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PDFDancer Changelog

Last updated: December 16, 2025

Follow along with the latest improvements to PDFDancer. We ship updates frequently to make editing, inspecting, and automating PDF workflows feel first-class for developers.

Week of December 14-20, 2025

Core Platform

Font Handling

  • Support for embedded TrueType fonts with custom encodings
  • Support for Type 3 fonts with resources dictionary
  • Vertical writing mode support for PDF fonts

Image & Graphics

  • Blend mode support in PDF images
  • ExtGState support with alpha/transparency and softmask composition
  • Page rotation transformation handling

Text Rendering

  • Improved text positioning with text rise offset
  • Horizontal scaling support for text elements
  • Color state inheritance for Form XObjects

Annotations

  • Popup annotation appearance stream preservation
  • Squiggly annotation support from original COS data

Java SDK (v0.2.2)

Improvements

  • Simplified redaction API for better usability
  • Text line assertions now support regex pattern matching

Python SDK (v0.3.3)

New Features

  • Select text lines by regex pattern: select_text_lines_matching("pattern")

TypeScript SDK

New Features

  • Batch redact functionality for redacting multiple elements at once

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript, plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistants. This week brings improved font handling including TrueType and Type 3 support, plus regex pattern matching for text selection.

Week of December 7-13, 2025

Core Platform

PDF Layers (Optional Content)

  • Support for Optional Content Groups (OCGs) and layer visibility
  • Preserve layer configurations when processing PDFs

Annotation Improvements

  • Better handling of line, polyline, polygon, and link annotations
  • Ink annotations now preserve opacity and border width
  • Popup annotation support

Form Fields

  • Improved appearance preservation for checkboxes, push buttons, and radio buttons
  • Better handling of standalone widget annotations
  • Text field appearance restoration

Fonts & Text

  • Support for Type0 (CID) fonts with proper encoding
  • Text rendering with stroke line width
  • Improved tiling pattern rendering

Image Editing

  • Replace, scale, and rotate images in PDFs
  • Crop images to specific bounds
  • Adjust image opacity
  • Flip images horizontally or vertically

Java SDK (v0.2.2)

No user-facing changes this week.

Python SDK (v0.3.2)

Documentation

  • Updated README with vector paths, redaction, and singular selectors examples

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.2)

No user-facing changes this week.

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript, plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistants. This week brings PDF layer support, improved annotation handling, and comprehensive image editing capabilities.

Week of November 30 - December 6, 2025

Core Platform

Redaction

  • Redact sensitive content from PDFs including text, images, paths, and form fields
  • Elements are permanently removed and replaced with placeholder boxes
  • Redact by element ID for precise control over what gets removed

Text Reflow

  • Replace text and automatically reflow to fit the original bounds
  • Options for horizontal expansion and vertical scaling
  • Works on both paragraphs and individual text lines

Java SDK (v0.2.1)

New Features

  • Redact content from PDFs: textLine.redact(), image.redact(), path.redact(), formField.redact()
  • Select form fields by name: selectFormFieldByName("fieldName")

Improvements

  • Default HTTP timeout increased to 60 seconds for large documents

Python SDK (v0.3.1)

New Features

  • Redact content from PDFs with redact() method on text lines, images, paths, and form fields

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.1)

New Features

  • Redact content from PDFs with redact() method on text lines, images, paths, and form fields

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript, plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistants. This week introduces redaction support across all SDKs and text reflow for automatic text fitting.

Week of November 23-29, 2025

Core Platform

Find and Replace

  • Find and replace text across PDFs with two replacement modes:
    • Visual replacement: overlays new text while preserving original structure
    • True replacement: removes original text completely
  • Supports case-sensitive and case-insensitive searches
  • Preserves font styling and positioning

PDF Processing

  • Page orientation now preserved when loading and creating pages

Java SDK (v0.2.0)

Breaking Changes

  • Page numbering is now 1-based instead of 0-based
  • pageIndex renamed to pageNumber throughout the API

Python SDK (v0.3.0)

Breaking Changes

  • Page numbering is now 1-based instead of 0-based
  • page_index renamed to page_number throughout the API
  • Removed line_spacing option from text line editing

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.0)

Breaking Changes

  • Page numbering is now 1-based instead of 0-based
  • pageIndex renamed to pageNumber throughout the API

New Features

  • Open PDFs directly from file paths: PDFDancer.open("document.pdf")
  • Support for File and ArrayBuffer types in open() method
  • Environment variable loading with dotenv support

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript, plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistants. This week brings a major API version update with 1-based page numbering across all SDKs and a new find-and-replace feature.

