Getting Started
XF Rendering Server can be accessed in several ways:
- Using a .NET, JAVA, COM+ or C++ programming interface. You can convert XML, WordML/DOCX and more to PDF (or any other supported output format) from your favourite programming language using just 2 lines of code. Visit the Code Samples section for more information.
- Via a Web Service. You can download the web service for free from our Downloads section.
- From the command line. There are several command line utilities in the Bin folder (urender.exe and others).
- Interactively using URun.
- Using the Management Console you can configure "hot folders". XF will monitor these folders for any new files and perform actions like rendering, XSLT transforms, etc. Hot folders and command line utilities are described in the help file installed with each product.
System Requirements
The following are the minimum system requirements:
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Software: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later or Linux.
XF Rendering Server has been successfully tested on Windows XP and up, including Windows 7.
On Linux, XF Rendering Server has been successfully tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, RedHat Linux Fedora Core, Novell SUSE and Ubuntu.
- Hardware: Minimum 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 or better, 512 Mb of RAM, 10 Gb of free disk space.
For all versions, using multicore or hyperthreaded CPUs will improve the response in highly concurrent environments. In addition, for the Ultrascale version, it is highly desirable to use Dual or Quad CPU server class machines. That is because the XSL-FO formatting engine that is included in the Ultrascale edition is able to process a document on more than one CPU, if available.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Can XF Rendering Server process documents of any size?
- What is the usual memory consumption?
- The server runs on Linux and Windows, but how? Natively or is it Java or ... ?
- Is XF able to process a document in 2 Phases?
- What input formats are supported by XF Rendering Server?
- What are the image formats supported?
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Q: Can XF Rendering Server process documents of any size?
A: Yes. There are several simple rules that must be followed for very large documents.
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Q: What is the usual memory consumption?
A: Usually under 100 Mb of RAM, but it really depends on the document. With careful planning a document can consume very little memory. This is because XF can process large documents incrementally. It will discard objects as soon as they are not needed. Take for example a table (fo:table). The header cannot be discarded as long as the table still has rows (fo:row) to be processed. But the rows will be loaded progressively and discarded from memory when a page break occurs. See our forum for more tips and tricks on how to minimize the memory consumption.
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Q: The server runs on Linux and Windows, but how? Natively, or is it Java or ... ?
A: The server will run on Linux and Windows natively.
There is no third party software that needs to be installed. We provide both RPMs (CentOS, Fedora, Suse) and DEB (Ubuntu) packages.
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Q: Is XF able to process a document in 2 Phases?
A: Yes. A 2 Phase rendering operation involves: a) rendering into an intermediary format and b) producing the final output from this intermediary format.
This scenario is useful only when a single very large job is processed in order to generate multiple outputs. In this case, computing the document layout can take significantly longer than generating the PDF output and it will make sense to preserve the layout into an intermediary format.
In order to use a 2 Phase rendering process, first render into SVG, then, render repeatedly in all the output formats you need.
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Q: What input formats are supported by XF Rendering Server?
A: XSL-FO, WordML (Word 2003), DocX (Word 2007), PPTX (PowerPoint 2007), SVG, XChart, EPS, Postscript, PDF, HTML, XHTML, TEXT.
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Q: What image formats are supported?
A: SVG, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, BMP, WMF, EMF, EPS, Postscript, PDF, PSD. All compression algorithms are supported (for example LZW, CCIT, ZIP, JPEG for TIFF), as well as all color depths and number of channels (Monochrome, Grayscale, RGB, CMYK, etc).