Innovations / improvements PDFmdx Version 3.18.0:

• Improved text extraction – Thanks to the improved test extraction, we were able to improve the text extraction on the basis of problematic PDFs provided by customers. This also made certain “problematic” PDFs processable – e.g .: phantom spaces were inserted for very small text, the “.” or “,” output shifted, or horizontal dividing lines created by strung together “_” prevented reading in these lines.

• Completed PDF forms Process – Forms are now “rendered”. The PDF is “flattened” and converted into a normal, no longer changeable PDF. Thus, the fields can be read out and processed by PDFmdx like with any other PDF.

• New counter variables for the metadata output -% COUNTER_GLOBAL% – A “global” counter for which a start value can be specified. This is increased each time a data record is output. % COUNTER_LOCAL% – the “local” counter, is only incremented for the data records of the current processing and starts with each processing job again at 1.

• Performance optimization when using the file name to select the layout directly via the name and not via conditions.

• PDFmdx Editor – Split Test Function – is now based on the same routine as the real processing. Error messages are displayed directly and correspond to the error messages that are also output during processing.

• PDFmdx Editor – Show fields / sliding groups on other pages – Usually fields are positioned on a specific page of the sample document. However, fields can also be read out on other or more pages, e.g. when reading out position data via sliding groups / subgroups. In order to be able to check how / where the fields are positioned on other pages, or which values ??are read out for “floating fields”, there is now a function to show the positioned fields on other pages. This display is automatically deactivated when you switch to another page. By & lt; CTRL & gt; + & lt; Up / Down Arrow & gt; the fields can also be moved vertically. Along with the & lt; Shift & gt; Key with larger increments. If you click in a displayed field, the field name and the text read out are displayed in the status line.

• Configuration of the output name – If an illegal character is used in the field for the PDF output file name, e.g. uses a “\”, characters that are not allowed are automatically replaced by a “_” during processing.

• PDF / A conversion – The PDF / A output is now based on the full functionality of our PDF / A converter component .

• ZUGFeRD XML via variables – The variables available via PDFmdx can be used to define the ZUGFeRD XML file to be embedded.

• Combining PDF files – The new “Combine” function allows you to combine additional PDF files with the processed file to form a single PDF.

Combining functions:

• • “Combine” allows you to combine one or more PDFs with the file generated via PDFmdx to form a complete PDF.
  • The order of the files to be merged can be specified via a list.
  • Criteria (AND / OR / NOT) can be used to decide on the basis of texts read from the document whether or not a “merge” should take place.
  • Several different “merge lists” can be created. Such a list can be linked to a specific layout. A layout can be recognized and selected using criteria.
  • In the merge list, you can either use fixed files or paths / names that are dynamically generated during processing using texts read from the document.

• New implementation of the email function:
  • A new email component has been implemented for sending and email processing.
  • This means that all current encryption protocols (SSL2, SSL3, TLS1, TLS1.1, TLS1.2) are supported. At the beginning of communication with the SMTP email server, the most suitable and supported protocol is automatically negotiated and determined.
  • Max. Configurable size of the email : When sending email, there is an option to combine all emails that are to be sent to the same email address into a single email message. There is now a separate parameter to limit the size of a single combined message, e.g .: to 10MB, If the value for a message is exceeded, it is divided into several emails so that the maximum set size is not exceeded.

• • • 

• • The PDFmdx processor now has its own logging / protocol function for sending emails. This can be activated individually for the successfully sent as well as for the error mail. The storage path can also be configured.

• • • 
  • The logged emails are saved as EML files in two configurable folders (Success / Failure). An XML file with metadata and error message is also created for an error email. A separate subfolder can be created for each day to store the successfully sent email.
  • Display of the sent / error email in the PDFmdx processor as a list, accessible via 2 buttons. Functions: sorting of the list by date / time, to, subject, error message, open folder, display email message, open file attachment. Delete individual messages, delete all messages.

 

Corrections PDFmdx version 3.18.0:

• Read barcodes were not assigned to variables and therefore not written to the metadata file.
• Text that has been read out was not prepared according to the configuration for variables in different places.
• Barcodes could not be read in PDF with page rotation – the display page rotation was not taken into account.
• “Received value” function did not receive the values ??for the sub-records.
• MRC-PDF (Mixed Raster Content) could not be processed. A defective PDF was issued.
• PDFmdx Service Processor – The start at a specified / repeated time did not work.
• PDFmdx processor – During parallel processing, sometimes it was not possible to write to the metadata XLS (X) because it was still open and therefore blocked by another process.
• PDFmdx Editor – import of templates – query after overwriting always came even if no file should be overwritten.
• PDFmdx Editor – First start without template & amp; Layout, then import a template – no automatic refresh was performed and the imported templates & amp; Layouts were not visible.
• PDFmdx Editor – When moving / copying a layout from one template to another, no query came up that a layout with the same name already existed.
• PDFmdx Editor – Deleting a layout with multiple linked conditions. The AND / OR nodes were retained in the editor and were not automatically cleaned up, which caused processing problems.
• PDFmdx Editor – Images in the HTML body were not inserted into the email when the email was merged to the same recipient and were missing in the sent message.
• Sending emails – If an error occurred when sending emails under certain conditions, processing was aborted or the service was stopped. For this reason, the sending of emails has been re-implemented and logging of successful and error emails has been added. (see innovations).

