Connect Shapes using Connectors, Improved Table & SmartArt Support in Presentation

What's New in this Release?

The long awaited version of Aspose.Slides for Java (15.4.0) has been released. This is one of maintenance release in which we have resolved certain issues incurring in the product along with support for some new features. We have introduced the support for joining the shapes using connectors in this release and now one can join the shapes using connector by selecting automatic shortest path or defining the connection point on shapes. Please visit the documentation article, connecting shapes using Connectors for more details and sample code. We have also added the support for getting slide by ID using getSlideById(id) method exposed by Presentation class. The more details about this new feature can be explored in documentation article, Accessing slide by ID. The SmartArt support has also been improved and some new features have been added when dealing with SmartArt shapes. Please visit documentation article, Exploring SmartArt Properties for more details in this regard. We have also included the support for setting the predefined view type for the generated presentation when it gets opened in PowerPoint. The slide view type can be set using ViewProperties exposed by Presentation class. We have also improved the Table support in Aspose.Slides and have added the facility for splitting the table cells based row span, column span, split by height and split by width. We have also added the support for working with NotesSlides and one can now use MasterNotesSlideManager exposed by Presentation class to access the NotesMaster and its elements. We have improved the presentation rendering support and have resolved certain rendering issues incurring during generation of slide thumbnails, exported PDF, HTML and SVG files in Windows, Linux\Unix and MAC platforms. The issues include improper text, missing background, missing strike through, improper SmartArt, improper gradient effects, incorrect table and different charts elements rendering. The WordArt rendering has also been improved in this new release and issue of WordArt effects getting lost in exported output has been rectified. The issue related to corrupt PDF file generated while exporting presentation with WordArt to PDF has also been addressed. We have rectified issues that appeared when accessing, saving and rendering presentation to PDF, HTML or slide thumbnails, which resulted in different exceptions like NullReference, PptxReadException, ObjectReferenceException,and IllegalArgumentException in previous releases for MAC, Linux and Windows environments. The output of IWarningCallbacks has also been improved and now it is represented in a much informative way as well. Some important enhancement & bug fixes included in this release are given below

• Connectors lay-outing
• Unique IDs for symbol id for pictures is needed when exporting slides with images to HTML
• Presentation.GetSlideByID() missing in Aspose.Slides
• Saving presentation in different slide view types
• Splitting table cells
• Accessing objects on the notes page view
• Implement serialization and deserialization of emdedded fonts for PPT
• Implement SmartArt customization
• Consistency in DocumentProperties
• Text improperly rendered in generated thumbnail
• insertClone gives PptxEditException if second column index bigger from first column index.t
• Black shape background appearing in generated HTML
• Text frames inside group shapes are not read
• Position of arrow in chart plot area gets changed in generated thumbnail
• Chart category axis is improperly rendered in generated thumbnail
• Strikethrough is appearing thick when exporting to pdf.
• Chart lines are missing in generated thumbnail
• Text size is not changed when TextAutoFitType.Normal is used for slide textframe
• Input string was not in the correct format exception on adding HTML to textframe
• Slide notes failed to get added in presentation
• Calibri font information is not getting accessed from portion fonts
• Portion format return wron values for portion properties
• Issue with connection positioning in PPTX file
• llegalArgumentException: Unable to read file on exporting to PDF
• Aspose Slides for Java causing Raster failure
• Slide thumbnails are improperly generated in Linux environment
• Setting Alternative property on Slide master shape is not getting applied on shapes in master slides
• Rectangle shape added has 0 height and width

Overview: Aspose.Slides for Java

Aspose.Slides is a Java component to create, read, write and modify a PowerPoint document without using Microsoft PowerPoint. It supports PHP applications and provides all advanced features for managing presentations, slides, shapes, tables and supports PPT, POT, POS PowerPoint formats. Now you can add, access, copy, clone, edit and delete slides in your presentations. It also supports audio & video frames, adding pictures, text frames and saving presentations as streams or SVG format.

• Homepage of Aspose.Slides for Java
• Downlaod Aspose.Slides for Java

Add VBA Modules to Excel Spreadsheet & Improved Chart Creation Mechanism using Java

What’s new in this release?

The long awaited version of Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.2 has been released. Starting with this release, Aspose.Cells for Java has provided support for adding VBA modules to the spreadsheets. Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.2 has exposed the VbaModuleCollection.add method to add a new VBA module to the instance of Workbook. The VbaModuleCollection.add method accepts a parameter of type Worksheet to add a worksheet specific module, whereas the existing VbaModule class contains all the module specific properties. Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.2 has exposed simplified mechanism to create charts on the fly. Please note, the conventional means of creating charts involves several steps that may include, but not limited to specifying the series and category axis data ranges separately. With new mechanism, all you have to do is to specify the chart’s data range while using the Chart.setChartDataRange method. The setChartDataRange method accepts two parameters, where first parameter is of type String in order to specify the cell area from which to plot the data series. The second parameter is of type Boolean that specifies the plot orientation, that is; whether to plot the chart data series from a range of cell values by row or by columns.Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.2 has fixed a number of issues and enhanced the core to accommodate many customer requests. Few worth mentioning enhancements & fixes includes, support for IFNA function, added an overloaded version of Cells.copyColumns method that can be used to repeat the source  columns onto the destination while copy operation, exposed 2 new fields for the PasteType enumeration in order to mimic the Excel’s ‘All’ & ‘All except borders’ functionality for pasting range of cells, improved the PDF rendering engine to handle cases that involve WordArt, shapes and uppercase characters converted through Excel’s ‘All caps’ functionality, improved Chart2Image functionality for EMF file format to correctly render axis and data labels, addressed a few exceptions related to the spreadsheets loading & saving mechanism of Aspose.Cells for Java API. This release includes plenty of improved features and bug fixes as listed below

