Chapter 1. About this Documentation

Who Should Read it

This manual is for Perl programmers whose job it is to ensure that generated PDF documents are correct.

It is assumed that you have a basic knowledge of Perl programming. Knowledge of test automation is not necessary, but helps to understand the text.

Code Examples

The code snippets in the following chapters use the module Test::More. But PDFUnit-Perl can also be used with other test modules. The distribution of PDF::PDFUnit (PDFUnit-Perl) contains some running examples.

References to the Java Documentation

This manual provides explanations and examples as much as possible for a good introduction into PDFUnit-Perl. But for a complete description you have to read the manual of PDFUnit-Java (http://www.pdfunit.com/en/documentation/java/index.html). Repeating all information here would be highly redundant. And because the method names are identical, Perl programmers can easily transfer the syntax of PDFUnit-Java to Perl.

API of PDFUnit-Java

The Javadoc documentation of the API is available online: http://www.pdfunit.com/api/javadoc/index.html.

Other Programming Languages

PDFUnit is available for Perl, Java, .NET and as an XML dialect. Separate documentation exists for each language.

If there are Problems

If you have problems to test a PDF, please search for a similar problem in the internet. Maybe, you find a solution. Finally, you are invited to write to info[at]pdfunit.com and describe the problem. We'll try to help you.

New Features Wanted?

Do you need other test functions? Please feel free to send your requirements to info@pdfunit.com. You are invited to influence the further development of PDFUnit.

Responsibility

Some examples in this book use PDF documents from the web. For legal reasons I make clear that I dissociate myself from their content, for instance I can not read Chinese. These documents support tests, for which I could not create my own test documents, e.g. the Chinese PDF documents.

Acknowledgement

Axel Miesen developed the Perl-API of PDFUnit and during that time he asked a lot of questions about the Java API. PDFUnit Java has profitted greatly from his input. Thank you, Axel.

Unfortunately, my English is not as good as I would like. But my colleague John Boyd-Rainey read the first version of this English documentation and corrected a huge number of misplaced commas and other typical errors. Thank you, John, for your perseverance and thoroughness. However, all remaining errors are my fault. He also asked critical questions which helped me to sharpen some descriptions.

Production of this Documentation

This documentation was created with DocBook-XML and both PDF and HTML are generated from one text source. It is well known that the layout can be improved in both formats, e.g. the pagebreaks in PDF format. And improving the layout is already on the to-do list, but there are other tasks with higher priority.

Feedback

Any kind of feedback is welcomed. Please write to info[at]pdfunit.com.