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PDFDancer Changelog

Last updated: February 26, 2026

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 February 20-26, 2026

Core Platform

Text Fragment Editing

  • Edit individual text fragments within a line — change font, size, or color on specific parts of a text line
  • Get styled spans from text lines and paragraphs to inspect how text is formatted
  • Split text lines into fragments by attribute for granular control

Font Swap

  • Replace fonts in PDFs while preserving text positioning
  • Kerning control for swapped fonts

Template Replacement

  • Replace template placeholders with images
  • Improved placeholder positioning accuracy

Text Rendering

  • Better width calculation for Type0 (CID) fonts

Java SDK (v0.2.7)

New Features

  • Replace template placeholders with images

Python SDK (v0.3.9)

New Features

  • Replace template placeholders with images

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.8)

New Features

  • Replace template placeholders with images

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week adds text fragment editing for granular style control, font swapping, and image replacement in templates.

Week of February 16-20, 2026

Core Platform

Text Rendering

  • Fixed character and word spacing calculations for more accurate text positioning

Template Replacement

  • Default reflow preset changed to NONE for more predictable template replacement behavior
  • Better error handling when template placeholders are missing

Images

  • Fixed image dimensions when adding images to new pages

Java SDK (v0.2.6)

New Features

  • Fill a rectangular region of an image with a solid color using fillRegion()

Python SDK (v0.3.8)

New Features

  • Fill a rectangular region of an image with a solid color using fill_region()

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.7)

New Features

  • Fill a rectangular region of an image with a solid color using fillRegion()

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week adds image fill region support and fixes text spacing accuracy.

Week of February 9-15, 2026

Core Platform

PDF Outlines & Bookmarks

  • Support for PDF outlines (bookmarks/table of contents) — preserved during processing

Text Processing

  • Detect and extract invisible text in PDF paragraphs
  • Improved word spacing in text width calculations
  • Fixed form field widget handling for documents with shared widgets

Element Ordering

  • Z-order index management for PDF elements — control the stacking order of text, images, and paths

Java SDK

New Features

  • Access text line font encoding and text content via TextLineReference

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week adds PDF outline support, invisible text detection, and element z-order control.

Week of February 2-8, 2026

Core Platform

Font Management

  • Upload and manage custom fonts for use in template replacements and text editing
  • Automatic cleanup of stale font resources

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week adds custom font management for template replacements.

Week of January 26-31, 2026

Core Platform

Text & Paragraph Detection

  • Better paragraph detection for documents with watermarks and varying font sizes
  • Support for rotated text elements

Image Manipulation

  • Scale images while preserving transformations
  • Better position preservation when transforming images
  • Replace images with automatic dimension handling

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week improves text handling for international documents and enhances image manipulation.

Week of January 12-18, 2026

Java SDK (v0.2.5)

New Features

  • Fluent template replacement API with builder pattern for easier configuration

Python SDK (v0.3.7)

New Features

  • Configure font and color for template replacements

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.6)

New Features

  • Fluent template replacement API with builder pattern

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week brings improved template replacement APIs across all SDKs.

Week of January 5-11, 2026

Core Platform

Template Replacement

  • Replace placeholder text in PDFs with dynamic content
  • Support for multiple template replacements in a single operation
  • Automatic text reflow for replaced content

Text & Paragraph Detection

  • Improved paragraph detection with adaptive line height reference
  • Better handling of multi-column documents

Word Detection

  • Enhanced word detection for better text selection
  • Support for complex text spacing with TJ operator expansion

Font Handling

  • Improved font encoding and text rendering
  • Better handling of embedded fonts
  • Deduplicate font streams across multi-page PDFs

Java SDK (v0.2.4)

New Features

  • Template replacement API: applyReplacements() to replace placeholder text with dynamic content

Python SDK (v0.3.6)

New Features

  • Template replacement: apply_replacements() to replace text templates

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.5)

New Features

  • Template replacement API with models for dynamic content

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week introduces template replacement for dynamic content generation and improves text detection.

Week of December 29, 2025 - January 4, 2026

Core Platform

Text Reflow

  • Automatic text reflow for template replacements
  • Better text fitting for replaced content

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week adds text reflow capabilities for better template replacement results.

Week of December 22-28, 2025

Java SDK (v0.2.3)

Configuration

  • Support for both PDFDANCER_API_TOKEN and PDFDANCER_TOKEN environment variables

Python SDK (v0.3.4)

Configuration

  • Support for PDFDANCER_API_TOKEN environment variable

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.4)

Configuration

  • Support for PDFDANCER_API_TOKEN environment variable with fallback to PDFDANCER_TOKEN

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week adds support for the new PDFDANCER_API_TOKEN environment variable across all SDKs.

Week of December 15-21, 2025

Java SDK (v0.2.3)

New Features

  • Image manipulation: get center position with getCenter() method

Python SDK (v0.3.5)

New Features

  • Image manipulation capabilities

TypeScript SDK (v2.0.3)

New Features

  • Image transformation features

What's PDFDancer? PDFDancer is a PDF manipulation platform with SDKs for Java, Python, and TypeScript. This week introduces image manipulation capabilities across all SDKs.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.