• Add VBA Modules to Excel Spreadsheet
• Easy way for Chart setup
• Watermarks are not displayed correctly
• Slicer is removed in Excel 2010/2013 after save
• Uppercase characters created through 'All caps' functionality in Excel is not preserved in PDF
• Rendering of Shapes in Page 5 is not correct
• Shape location is wrong while rendering spreadsheet to PDF format
• Arrow heads are enlarged while converting spreadsheet with drawings to PDF
• WordArt is not rendering fine in the output PDF file
• Horizontal text in the shapes is rendered vertical while converting spreadsheet to PDF
• Drawing is messed up while rendering the spreadsheet to PDF
• Circle shapes convert to ovals while rendering spreadsheet to PDF
• Drawing objects and shapes in Excel template are not rendered fine in the output PDF using Aspose.Cells
• Latest Aspose version fails to save file saved through earlier version
• File gets corrupt when xls is saved into xlsx format
• Workbook.copy() corrupts the output excel file
• Calculation bug with OR function
• Auto-fit columns operation does not take effect with a few cells with ShrinkToFit option on
• Solid lines are showing up as Dotted lines
• Excel to PDF conversion issue - right side cut off
• Some DataLabels are missing in the rendered HTML file when copying workbook
• DataLabels in the chart are not shown in the rendered EMF image
• Missing Chart's Axis labels while converting to EMF
• Hebrew characters in 'smart art' present in excel are mirrored in PDF rendition
• Incorrect Pie Chart Data when rendered through Aspose
• Height of the Chart's Plot Area increases after combining Workbooks
• Rendering only Pie chart results in a blank PDF
• Chart.toImage generates a blank image for Pie Chart
• Two of the Axis labels are missing in the resultant EMF while converting chart to image
• Rendered image of the chart is not right (Chart to Image)
• Chart.calculate() misplaces X and Y axis labels

Other most recent bug fixes are also included in this release.

Overview: Aspose.Cells for Java

Aspose.Cells is a Java component for spreadsheet reporting without using Microsoft Excel. Other features include creating spreadsheets, opening encrypted excel files, macros, VBA, unicode, formula settings, pivot tables, importing data from JDBC ResultSet and support of CSV, SpreadsheetML, PDF, ODS and all file formats from Excel 97 to Excel 2007. It is compatible with Windows, Linux & Unix and supports all advanced features of data management, formatting, worksheet, charting and graphics

• Homepage of Aspose.Cells for Java
• Download Aspose.Cells for Java

Access Slide by ID, Shapes Connector & Set Predefined View Type for Presentation

What's New in this Release?

We are happy to share the announcement of Aspose.Slides for .NET 15.4.0. This is one of maintenance releases in which we have resolved certain issues incurring in the product along with some of new features. Aspose team has included the long awaited support for joining the shapes using connectors. It also resumed the support for getting slide by ID using GetSlideById(id) method exposed by Presentation class. It has also included the support for setting the predefined view type for the generated presentation when it gets opened in PowerPoint. The slide view type can be set using ViewProperties exposed by Presentation class. This release has also improved the Table support in Aspose.Slides and has added the facility for splitting the table cells based row span, column span, split by height and split by width. We have also added the support for working with NotesSlides and one can now use MasterNotesSlideManager exposed by Presentation class to access the NotesMaster and its elements. It has resolved the issues that appeared while accessing, saving and rendering presentation to PDF, HTML or slide thumbnails, which resulted in different exceptions like NullReference, ArgumentException , UnSupportedBrushTypeException,and IndexOutOfRange in previous releases. The issue of presentation repair message appearing in Aspose.Slides generated presentations when viewed in different PowerPoint versions has also been addressed and resolved in this release. A step forward has also been taken towards improving the performance of API in terms of memory usage as well. It has addressed many text and image rendering issues in this new release that occurred in charts, tables, Smart and AutoShape. We have also improved the strike through text rendering support for generated PDF and thumbnails. Many of chart elements rendering issues including chart titles, axis text, legends and chart labels have been addressed for different type of charts. The rendering performance has been significantly improved for generated thumbnails, exported Pdf and SVG files. The WordArt rendering has also been improved in this new release and issue of WordArt effects getting lost in exported output has been rectified. The issue related to corrupt PDF file generated while exporting presentation with WordArt to PDF has also been addressed. This list of new, improved and bug fixes in this release are given below