Week of November 16-22, 2025

Core Platform

Text Manipulation

  • More accurate text positioning and alignment in processed PDFs
  • Better paragraph detection for multi-column documents
  • Edit text lines that contain multiple styled text elements

Form Fields

  • Form field validation ensures you're setting the right value types

Java SDK (v0.1.8)

New Features

  • Select text lines using pattern matching: selectTextLinesMatching("pattern") and selectTextLineMatching("pattern")
  • Build text line edits with fluent API for clearer code
  • Delete pages with page().delete()
  • Better Gradle 9.x compatibility

API Changes

  • name() method renamed to getName() for consistency

Documentation

  • OpenAPI specification published
  • API coverage report shows what's available

Python SDK (v0.2.28)

New Features

  • Edit text in existing PDFs by modifying text lines
  • Change fonts and colors on text lines

Bug Fixes

  • Text and font properties now preserved correctly during edits
  • Clearer error messages when operations aren't supported

Documentation

  • Complete PyPI package information for easier discovery

TypeScript SDK (v1.0.22)

New Features

  • Create vector paths programmatically with the new PathBuilder API
  • Visual debugging helpers for development

Bug Fixes

  • Better handling of page references in complex documents
  • Improved Node.js compatibility

Documentation

  • Visual debugging examples
  • OpenAPI specification updated

MCP Server (v0.1.2)

Improvements

  • Verified compatibility with Node.js 18-25
  • Full Windows and macOS support
  • Works in PowerShell and WSL environments

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript, plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistants. This week brought text editing improvements and the new PathBuilder API for creating vector graphics.

Week of November 9-15, 2025

Core Platform

Text Processing

  • More accurate text positioning and sizing
  • Better text merging for cleaner output

Vector Graphics

  • Support for shading fills and gradients
  • Enhanced annotation handling
  • Better line width rendering
  • Support for CMYK colors

OCR Detection

  • Automatically detect if a PDF contains OCR'd text
  • Page-level OCR detection

PDF Features

  • Support for link annotations
  • Better handling of specialized fonts

Font Management

  • API endpoints for managing fonts

Java SDK (v0.1.4)

New Features

  • Select single elements at coordinates: selectTextLineAt(), selectPathAt(), selectElementAt()
  • Automatic retry for failed requests with configurable backoff
  • Graceful handling of rate limits with Retry-After support
  • Enhanced form field type validation

Documentation

  • API coverage analysis

Python SDK (v0.2.24)

New Features

  • Automatic retry for network errors
  • Graceful rate limit handling with Retry-After support
  • Select single elements: selectTextLineAt(), selectPathAt(), selectElementAt()

Configuration

  • Control retry behavior with PDFDANCER_RETRY_BACKOFF_FACTOR environment variable

TypeScript SDK (v1.0.17)

New Features

  • Automatic retry for failed requests with Retry-After support
  • Select single elements: selectTextLineAt(), selectPathAt(), selectElementAt()
  • ImageBuilder.apply() method for easier image operations

Improvements

  • Better Node.js environment handling

MCP Server (v0.1.2)

Major Changes

  • Focused on PDFDancer SDK documentation only
  • Simplified search with clear syntax guide

Publishing

  • Published to npm as @pdfdancer/mcp-server

Documentation

  • Installation guides for Claude Desktop, Cline, Zed, and Sourcegraph Cody
  • Demo video showing Claude Code integration

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript, plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistants. This week focused on reliability with automatic retries and rate limiting.

Week of November 2-8, 2025

Core Platform

PDF Metadata

  • All generated PDFs now include metadata
  • Tenant ID tracking in documents

Documentation

  • Coordinate system visualization tool
  • Element selection demonstration tool

Java SDK (v0.1.2)

New Features

  • Configurable retry mechanism for network calls
  • Session management and PDF processing

Configuration

Publishing

  • Published to Maven Central

Python SDK (v0.2.22)

New Features

  • Automatic retry for network failures
  • Select single elements at coordinates

Configuration

  • PDFDANCER_RETRY_BACKOFF_FACTOR environment variable

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed attribute delegation in TextLineObject

TypeScript SDK (v1.0.16)

New Features

  • Full TypeScript support with type safety
  • Works in browsers and Node.js
  • String file path support
  • Select single elements at coordinates

Configuration

MCP Server (v0.1.0)

Initial Release

  • Access PDFDancer SDK documentation through MCP protocol
  • Search documentation and retrieve code samples
  • Compatible with AI assistants

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript, plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistants.