RasterMaster supports many document file formats in most of its viewing, converting, and RasterMaster® SDK products.

The supported file formats include:

  • PDF - Adobe portable file
  • PCL - Hewlett Packard printer format
  • DOC - Microsoft Word processor format
  • XLS - Microsoft Excel spreadsheet format
  • PPT - Microsoft PowerPoint presentation format
  • RTF - Rich text file format
  • AFP and MODCA - IBM advanced printing format

These formats, like any other file formats supported by RasterMaster, are read in using a call such as IMG_decompress_bitmap(String, int). RasterMaster auto-detects the file format so there is no need to specify which format you are reading. You don’t even need a specific extension.

These formats contain graphics commands such as line and text drawing. This differs from bitmap formats that are a 2-dimensional array of bytes forming a picture. Normally, documents are drawn or rendered to a bitmap in RasterMaster Java, but RasterMaster Java can also produce searchable text documents. The PDF file created can be searched for words or phrases with the use of a text searching application.

Please note that the only currently supported input formats for creating searchable PDF output are AFP/MO:DCA, PTOCA, PCL, RTF, DOC(MS Word), and MS Excel files. For more information on creating PDF files that are text searchable, please see Extracting Text for Searchable PDF output.

The rendering size for the bitmap can be set by the following call to RasterMaster’s library:

IMGLOW_set_document_input(int dpi, int bits_pix, int format);

This method sets the destination size for saving PDF files. The xsize and ysize are the output sizes in points. A point is 1/72 of an inch. Only PDF, PCL, and AFP file formats can be saved. The PCL and AFP file formats are saved as bitmap. The PDF file format can be saved as bitmap or searchable text. You can specify the output size with PDF using the IMGLOW_set_pdf_output(int, int) call.