• Connectors lay-outing
• Unique IDs for symbol id for pictures is needed when exporting slides with images to HTML
• Presentation.GetSlideByID() missing in Aspose.Slides
• Saving presentation in different slide view types
• Splitting table cells
• Implement serialization and deserialization of embedded fonts for PPT
• Implement SmartArt customization
• Consistency in DocumentProperties
• Template Name property missing in Document Properties
• SlideCollection.ResetEffectiveFormat throws NullReferenceException
• PowerPoint craches on playing presentation with embedded video, 15.5.0
• DateTimeInvalid Local format exception is thrown on saving presentation
• Slide notes failed to get added in presentation
• Strikethrough is appearing thick in generated thumbnail and pdf
• Inverse mapping of RotationX and RotationY in Rotation3D Members.
• FontHeight changing does not work
• PowerPoint shows a repair request when a presentation generated with Aspose.Slides is opened
• Issue with Bullets in pptx and ppt
• Error Bars are missing in generated thumbnail
• Presentation repair message pops on saving the presentation.
• Portion format returns wrong font names
• Chart labels and legends gets disturbed in generated PDF
• Chart labels and legends gets disturbed in saved presentation
• Slide background image gets jagged pdf.
• Text size is not reduced when TextAutoFitType.Normal is used for slide textframe
• Absurd memory usage in GetThumbnail() for simple slide with log scale
• Custom document properties are not accessible using Aspose.Slides
• Input string was not in the correct format exception on adding HTML to text frame
• Missed shapes in generated Html
• Null Reference exception on cloning row in side the table
• Presentation repair message on saving presentation with video
• Wrong logo image rendering in generated thumbnail
• Font size for text changed in Aspose.Slides saved presentation
• Chart Series Markers and lines are improperly rendered in generated thumbnail
• Charts axis labels are improperly rendered in thumbnails
• Pptx exception thrown on accessing presentation
• Presentation with WordArt generate corrupt PDF
• WordArt effect are lost on text when saving the presentation
• Presentation gets corrupt when opened in PowerPoint 2007
• Save method required to dynamically pass Save Format
• Chart category axis is improperly rendered in generated thumbnail
• The presentation size grows after slide cloning
• ArgumentException thrown on generating the slide thumbnail in Mono MAC environment
• Text converted to image while converting PPT to PPTX
• Unsupported Brush Type Exception on PPTX to PDF
• Accessing objects on the notes page view

Other most recent bug fixes are also included in this release

Overview: Aspose.Slides for .NET

Aspose.Slides is a .NET component to read, write and modify a PowerPoint document without using MS PowerPoint. PowerPoint versions from 97-2007 and all three PowerPoint formats: PPT, POT, PPS are also supported. Now you can create, access, copy, clone, edit and delete slides in your presentations. Other features include saving PowerPoint slides into PDF, adding & modifying audio & video frames, using shapes like rectangles or ellipses and saving presentations in SVG format, streams or images.

• Homepage of Aspose.Slides for .NET
• Downlaod of Aspose.Slides for .NET

Set Auto Layout Scaling & BitDepth for PNG Image Format inside .NET Apps

What’s new in this release?

We are pleased to announce the new release of Aspose.Imaging for .NET 2.9.0.  Bit depth in imaging is the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel in a bitmap image. Like all other bitmap formats, PNG color depth is also represented in bits such as 1-bit (2 colors), 2-bit (4 colors), 4-bit (16 colors) and 8-bit (256 colors). Aspose.Imaging for .NET API has exposed a very easy to use mechanism to set the BitDepth for existing as well as new PNG images. With the release of version 2.9.0, the API has provided the BitDepth property for the PngOptions class that can be used to set the BitDepth as 1, 2, 4 or 8 bits for grayscale and indexed color types, whereas, for all other color types only 8 bits are supported at the moment. Most of the CAD drawings have more than one layouts stored in a single file, and each layout could have different dimensions. While rendering such CAD drawings to PDF, each page of the PDF could have different scaling according to the layout size. In order to make the rendering homogeneous, the Aspose.Imaging APIs have exposed the CadRasterizationOptions.AutomaticLayoutsScaling property. Its default value is false but when set to true, the API will try to search for a corresponding scale for each separate layout and draw them in corresponding manner by performing automatic re-size operation according to page size. Aspose.Imaging for .NET 2.9.0 has also made some importantimprovements, such as enhanced the image loading & saving mechanism of JPEG, BMP & GIF file formats, improved the CAD loading mechanism for head-less CAD drawing files and provided support for TIFF files having PackBits compression. The main new and improved features added in this release are listed below

• Tiff image loading throws FrameworkException
• Incorrect Raster image saving work when created image width is lover than 125 px
• Gif export is very slow
• Export of bmp to gif hangs
• Improve performance of JPEG saving
• Improve performance of JPEG loading
• Implement autoscaling for layout pages
• Support CAD files with no proper header defined
• ImageLoadException: Error in Layers, while loading certain DXF file
• ImageLoadException: Cannot open an image. The image file format may be not supported at the moment, while loading a certain DXF
• ImageLoadException: Cannot open an image. The image file format may be not supported at the moment." while loading a certain DXF
• TIFF Codec does not support PackBits compression method
• Converting images to PNG 1 bpp

Overview:Aspose.Imaging for .NET
Aspose.Imaging for .NET is an image processing & manipulation component that allows developers to create, edit, draw or convert images in their .NET application. It allows developers to convert image files to PSD, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and GIF formats. Moreover a set of pens, brushes and fonts can be used to draw images or add new elements & text to existing images. Aspose.Imaging for .NET works well with both web & windows applications. Moreover, it adds the support for Silverlight platform.

• Homepage of Aspose.Imaging for .NET
• DownloadAspose.Imaging for .NET

MathML Equations, EMF, WMF Rendering & Enhanced Iso29500 Support for MS Word for Mac 2011 Document

What's New in this Release?
 
Aspose development team is happy to announce the monthly release of Aspose.Words for Java &.NET 15.4.0.  This month’s release contains over 110 useful new features, enhancements and bug fixes to the Aspose.Words products. Here is a look at just a few of the biggest features and API changes in this month’s release, MathML equations rendering inside shapes implemented, MathML equations vertical positioning improved when rendering, Improved Iso29500 support for MS Word for Mac 2011 documents, Improved page number calculation, footnote balancing, nested floating tables and text wrapping around floating objects, EMF and WMF rendering improvements, Added some new public members to HTML save options and shapes/drawing , over 30 improvements to DocumentBuilder, TXT, ODT & MSWord document formats and many more. Aspose team has added new public property to HtmlFixedSaveOptions class. This property behaves similar way as HtmlSaveOptions.CssClassNamesPrefix property for Aspose.Pdf.This release also added new public property to HtmlSaveOptions class. Previously, the API didn’t provide any clues to whether a shape is a signature line or not, except for a hint under Alternative Text. This property provides a way to distinguish signature line shapes. While analyzing WORDSNET-11716, we have discovered that Word merges unknown fields like { City } which normally serve as bookmark references. The fields are merged even though there are corresponding bookmarks in the document. We’ve decided to implement similar behavior due to the “do like Word” policy. However, this is a noticeable behavioral change to be published to our customers.   The list of new and improved features added in this release are given below

