Question

Which of the mainstream Delphi report generators (if any) supports generating PDF files that comply with PDF/A standard? I’m mostly curious about FastReports and QuickReport.

Answer 1

We provided an open source report builder, to be used from code, which is able to produce PDF or even PDF/A compliant files.

You create your report from code, then you can preview it on the screen. You can then print or export the report as PDF. Note that the report drawing uses GDI+, even if you embed .emf files or TMetaFile in them: with antialiaising, they just look smooth on screen. There are some report-dedicated methods to create the report, but also a true Canvas property, in which you can draw whatever you want.

You can use the same class without the preview function, just to create a pdf file from some content.

It’s free, licensed under MPL/LGPL/GPL, and compiles and run from Delphi 6 up to XE. It’s 100% Unicode-ready, even before Delphi 2009.

In order to have your reports being compliant with the PDF/A standard, you must ensure that the ExportPDFA1 property is set to true. Only a sub-set of the font file (i.e. only used characters) will be joined to the pdf content, saving disk space. Therefore PDF/A files will be bigger than PDF files generated with the default options.

Reporting has just been enhanced (in our source code repository): now handle bookmarks, links, and document outline, and life-navigation within the report preview. The generated PDF file also handle those links and outline tree. Some issues were also fixed (about bitmaps or underlined text). And one bitmap will be stored only once in the PDF, if it’s drawn several times on the report. So make sure you’re using the latest source code repository version.