New Plugins!
This month there is loads more news than usual, and not much of it is easy to bear. Here in California we’ve been ordered to stay home now for more than a week. I’ve distracted myself by typing lots and lots code.
It’s about time I addressed your ongoing request for a PDF watermarker that preserves internal links such as table of contents. For many of you with longer PDFs, these page indexes are crucial. While my proposed solution is more expensive and mildly more complicated to install than WaterWoo & EDDiMark, it offers improved PDF parsing/writing and heftier encryption, as well as backing by the PDF gurus at SetaSign.
Bottom line: if it is essential your PDF keep its internal links, you want a -Stamper plugin, not WaterWoo or EDDiMark.
Introducing PDF Stamper and EDDiStamper
PDF Stamper for WooCommerce and EDDiStamper are both “bridge” plugins which integrate WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads (popular WordPress e-commerce solutions) with SetaPDF-Stamper. You can use them to connect Woo or EDD to Seta.
We can not distribute SetaPDF-Stamper bundled with these bridge plugins because of GNU, but if you have a SetaPDF-Stamper license, you can include the Seta library into PDF Stamper or EDDiStamper and be stamping your complex PDFs again. Under no circumstances are you able to combine and redistribute these components together. You must honor Setasign’s license, and GNU.
We realize that this solution seems expensive; however, if you consider you are getting software support and updates for a year from developers who routinely charge >$100/hour for services, you’ll understand it’s still a deal.
Comparison of WaterWoo/EDDiMark and PDF Stamper/EDDiStamper
| WaterWoo/EDDiMark | PDF Stamper/EDDiStamper | |
|---|---|---|
| Preserves PDF interactive features | no | yes |
| Requires additional purchase to stamp | no | yes |
| PDF passwording, encryption and permissions-limiting | yes | yes, heightened |
| possible watermark positions | 2 | 1 |
| barcodes & QR codes | yes | no |
| RTL | yes | no |
| Handles PDFs with pages of varying size | yes | no |
| Preserves original metadata | some | all, can be encrypted optionally |
| Text opacity and rotation | yes | yes |
| Stamp with images | yes | coming soon |
| Fonts | 5 default, add your own TTF | 3 default, more soon |
| Library | TCPDI/TCPDF, open source, limited maintenance. TCPDI is based on FPDI, which was written by Seta | Seta-PDF Stamper, non-free, not distributed with Little Package plugins |
At last!
As you can learn more about here if you wish, I’ve been struggling with watermarking limitations for years. Even though I wish it could be offered bundled, at least I am offering some sort of solution. Other than not being bundled, it’s an excellent solution, combining the best of GNU (WordPress) with the best of the best PDF parsing software from Setasign for your implementation. It’s up to you to purchase and maintain the correct license from Setasign to cover the extent of your implementation. Any SetaPDF-Stamper-specific PDF parsing/writing issues that come up with your particular PDF files will need to be addressed with Setasign, and you will need to have a license with Setasign to obtain that support. Issues related to the GPL end of the plugin will be handled by Little Package, unless they need to be relayed to WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, other interfering 3rd party plugins, your theme maker, or WordPress. Ultimately, you get better support, and you get to keep your PDF’s functions.
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