• MathML equations rendering inside shapes implemented
• MathML equations vertical positioning improved when rendering
• Improved Iso29500 support for MS Word for Mac 2011 documents
• Improved page number calculation, footnote balancing, nested floating tables and text wrapping around floating objects
• EMF and WMF rendering improvements
• Added some new public members to HTML save options and shapes/drawing
• Over 30 improvements to DocumentBuilder, TXT, ODT and Microsoft Word document formats
• /equation alignment/ Equations do not render correctly in Pdf
• Add feature to export linked image URL for exported image
• Support all picture switches like Ms Word does.
• Japanese contents moves to next page after conversion from Doc to Pdf
• Add feature to specify a suffix for CSS rules in style.css when document is exported to HtmlFixed
• Nested number sequence of lists is wrong in HTML
• DocumentBuilder.InsertImage does not mimics the MS Word behavior
• Document.Save generates huge size html for Odt
• Images are very small after HTML to DOCX
• /w:legacySpace/ Toc field does not render correctly in output Pdf
• Extra space between numbers and text after RTF to HTML to RTF
• Barcode text is misplaced after DOC to PDF
• Incorrect default font color of tables when importing an HTML document in Quirks mode
• Vertical alignment of table cells is not preserved during HTML-DOCX-HTML round trip
• DrawingML shape that simultaneously has 3D effect, Outer shadow and Reflection is rendered a bit incorrectly
• Text in the left most column in a table is cut in PDF
• A picture overlaps Table in HtmlFixed
• System.IndexOutOfRangeException is thrown while saving docx to pdf
• ParagraphBreakFont should be the same as DocumentBuilder.Font, when use builder.Writeln.
• Shape name is always empty
• Picture switch does not work if there is “Text Before”.
• /footnote balancing/ Number of pages is incorrect after rendering.
• Add a way to distinguish signature line shapes in the API
• Export Revision's metadata to Html
• Color of DrawingML is changed after conversion from Docx to Pdf
• Document.PageCount returns incorrect value due absent fonts.        Bug
• Dr3DFaceComparer violates its general contract if TimSort (ether java or net implementation) is used
• WebRequestTimeout is ignored during load of html with link to absent image.
• On word document saved as pdf, the romanian character "ț" is displayed as a box under linux.
• Special processing of MS Shell Dlg font.
• Different sorting of docx xml tags.
• On word document saved as png, the romanian character "ț" is displayed as a box under Linux despite of any fonts' sources.
• /negative page margins/ Header paragraph border is lost after conversion from Doc to PDF
• A blank page is rendered in PDF        Images are not preserved during exporting to MHTML
• Image border disappear after saving Docx to Doc/Pdf
• DrawingML contents are missing after conversion from Docx to Pdf
• Extra paragraph mark is inserted at the bottom of the footer upon document save
• Table's border is lost after conversion from ODT to Docx
• Field.Remove does not remove the mail merge field Text wraps around empty space while converting Doc to Pdf
• Document protection issue with Microsoft Word for Mac 2011
• Table's border width does not import into Aspose.Words DOM
• Paragraph with big left indentation value is rendering incorrectly in PDF
• Page breaks are not preserved in PDF
• Aspose.Words produces empty documents
• Shape is missing after merging one document into another
• Docx to Pdf causes 100% memory usage
• Color of brush in Wmf is wrong.
• Doc to Pdf conversion issue with bullet position
• Text gets blurred during rendering to HtmlFixed
• CARDTEXT swtich does not work for Dutch language
• PrintDate value is changed after conversion from RTF to PDF
• Image is missing after conversion from Docx to Pdf/Docx
• STYLEREF produces error message in PDF
• Tables are pushed to following pages during open/save an ODT
• Document.AcceptAllRevisions deletes the footer in the documentg
• Contents move to next page after conversion from Doc to Pdf
• Word REF fields are incorrectly updated
• Track Revisions set incorrect author name
• Table row headings are missing after converting RTF to Tiff/Rtf
• Table position is changed after converting RTF to Tiff/Rtf.
• Contents are missing after converting RTF to Tiff/Rtf
• 'A generic error occurred in GDI+' occurs when converting DOCX to PDF
• Bullet numbers are changed after re-saving Doc
• Paragraph moves to previous page after conversion from Docx to Pdf
• Displayed date format in chart is not the same as in the docx file
• Missing MERGEFIELD in Conditional, Works in Word, Not In Aspose.Words
• Strange \* MERGEFORMAT text appears in front of equations in PDF
• Equations are rendered higher than the text on the same line. I.e. baselines do not match.
• WORDSNET-11511 was not fixed in v15.3.0
• Missing images on word to HTML conversion
• EMF image big differnce after docx saved to pdf
• fldLock="on" attribute is removed from document after re-saving WordML
• Aspose.Words ignore Thai fonts while saving html/txt to Pdf or Docx
• Dr3DFaceComparer violates transitivity rule
• First page header content is not preserved during open/save a
• Header on second page is missing in PDF
• Page layout of rendered PDF differs from original document
• Field Codes not parsed correctly when leading quotes or paragraph end markers present
• /printer metrics/ Text is wrapped incorrectly during rendering.
• PAGE field, GroupShape inside Primary Footer becomes invisible after processing
• Image squashed, while converting Word document to Pdf
• Paragraph's embedded style applied to table cell's text without "p" tag.
• /printer metrics/ Some text is moved to the previous page upon rendering
• /printer metrics/ Content is rendering on the previous page in Pdf
• /printer metrics/ Indent of some list lines are not exported correctly to fixed page formats
• DocumentBuilder.Font.ClearFormatting do not reset to default font formatting
• Document.AcceptAllRevisions add empty Paragraph in output Docx
• Implement Bevel effect // Simple Frame style applied on a DrawingML is not preserved when rendering
• A GUID text value is added at the end of a SDT during rendering to fixed page formats

