The Best iText Questions on StackOverflow

A couple of years ago, I decided to self-publish new books about iText, as opposed to working with
a publisher as I did before for the “iText in Action” books. This led to a book about digital signatures
that is available for download¹ on the iText site, and a book called “The ABC of PDF”² published on
LeanPub. The goal of “The ABC of PDF” was to start with a book that looks at PDF at the lowest
level, examining the syntax of a PDF file and a PDF page, and then to continue writing a series of
books that explain how to use iText on a higher level, answering questions such as:

• How to create a PDF from scratch?
• How to create PDF from HTML?
• How to fill out PDF forms?
• How to parse a PDF file?
• …

However, in spite of the fact that almost 15,000 people downloaded “The ABC of PDF”, it turned
out that people really wanted me to write a different kind of book. I’ve received many comments
through LeanPub from people who were disappointed that the ABC-book didn’t explain how to
use iText. They expected a book with more practical examples, instead of examples that helps them
understand the PDF specification. Some people even used the feedback form to ask me technical
questions. Unfortunately, I was unable to answer these questions, because the people posting them
didn’t realize that I received these questions anonymously. Even if I knew the answers, I didn’t know
who or where to send them to.
All of this faced me with a dilemma: do I stop writing “The ABC of PDF” and start writing one of
the other books that were planned? If so, which part of iText is most important to iText users? The
plan for the ABC was to write a book of about 150 pages, but much to my surprise, I was only half
way when I finished writing page 150. Didn’t I have other writing priorities?
Then suddenly I had an idea: why not write a book with questions and answers? Why not create a
book entitled “The Best iText Questions on StackOverflow?”
Download: Mediafire