Simon Wilkins

Developer of IronPDF - which is a fun new way for coders to make PDFs. #IronPDF #CSharp #PHP #Python #dotNet #code #mono #PDF # VisualStudioPDF is everywhere - in our inboxes, on our desktops… its how people share documents so that they cant be changed. Every user loves PDFs - even your grandparents might use it…. but there is one demographic who hates PDFs - and that is software developers.To understand - PDFs are not like normal documents - they are more a set of printer instructions that Acrobat reader "prints" onto your screen. It guarantees a nice look and feel - but its horrible to work with behind the scenes. The PDF format has evolved for decades, with almost little openness nor standards until the past few years. Backwards compatibility attempts have made the file format a complete minefield…. its literally like looking at a hard disk… and then scanning though the file allocation table for lists for printer instructions in part-documented formats. The binary is so complicated that to date - do single PHP developer has managed to make a fully functional PDF reader or interpreter - they all fail at one point or another. My challenge as a developer is to put on my "Iron" suit glory (em…ok) and try to make developing PDFs fun. … (http://ironpdf.com)My Hypothesis: The only way i can think to do that is to bypass the PDF file format all together. Im sorry arable - it really is no fun. I'm working on IronPDF - a new project for C# / CLR / .Net development which i then hope to port to PHP, Java, Python and all your other favorite languages. (I just like c# best because of visual studio… thanks for the 2015 community edition Microsoft - you did yourself ad the world a solid). Iron PDF lets developers create PDFs from any there language / file format they know…. now how to write HTML….zap… its a PDF. Either by url or by direct string input. Have a doc, docx, Image, RTF… you name it - we are going to make it PDF-able in microseconds - and highest print quality… The next this of the equation will be PDF reading… and again… lets bypass the PDF file format altogether…. to read PDFs as HTML, RTF, text, images, anything with a standards that actually makes sense. So far - I'm most pumped about HTML because PDF and HTML5 have so much in common - like editable forms, visual strong, and a layout first approach. (by this i mean 10% of time is focused on content, and 90% debugging the css, right?) So far i ahem gotten as far as HTMLTOPDF for C# and ASPXtoPDF fo