Other most recent bug fixes are also included in this release

Overview: Aspose.Words

Aspose.Words is a word processing component that enables .NET, Java & Android applications to read, write and modify Word documents without using Microsoft Word. Other useful features include document creation, content and formatting manipulation, mail merge abilities, reporting features, TOC updated/rebuilt, Embedded OOXML, Footnotes rendering and support of DOCX, DOC, WordprocessingML, HTML, XHTML, TXT and PDF formats (requires Aspose.Pdf). It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. You can even use Aspose.Words for .NET to build applications with Mono.

• Homepage Aspose.Words for .NET
• Homepage of Aspose.Words for Java

Project Data Export to Primavera MPX & Better Formula Calculation using Java

What’s new in this release?

We are pleased to announce the release of Aspose.Tasks for Java 8.3.0. It is Ported from its equivalent .NET version, this month’s release introduces the same new features, enhancements and improvements. Application developers can now use Aspose.Tasks API for exporting Microsoft Project data to Primavera MPX format. Until now, the API only supported exporting project data to Primavera XML and XER formats. This month’s release introduces the capability of setting the start date of Gantt chart view while saving the file. The TimeScaleStart property exposed by Prj class allows setting the start date of Gantt chart view. However, if the saved file is opened by MSP in maximized window mode, the timescale start date will not match. This month’s release also provides support for reading/writing recurring task information. This enables to update recurring information of a task such as Occurrences count. The feature currently supports writing the information to output MPP file. At present, generation of recurring task’s children is not implemented yet and we plan to implement the feature in near future. This month’s release also includes a number of bugs that were fixed in the equivalent .NET version of the API. This also includes performance related issue while adding resource assignments to the project. In case you have got any query, please feel free to write to us over Aspose.Tasks forum. We’ll be glad to address your concerns and assist you further. Below is the complete list of bug fixes and enhanced features included in this release.

• Implement reading recurring tasks data from mpp
• Implement recurring task data writing to mpp
• Option to convert MPP to MPX format
• Implement formula calculation
• Implement evaluation of functions in formulas
• Updating MPP raises ArgumentOutOfRangeException
• Provide option to set start date for GanttChart view while saving as MPP
• Normal tasks become summary task after saving the project by Aspose.Tasks
• MPP to XML issue
• TaskReadingException while loading MPP File
• Low performance of RescheduleUncompletedWorkToStartAfter method
• Slow performance with Resource Assignment
• Extended attribute values become combo box after saving MPP file by Aspose.Tasks
• Setting Actual Start of Task doesn't update Summary Task's "Actual Start" field

Overview: Aspose.Tasks for Java

Aspose.Tasks is a non-graphical Java Project management component that enables Java applications to read, write & manage Project documents without utilizing MS Project. It supports reading MS Project Template (MPT) files as well as allows exporting project data to HTML, BMP, PNG, JPEG, PDF, TIFF, XPS, XAML and SVG formats. It reads & writes MS Project documents in both MPP & XML formats.  Developers can read & change tasks, recurring tasks, resources, resource assignments, relations & calendars.

• Homepage of Aspose.Tasks for Java
• Download Aspose.Tasks for Java

Work with MS Project's Tasks, Calendars & Resources using Cloud SDK for .NET

Aspose for Cloud is a cloud-based document generation, conversion and automation platform for developers. Before Aspose for Cloud, performing document processing and manipulation tasks in the cloud was not so easy. The Aspose for Cloud APIs give developers full control over documents and file formats. Each API has been developed to offer you a wide range of features for file processing in the cloud. Aspose for Cloud’s REST APIs are platform independent and can be used across any platform such as Node.js, Amazon, Salesforce etc. without any installation. Being language independent makes it a suitable choice for developers with expertise in any programming language. We also provide SDKs for various programming languages such as .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, ZF 2.0, Symfony2 and Laravel.

• Retrieve Task Information – This feature allows you to Retrieve Task Information
• Delete a Task from Project – This feature allows you to Delete a Task from Project
• Add a Task to Project – This feature allows you to Add a Task to Project
• Delete Resource From Project – This feature allows you to Delete Resource From Project
• Add a Resource To Project – This feature allows you to Add a Resource To Project
• Retrieve Resource Information – This feature allows you to Retrieve Resource Information
• Retrieve Calendars Information from a Project – This feature allows you to Retrieve Calendars Information from a Project
• Add Calendar to Project – This feature allows you to Add Calendar to Project
• Delete a Calendar from Project – This feature allows you to Delete a Calendar from Project
• Retrieve Assignments Information from Project – This feature allows you to Retrieve Assignments Information from Project
• Add Assignment to Project – This feature allows you to Add Assignment to Project
• Delete an Assignment from a Project – This feature allows you to Delete an Assignment from a Project

Aspose.Tasks for Cloud

Aspose.Tasks for Cloud is a project management API that enables developers to provide Microsoft Project® document manipulation capability in their applications – all without using Microsoft Project®. With this powerful cloud API, developers can control various stages of project management. API provides full control over a project’s tasks, task links, resources, resource assignments and extended attribute data. Tasks and resources can be added to a project and resources can be assigned to or remove from tasks. Aspose.Tasks supports rendering tasks, resources and resource assignment data to various output formats such as JPG, PNG, PDF, XML, XAML, HTML, BMP, XPS, TIFF and SVG.