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New features PDFmdx template editor:

• Update of all PDFmdx basic components: Our general basic components PDF2PDFA, PDF2DOCX, PDFSign, PDFCompressor – were brought up to date.

• Templates / template groups: An additional “group” level has been implemented to enable clarity and management of a large number of templates. This allows templates to be grouped together. In the PDFmdx Editor, the groups form the top level in the tree view. Groups can – be created, the name changed, deleted or moved up and down. Templates of a selected group can be exported or imported as a whole or individually. Templates in a group can be moved to a different or a new group.

 

• E-Mail – Configuration via profiles: Several email configurations can now be created in one template. The e-mail configurations are managed using profiles with names. E-mail profiles can be created, copied, renamed and deleted. A specific email profile can be assigned to the email conditions. This means that not only the e-mail function itself, but also the e-mail profile to be used can be controlled via conditions.

 

• E-Mail – Use of variables for attachments: Up to now, only fix selectable and therefore predefined attachments could be sent with the PDFmdx main document by email. Now it is also possible to use variables for the path and file name of the additional attachments. An option can be used to determine whether, if an attachment does not exist or cannot be found, the email is sent anyway, or whether it should be treated as an error. During configuration, a file is first selected, inserted into the list, then edited and the variables added.

• E-Mail – Main document always as the first appendix: When sending an e-mail, additional attachments can be sent in addition to the main document generated via PDFmdx. Now the main document generated by PDFmdx is always inserted as the first attachment, the other additional attachments are always inserted after.

• Sliding group over 2 pages: With some documents it can happen that a data record of a sliding group begins on one page and continues on the next page. Up to now, sliding groups have only been identified via a condition (DG) for the start of the group. The data record is recognized, but cannot be read out completely, as part of it is on the following page. In order to include the information on the following page for such cases, at least two “DG” conditions with OR / OR link are required. One for the beginning and one for the rest of the record on the next page. This means that the entire data record is recognized and processed, even if it is on separate pages.

• Metadaten as XLS: Some downstream applications can only process the old XLS and not the current XLSX format. That is why the XLS format for the metadata output has now been implemented again.

• New PDF preview functions – display text layer / display text blocks: A scanned PDF that has been made searchable via OCR consists of both an image and a text layer. The image plane shows that only the scanned document. From this point of view it cannot be seen whether, where or which text is behind it. In the PDFmdx Editor preview there is now the option of showing only the text layer and hiding the image layer, as well as the option of showing the boundaries of the text blocks as green rectangles for each of these displays. This makes it easy and quick to see which text is available and where exactly the text blocks are located.

 

• Fields / Variables – Replacement of values via XLSX table: Bisher konnte nur eine CSV Datei verwendet werden um die Werte von Feldern/Variablen zu ersetzen. Jetzt ist es auch möglich eine XLSX Datei zu verwenden. Konfiguriert wird der Name der Spalte für den Suchschlüssel sowie die Spalte für den Ersatzwert.

• Counter as a stamp variable: There is now also a counter variable for text or barcode stamps. An option can be used to configure whether the counter should be increased when it is used several times within the document or only with each new document. The start value can also be specified.

 

• Visual PDF signature – support for transparent image files: With the current version, transparent image files (PNG, TIFF) can also be used for the visual representation of the PDF signature.

• Export templates as PMDX individual data: Previously, several or all templates could only be exported as a single PMDX file. or if you wanted to export several or specific templates as individual files, this had to be done individually for each template. Now, via an option from a template group, each template contained in the group can also be exported individually as a separate PMDX file. The template name is used as the file name.

 

Innovations PDFmdx processing:

• Recognition and export of a ZUGFeRD XML file contained in the PDF: This option can be activated for the PDFmdx job. Each PDF file to be processed is checked in advance to determine whether it contains a ZUGFeRD XML file. If such an XML is contained in the PDF as an attachment, the XML is extracted from the PDF and saved in the configured folder under the PDF name with the extension * .XML. If the option “Move PDF” has been activated, the PDF will also be moved to this folder and will not be processed by PDFmdx.

• Activate all layouts automatically: If a new layout is added to a template, this layout must also be activated in the PDFmdx processor during the job. Up until now, this had to be done manually and was sometimes “forgotten” so that the newly created layout is not recognized. For a template as well as for the job configuration there is now an option to activate all layouts automatically. This means that all newly added layouts are always automatically activated and can no longer be “forgotten”.

 

• Error log with header: In order to be able to interpret the content of the individual columns of the error log (Error.csv) more easily, a header line with the names of the columns was inserted to get a conclusion about the information of the fields.

 

PDFmdx corrections:

• E-Mail HTML Body – File names for images can now contain spaces.
• Anchor field not found – Linked fields now remain empty and are not assigned any values.
• Fuzzy anchor search function has been improved.
• Error message – XLSX blocked: Over time, an XLSX metadata file can become very large. It has happened that opening and writing this XLSX took longer and several processes wanted to access this file. This led to error messages, access was not possible because the XLSX was still blocked by another process. This problem has been resolved. Nevertheless, care should be taken to ensure that such metadata files do not become unnecessarily large.
• Sliding group – Recognition was not possible with PDF with “Display Rotation”.

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