Monday 31 October 2011

What News About Dysprosium?

(For the latest PDF files Merger Software please have a look at the top of the left margin, inside the red box.) This is an obsolete content. Some updates can be find at the bottom of this post. I promised a release of Dysprosium Suite before the end of this 2011. I could not eliminate a serious hurdle on the way. I could not find a PDF viewer that seamlessly joins to Java. I mean a free viewer. There had been an excellent free Java viewer by Adobe developed ten years ago. It means it is based at best on works started before the millennium. It works still perfect if your created PDF be of the type you might create by the latest LaTeX tools (such as MiKTex) or by Adobe Professional tools. It does not even load a blank page which is not created in this way. But most of the people use everything to create PDF; such as, Google Docs, or Open Office, and many scanner to PDF software. Such cases crashes the Adobe Java viewer. Adobe for unknown reasons did not continue the development of that software, and its present free software SDK is pure C++. I worked to switch to that tool but there is a further hurdle since this SDK utilizes MFC proprietary libraries and include files. I tested every available claimed free Java PDF viewer, but actually they all have a mistake. They are not Java Swing. Adobe viewer is a pure Java Swing. It is so malleable that you can give them the "group layout;" a very Java Swingish layout. But I succeeded in pushing the limit of merge to astonishing 3.5GB in 64 bits versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8, with enough RAM memory. I had 32GB installed and put 4GB of it available for Java heap. CPU was quad core and never exceeded in 10% usage for each core. FSB was 1600MHz. This is the biggest PDF file you might find. The other reason that I did not switch to C++ is the belief that I have on Java programming. It is much more natural than C++. (I am a C language fanatic, but not C++) Well, C# is somehow Java. But it is not free, for full blood development. (It was a strategic mistake, in terms of nerds commenting, that Sun pushed against usage of Java by Microsoft. Otherwise, there could be more harmony in the present sphere of development tools.) Switching to C++, or to C# will change my work as a retired person to a full time professional developer. I am going to create a separate package with Adobe Java viewer with no guarantee of being usable on loading every PDF. I am going to develop one without viewer, besides. Please have a look at the snapshot.
It is a document created by the LaTeX (using MiKTeX). Book includes extreme fonts and sophisticated images. All 74 pages are loaded nicely. Yellow color has been used to create contrast for this demo. The next document is a one page document created by Open Office. Only one word is written on it. It dispatches error upon loading.
There was, another disappointment, too, in lack of much progress in breaking the password of PDF. I was interested in its mathematical side. A brute force multi threading could break a password of 5-character length created out of 64 characters in a reasonable time. Hence, we have "Remove Password" button (on condition that you have the owner's password) but not the "Unlock Password" button.
Update, May 2016 : Dysprosium (Dolce edition) has been released (please click) based on iText from mid of April 2014 and smoothly on a nightly basis added more features and now I have deprecated many scattered pieces of PDF utilities I already released. There are so many features that I cannot write complete instructions for all of them. From other previous pieces only Signature manager has been remained to be integrated. I sorted out PDF viewer problem somehow satisfactorily.)
(updated : 26/May/2016) I have had over 60,000 downloads from 187 countries. All around the world, only 1 country in South America (French Guiana) and 1 countries in Asia (Democratic North Korea ) have not used Dysprosium Software, yet. The remaing countries not downloaded to this date (less than 10) are from the central Africa and perhaps some very small Island countries.
(Deprecated Paragraph : People contacted me regarding not fulfilling promises in creating an integrated software for different pieces of dysprosium in on single -and perhaps bloated- suite. My friend Grant Hardy is too busy with electronics and doesn't come around. Phoenix  is also has committed himself in different web developments. I have been left alone and I am too old and feeble, but have progressed in some areas. For example, I have created a Complex Polynomial Calculator; download here. I postpone my promises towards end of this year. We had some joy with majority of algorithms in recovering lost owner's passwords. Well, I succeeded in a relatively fast password cracker but won't publish it. People who have lost their password might like to use other things available out there. We fulfilled all  promises at this date 26/May/2016.)