• Homepage of Aspose.Tasks for Cloud
• Download Aspose for Cloud .NET SDK

Save Document to MS OneNote Format & Inserting Image into OneNote File using .NET

What’s new in this release?

We are pleased to announce the release of Aspose.Note for .NET 1.5.0. This new release allows clients to also save OneNote documents in .ONE format, insert an image into the OneNote document, apply different text styles in one rich text element, parsing and exporting of different formats of numbered lists and maintain various page levels as Microsoft Office OneNote do. Besides this, our product team has also included fixes of recently reported bugs and other sort of enhancement. We have added support to save a document to Microsoft Office OneNote format. Few of our clients were anxiously waiting for this feature support. Since we have accomplished our promise. Previously, our clients were only able to save OneNote documents in PDF and some common thumbnail formats. The OneNote documents clients create in Microsoft Office OneNote let them collect and keep all kinds of information in one place. Aspose.Note APIs now allows developers to insert an image into the OneNote document automatically.  Our clients can set the page title of the OneNote document. It is now supported. We can get or set Title property of the Page class object. n addition to the above features, we have added support of page levels. Previously, it was saving big chunks of data in a single page and not splitting into pages as Microsoft Office OneNote do. It also allows to preserve different text styles in one rich text element during the call of OneNote export features. The Numbered list can have various formats. Many of our clients were facing issues of missing numbered list during the export features of OneNote documents. We have added support of basic numbered list formats. This release also includes public API and backwards incompatible changes. The main features and bug fixes added in this release are listed below

• Saving a document to MS OneNote format;
• Support for different text styles in one rich text element;
• Support to export hyperlinks in PDF;
• Parsing and exporting of different formats of numbered lists;
• Support for page level;
• Support to insert an image into the OneNote document.
• Public API was significantly improved.
• OneNote to PDF conversion, hyperlink format is also applied to other words;
• OneNote to PDF conversion, hyperlinks does not work;
• Wrong line breaks during Pdf export;
• Wrong height in text with Cambria Math font.

Overview: Aspose.Note for .NET

Aspose.Note for .NET is a set of .NET components that enables developers to work with Microsoft Office OneNote files in C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET web applications, web services & Windows applications. It allows developers to open files & manipulate elements of OneNote books, from text, images & properties, to more complex elements, & then export to PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP or PDF formats. It is a pure .NET alternative to the MS OneNote Object Model & supports OneNote 2010, OneNote®  2010 SP1 & 2013 files.

• Homepage of Aspose.Note for .NET
• Download Aspose.Note for .NET

Work with Exchange Sever using WebDav or EWS Protocols & Email Message Encryption

What’s new in this release?

We are pleased to announce the new release of Aspose.Email for Java 5.3.0. It provides the capability of working with Microsoft Exchange Server. This month’s release brings other enhancements and improvements by fixing a number of bugs. This month’s release also provides a number of enhancements such as Detecting Messages for Encryption. The MailMessage class now provides the method of detecting if a message is encrypted or not. The IsEncrypted method can be used to check a message for encryption. This month’s release provides the capability of adding a new multivalued property, PT_MV_LONG.  The property can be added to the NamedPropertyMapping or as a Custom property to the message store, as shown in our Setting Outlook Mapi Properties article.  JDK 1.4 and 1.5 have been discontinued by Sun/Oracle. Even the commercial (non-open) support of JDK 1.5 is no more available. As a result, we also had to discontinue the support for these older versions of JDK. Starting from January release of Aspose.Email for Java 5.0.0, we no more support Java 1.4 and 1.5, and we have already moved our code based to Java 6. Since the last available Java JDK is 1.8 64-bit, we can compile 1.8 baseline to 1.6 production JAR for release publication. There are a number of other improvements that are part of this release such as incorrect time zone display when retrieving message’s date information, loss of Contat Notes while downloading contact information from Exchange server, formatting issues during message conversions between various formats, exceptions such as working with Mono Framework using the API and loading certain messages and appointments files, and adding/deleting messages to a PST. Aspose.Email for Java API now supports working with Exchange servers. This support is based on WebDav and Exchange Web Service (EWS) protocols that enable users to connect to Microsoft Exchange servers 2007, 2010 and 2013. In addition, it can be used to connect to Office 365 online servers via the EWS protocol. The API supports:

•     Connecting to Exchange Server using WebDav and EWS protocols
•     Listing messages from Mailbox
•     Fetching and saving messages to disc
•     Filtering messages from mailbox
•     Access and download messages from Public folders on Exchange server
•     Delete messages from mailbox
•     Getting MailTips from Server
•     Getting Mailbox information from server
•     Connecting to Exchange Server using IMAP
•     Working with Conversation Items
•     Managing Rules on Exchange Server
•     Managing User configuration on Exchange Server
•     Reading emails from other user’s mailbox
•     Move messages between mailbox folders
•     Create and Send message using the API’s Exchange clients
•     Send meeting requests using Exchange Server
•     Synchronizing folder items
•     Retrieving contacts information from Exchange Server

