I would rec against buying software from this company. I've now logged four bugs in their PDF product.
I'm sure it's useful for some things - but it is very inconsistent, buggy and if I had a choice, I'd never use it again. Unfortunately it's the only product on the market that can render SVG inside a PDF - so I'm stuck with it.
The following bugs were initially denied by ABCpdf support. I was wrong, they were right type of issue resolution. To their credit they managed to fix 1 of the issues, but they deny the existence of all other issues:
Fatal ExecutionExceptions
1) ABCpdf6 is crashing the .Net Runtime with Fatal ExecutionExceptions. If anyone has encountered an ExecutionException they know this is about as bad as it gets - it crashes the .Net runtime, it crashes the web server etc. etc. etc. Websupergoo support denied the existence of this issue for months. To reproduce this issue, download ABCpdf6, download .Net 3.5 SP1, run a project in VS2008 and hit stop button half way through some long process. Restart the application ... kaboom explosion ... Well guess what - they figured it out and fixed it in ABCpdf7.
Line Counts Fail
2) ABCpdf7 is not capable of counting the number of lines of text that have been written to a text area. Moreover, Websupergoo support denies this is an issue -> actually suggesting I use the line counts for another VERY important part of my application. I've uploaded an example of the incorrect line counts at my live space here:
http://cid-cd836a97f80e0c35.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/HeightProblemExample.zip
Text Height Methods Fail
3) ABCpdf7 is not capable of determining with accuracy the dimensions of text that has been written to a text area (esp when line spacing is specified). Moreover, Websupergoo support denies this is an issue -> they suggest I use line counts (which are also broken) to determine the height of a text area. They are morons, they don't read their support requests, and they are incapable of resolving any problems in what would be considered a reasonable amount of time. I've uploaded an example of the height calculation issues at my live space here:
http://cid-cd836a97f80e0c35.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/HeightProblemExample.zip
Cache is Completely Broken
4) ABCpdf6 is not capable of clearing it's cache properly, moreover, cache settings that Websupergoo claims to do things - do not do what they say they do. Websupergoo support denies this issue, are insulting by pointing users to obvious documentation - but even when all the settings are setup precisely to their requirements we still have to reboot the webserver to clear the cache. Unfortunately I don't have an example of this behavior - but you can see for yourself by going to their site and merely running the cache examples. It does not work consistently at all.
As to not complain complain complain - I assume idiots will always be idiots and business people will sell pretty much anything any idiot (like me) are willing to buy at the highest cost possible.
Solution To Text Height issues:
I'm providing a solution to accurately predict the height of text in ABCpdf7. Websupergoo is incapable of doing this - therefore - I've been forced to apply some really ugly inefficient methodolgy to correct their issue. I've uploaded an example of the fix to my live space here:
http://cid-cd836a97f80e0c35.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/TextHeightSolution.zip
I am purposely blasting this group as they have provided such low quality support. Every reply is insulting and the only way to get them to take your requests seriously is to kick and scream, kick and scream, kick and scream. May be at some point I'll get to chat with their top level support people - but even at that - these people deny the issues in their application and do not help users move forward.
If you don't believe me take a look at the examples they provide with the ABCpdf7 trial download. 1988 called and they want their coding conventions back!
Over And Out
2 comments:
Hi, I feel your pain regarding abcPDF, I found your blog trying to resolve issue number 4
"Cache is Completely Broken". I have now found the solution to my caching issue and it may help you also, if your retrieving a page with static querystring (for instance I was using page.aspx?sessionid=SESSIONID which could yeild different content (mine did) it caches, but if you modify this query string it will work, all you have to do is append &Version=DateTime.Now.ToString() (or any unique key/value) on each request so page.aspx?Sessionid=Sessionid&Version=UNIQUEVALUEPERREQUEST i.e. datetime.now.tostring() it should resolve your issue, hope this helps..
Agreed putting a random query string variable in is a decent work around - my point here is that we should not have to do this.
Thanks for your contribution. BTW - I have work arounds for a lot of the bugs and don't mind providing help.
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