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Home » Newsletter » April 2011

By V. Subhash and L. Santhanam

In a previous article, we saw how to create PDF content that will be rendered only when the document is printed. In this article, we will see how to create a PDF with content with different content in the same location but only of which is rendered when the document is printed or viewed on screen.

The objective is to provide alternate content for screen and print. One of the ways to achieve is this is by using PDF watermark annotations. Typically, watermark annotations are not printed. However, there is a PDF annotation flag that can be set to make them printable. There is another PDF annotation flags that makes them not viewable on the screen. Using these two annotations, we can achieve our objective. Here is our code example.

Example Code

import java.io.IOException;

import com.gnostice.pdfone.PDFOne;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfAnnot;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfAppearanceStream;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfDocument;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfException;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfImage;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfMeasurement;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfPage;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfPageSize;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfRect;
import com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfWatermarkAnnot;


public class Print_With_Alternative_Print_Logo {    
    
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, PdfException {
    
    // Create a new PDF document and add a blank new page to it
    PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();    
    PdfPage pg = new PdfPage(PdfPageSize.A4);
    pg.setMeasurementUnit(PdfMeasurement.MU_PIXELS);
    doc.add(pg);
    
    // Create "print-only" watermark content
    // with black-and-white logo
    PdfAppearanceStream ap1 = 
         new PdfAppearanceStream(new PdfRect(0, 0, 345, 113));
    ap1.drawImage(PdfImage.create("sample_logo_bw.bmp"), 
                  new PdfRect(0,0, 308, 127));
    
    // Creates a watermark annotation
    PdfWatermarkAnnot waterAnnot1 = new PdfWatermarkAnnot();
    waterAnnot1.setRect(new PdfRect(0,0, 308, 127));
    // Set watermark to appear in the same location on the page
    // both when viewed and when printed
    waterAnnot1.setFixedPrint(false);
    // Set "print" appearance for the watermark
    waterAnnot1.setNormalAppearance(ap1);    
    // Make watermark print-only
    waterAnnot1.setFlags(PdfAnnot.FLAG_NO_VIEW | PdfAnnot.FLAG_PRINT);
    

    // Create "screen-only" watermark content
    // with color logo
    PdfAppearanceStream ap2 = 
         new PdfAppearanceStream(new PdfRect(0, 0, 308, 127));
    ap2.drawImage(PdfImage.create("sample_logo_color.bmp"), 
                  new PdfRect(0,0, 308, 127));
    // Creates another watermark annotation (for the screen)
    // in the the same location 
    PdfWatermarkAnnot waterAnnot2 = new PdfWatermarkAnnot();
    waterAnnot2.setRect(new PdfRect(0,0, 308, 127));    
    // Set "screen" appearance for the watermark
    waterAnnot2.setNormalAppearance(ap2);    
    
    // Add watermarks to the page 
    pg.addAnnotation(waterAnnot1);
    pg.addAnnotation(waterAnnot2);
    
    // Save the PDF document to file
    doc.save("alternate_print_content.pdf");
    
    // Clean up
    doc.close();
  }
}

Note: PDF watermark annotations use appearance streams. These are bounded areas of PDF content that are not assigned any page but can be added to any annotation or form field as required.

Screenshots