The main improved features & bug fixes added in this release are listed below

• Exchange Web services support
• Exchange WebDav support
• Message Disposition Notifications (MDN) support
• Synchronizing Exchange folders
• Create Assignable Task using Aspose.Email for .NET
• Provide support for MapiPropertyType.PT_MV_LONG
• Access Exchange Address Book
• Connect to Exchange and download messages
• Email time shows incorrect time zone while showing the GMT time
• NDR from Exchange server with "content conversion error" for message with Outlook item from Drafts folder
• Pop3Client: The server returned an invalid response to the TOP command.
• MSG to MHTML: Footer signature is not included in output
• Message body truncated while extracting from PST
• PersonalStorage: FolderInfo.HasSubFolders returns FALSE
• IEWSClient.UpdateContact changes Contact Notes to HTML
• MSG to Mhtml places headers at wrong position in the body
• MailMessage.BodyType returns wrong body type
• Tab character in body replaced by 8 spaces while converting MSG to EML
• Images added as Linked Resource are lost using Aspose.Email 5.2.0
• MailMessage.Load never returns

Other most recent bug fixes are also included in this release

Overview:Aspose.Email for Java 

Aspose.Email for Java is a Non-Graphical Java component that enables Java applications to read and write Microsoft Outlook documents without utilizing Microsoft Outlook. It enables developers to create new MSG file from scratch, update an existing MSG file, read Outlook MSG file & get it's properties like subject, body, recipients in to, cc and bcc, Adding or removing attachment, sender information and MAPI properties.  Aspose.Email for Java can be used with Web as well asDesktop Application.

More about Aspose.Email for Java

• Homepage of Oulook component Aspose.Email for Java
• Download Aspose.Email for Java

Render Cell Comments in PDF & Modify SQL Database Connection Settings using Java

What’s new in this release?

The long awaited version of Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.1 has been released. Starting with this release, Aspose.Cells for Java has dropped the support for Java versions prior to v6 and has moved its codebase to Java 6 (Java 7 and 8 are also supported). Reason being, Sun/Oracle has discontinued the support for all JDK revisions prior to 1.6. Now the Aspose.Cells for Java package contains a single Jar that works well with Java 6, 7 & 8. Microsoft Excel application allows to create the database connection so that the data could be fetched and loaded in the spreadsheets to refresh Pivot Tables, Charts or just the worksheet. The external data source is connected to the workbook through a data connection, which is a set of information that describes how to locate, log in, query, and access the external data source. Aspose.Cells for Java API does not allow to create a database connection yet, however, some revisions back, the API had exposed the ExternalConnection class that contains the method & properties that could be used to inspect the database connection details stored in a spreadsheet. Most of the properties associated with ExternalConnection class were read-only until the release of Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.1. With this release, the API has provided the support to manipulate the database connection settings. Another worth mentioning feature is the support for setting desired image dimensions while exporting spreadsheets & charts to image formats. Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.1 has exposed the ImageOrPrintOptions.setDesiredSize method to set the dimensions of the resultant image while exporting spreadsheets & charts to images. The setDesiredSize method accepts two integer type parameters, where first is the desired width and second parameter is the desired height. The code snippet given on blog post page shows how to set the desired dimensions while exporting Worksheet to PNG. Please note, similar mechanism can also be used to set the image dimensions while converting Charts to image formats. The API has recently exposed the DataLabels.characters method to retrieve an instance of FontSetting class that corresponds to the sub-string of a ChartPoints.DataLabels. In turn, the instance of FontSetting class can be used to format the sub-string of the Data Labels with different font settings & color. Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.1 has exposed the Workbook.isLicensed which could be of great help in determining if the license has been successfully loaded or not. If you access this property before setting the license, it will return false and true for a properly set valid license. Aspose.Cells for Java 8.4.1 has fixed a number of issues and enhanced the core to accommodate many customer requested features. This release includes plenty of improved features and bug fixes as listed below

• Gridweb :setting diffrent border through web operation
• Moved main codebase to Java 6 (Java 7 and 8 are also supported). Dropped support for Java 5 and 1.4.
• Support RenderToSize API for Worksheet Image
• Support Bullets while using SmartMarkers or Cell.setHtmlString method
• Aspose.Cells does not generate individual HTMs and CSS file for the sheets in Excel to HTML conversion
• SheetRender.toImage renders the image with "(blank)" labels on x-axis of the chart
• Issue with Cells.insertRange() as the merged area is not shifted fine
• Text in Arial font getting trimmed from top while rendering the spreadsheet to PDF
• PAPER_A_2 does not work as expected when saving as PDF
• When series category data has comma then PIE chart legends does not show correctly
• Overlapping of the Legend Entries while converting Chart to Image
• Dotted Line is missing in Chart 1
• Horizontal Gridlines are missing in Growth Chart
• Setting the Name.setRefersTo and recalculating formulas result in incorrect value while converting spreadsheet to HTML
• Loading & saving the XLSX with Aspose.Cells make the resultant spreadsheet corrupt
• Custom button becomes picture and caption disappears in the output xlsx
• Microsoft Excel crashes when the output xlsx file is opened
• Dropdown disappears in the output xlsx file
• Multi-byte characters in the data validation list are changed to "??" when selecting it in the FireFox
• Cannot unhide, select or increase the height of the hidden row in GridWeb
• Navigation is wrong when moving from C1 --> C3 cell using Arrow keys
• Some conditional formatting rules cannot be used or partially used in the template file when imported to GridWeb

Overview: Aspose.Cells for Java

Aspose.Cells is a Java component for spreadsheet reporting without using Microsoft Excel. Other features include creating spreadsheets, opening encrypted excel files, macros, VBA, unicode, formula settings, pivot tables, importing data from JDBC ResultSet and support of CSV, SpreadsheetML, PDF, ODS and all file formats from Excel 97 to Excel 2007. It is compatible with Windows, Linux & Unix and supports all advanced features of data management, formatting, worksheet, charting and graphics

• Homepage of Aspose.Cells for Java
• Download Aspose.Cells for Java

OMR Template Editor: Create/Edit OMR Templates using Enhanced Licensing Mechanism

What’s new in this release?

