to the API, to determine when the template images in the form definitions or form set have changed. FormFix uses the hash code to determine if the template images have changed, requiring it to recompute Form Set Analysis data. FormFix caches Form Set Analysis data, rather than recomputing it on each run, to save time during forms processing.

If you encounter any porting issues, please contact Support for assistance.