What is the difference between lowagie and iText?

Question

What is the difference between lowagie and iText? Is this just version difference or an upgrade to the library. Which one is recommended to be used?

Answer 1

So I am editing in Eclipse Oxygen and my List of import suggestions look like this. There is Lowagie!

Answer 2

As of now, there is also OpenPDF that uses the classes from com.lowagie, so you might also want to consider that some dependency of your project could be depending on OpenPDF.

Answer 3

Actually, there is no difference: in iText 2.1.0. Create a PDF, go to properties and see "iText 2.1.0 by lowagie.com" )) what seems to have happened in the evolution of the lib is that "lowagie" in the java package name, was replaced with "itextpdf".

That was my first answer. Bruno does not like it )). OK -- so of course, lots has changed over the life of the java lib. What I meant to say is that "lowagie" is the same lib (albeit in an earlier revision) as iText. I think that Bruno is very interested in re-branding the lib and does not want it referred to as lowagie. Fine -- but no need to mince words -- lowagie is iText in a previous version.

Ax, let me try again... there was something, something like an opensource brand/business, they had a web site, it was named after the creater "lowagie.com". and it was a java lib. and when we used it, we saw that the package structure reflected this brand choice "lowagie" as in:

import com.lowagie.text.Document;
import com.lowagie.text.DocumentException;
import com.lowagie.text.Element;
import com.lowagie.text.Font;
import com.lowagie.text.Image;
import com.lowagie.text.PageSize;
import com.lowagie.text.Paragraph;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfContentByte;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfImportedPage;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfReader;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfStamper;

So, I stand by my answer, and assert that there were two brands being used for iText: iText and lowagie.com. But now clearly, there is a move to get rid of "lowagie" and just stick with iText.

Answer 4

I am Lowagie, the lowagie you refer to. This is what I have to say about this: http://itextpdf.com/salesfaq

You should use the latest version of iText. Currently that's iText 5.3.4.

I'm the original author of iText and the author of the "iText in Action" books.

The differences between old versions of iText (iText 2.x.y dates from July 2009 or earlier) and newer versions of iText can be found in the changelogs: http://itextpdf.com/changelog

The 5.0.0 version had the following substantial changes:

• iText and iTextSharp started using the same version numbers
• the iText.jar is compiled using Java 5 (instead of with the JDK 1.4).
• The F/OSS license has been upgraded from MPL/LGPL to AGPL.
• The package names have changed from com.lowagie to com.itextpdf.
• The toolbox and RTF support have been removed: they are now in a separate project at SourceForge.

Numerous bugs have been fixed since July 2009. Functionality that makes your PDFs future-proof such as updates regarding new digital signature standards and new standards such as PDF/UA, PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 is only available in the more recent iText versions.