We are proud to announce the new release of Aspose.OCR for .NET 2.5.0. The biggest attraction of this month’s release is the improved licensing mechanism for OMR Template Editor Tool, shipped with Aspose.OCR for .NET API to create, manipulate & scan OMR templates against OMR sheets. The OMR Template Editor is a simple graphical tool, available with Aspose.OCR for .NET API in an executable format (.exe). There could be several usage scenarios however, the main purpose of the tool is to create & save OMR templates that in turn can be used to dynamically identify optical markers from a batch of scanned sheets. Whereas, the template itself is a simple XML file (.amr) in which the elements are defined in the form of XML nodes along with their dimensions, size, name and other properties. The OMR Template Editor allows to create the aforesaid XML through its UI without even having the knowledge of the XML structure. By default, the OMR Template Editor works in evaluation mode and restricts the recognition to not more than 3 elements per page and not more than 10 pages in total. If the limit is exceeded, the recognized value gets replaced with an error message similar to “Trial mode. Recognition is not performed for more than 3 elements.”. In order to work in licensed mode, the OMR Template Editor allows to set a valid license through its Settings interface. The settings dialog can be triggered by clicking the Edit menu and then Settings. The snapshot on the blog announcement page shows the General tab of the Settings dialog, where license can be set using the Change License button. Once clicked, it will prompt to specify the location to the license file, and after validation, the status will be changed to Licensed. Moreover, the OMR Template Editor can also accept valid Aspose.OCR for Java & Aspose.Total for Java licenses. In order to set the Java licenses, one have to first change the mode to Java by clicking the Switch to Aspose.OCR for Java button, whereas the rest of the process to apply the license is same as of setting a .NET license with one change, that is: the OMR Template Editor also requires the location of Aspose.OCR.jar file to validate the license as shown in following illustration.   

Overview: Aspose.OCR for .NET

Aspose.OCR for .NET is a character recognition component built to allow developers to add OCR functionality in their ASP .NET web applications, web services and Windows applications. It provides a simple set of classes for controlling character recognition tasks. It helps developers to work with image (BMP, TIFF) files from within their own applications. It allows developers to extract text from images quickly & easily, saving time & effort involved in developing an OCR solution from scratch.

• Homepage of Aspose.OCR for .NET
• DownloadAspose.OCR for .NET

Sync Exchange Server Folder Items, Email Tracking & Enhanced Message Encryption

What's New in this Release?

We are pleased to announce the release of Aspose.Email for .NET 3.0.0. This month’s release includes new features, enhancements and bug fixes that contribute more towards the value of the product. These features are related to various functional areas of the API including Outlook properties of a message, Exchange client, and Microsoft Outlook tasks and messages encryption. This month’s release includes a new feature of email tracking using Message Disposition Notification (MDN) support. This is achieved by requesting the read receipts and creating the required information. The MailMessage class’s ReadReceiptTo property gets or sets the set read receipt address. The CreateReadReceipt and ReadReceiptRequested methods are used for creating and retrieving the information whether read receipts are requested. We have illustrated the usage of this feature with the help of sample code that can be consulted for getting an idea. This month’s release of Aspose.Email has further enhanced the MailMessage class with inclusion of IsEncrypted property. The property can be used to check a received/load message file for encryption. This is different to the already available IsSigned property that shows if message is signed. Aspose.Email API already supports adding multi value Mapi properties to a message’s store. We have added the support for MV_LONG property in this month’s release which allows adding this property using both NamedProperty and Custom property message store. Aspose.Email API already supports adding multi value Mapi properties to a message’s store. We have added the support for MV_LONG property in this month’s release which allows adding this property using both NamedProperty and Custom property message store. We have also fixed a number of bugs related to various areas of API functionality. These include issues related to encoding issues during message conversion to other formats, missing information during messages conversion to MHTML, wrong message body type detection by MailMessage, loss of linked resource images when sending email using the API, exceptions such as using the IEWSClient of API with Mono framework, conversion to messages to MailMessage, loading certain email message files, and malformed address compilation etc. The main bug fixes & improved features added in this release are listed below

• Message Disposition Notifications (MDN) support
• Synchronizing Exchange folders
• Create Assignable Task using Aspose.Email for .NET
• Provide support for MapiPropertyType.PT_MV_LONG
• NDR from Exchange server with "content conversion error" for message with Outlook item from Drafts folder
• Pop3Client: The server returned an invalid response to the TOP command.
• MSG to MHTML: Footer signature is not included in output
• Message body truncated while extracting from PST
• PersonalStorage: FolderInfo.HasSubFolders returns FALSE
• IEWSClient.UpdateContact changes Contact Notes to HTML
• MSG to Mhtml places headers at wrong position in the body
• MailMessage.BodyType returns wrong body type
• Tab character in body replaced by 8 spaces while converting MSG to EML
• Images added as Linked Resource are lost using Aspose.Email 5.2.0
• MailMessage.Load never returns

Other most recent bug fixes are also included in this release.

Overview:Aspose.Email for .NET

Aspose.Email for .NET is a set of .net email components allowing developers to easily implement email functionality within their ASP.NET web applications, web services & Windows applications. It Supports Outlook PST, EML, MSG & MHT formats. It allows developers to work with SMTP, POP3, FTP & MS Exchange servers. It supports mail merge, iCalendar, customized header & body, header information, embedded files, Twitter & many more. It makes it easy to work with HTML or plain text emails & their attachments.

• Homepage of Aspose.Email for .NET C#
• Download Aspose.Email for .NET