Upgrade note: See v2023.19.0 for detailed instructions.

Overview​

ARender 2023.19.0 introduces fillable fields comparison for AcroForm PDF documents, enabling users to see differences in form field content when comparing two versions. Text selection is now enabled by default on mobile devices, and saved page rotations can now be transparently included in downloads and prints via dedicated properties — replacing the separate download button and print checkbox from the previous release. Two new JavaScript API events allow integrators to track the first page render time and the resolution of all document layouts. The release also includes synchronized zoom in document comparison, several annotation and redaction fixes, and rendering improvements for emails, Office documents, and SVG files.

Prerequisites​

Security​

Security dependencies upgraded Embedded dependencies have been upgraded to address known vulnerabilities in the rendition and UI components. For detailed information about the specific vulnerabilities addressed, please contact ARender support. Related issues: AR-18122, AR-18223

User Perspective​

AcroForm fillable fields comparison When comparing two versions of a PDF document containing fillable form fields (AcroForm), ARender now extracts and compares the text content of those fields. Differences in fillable field values are highlighted alongside regular text differences in the comparison view. This feature supports text fields; button fields (checkboxes, radio buttons) are excluded. Related issues: AR-16889

Text selection enabled by default on mobile Mobile users no longer need to manually switch to text selection mode. Text selection is now active by default, removing an extra step for users who need to select text or apply redact annotations on mobile devices. Related issues: AR-16665

Streamlined rotation on download and print The separate "Download with rotations" button and the print checkbox introduced in 2023.18.0 have been removed. Instead, when rotation saving is enabled (visualization.rotation.save.enabled=true), two properties now control whether the standard download and print actions transparently include saved rotations:

• topPanel.documentMenu.downloadPDF.includeRotations=true — the standard "Download as PDF" action includes saved rotations (default: false)
• print.includeRotations=true — printing includes saved rotations (default: false)

When enabled, no extra button or checkbox is presented to the user — rotations are applied automatically. Related issues: AR-18187

Synchronized zoom in document comparison When comparing two documents side by side, zooming in one panel now synchronizes the zoom level in the other panel, providing a more consistent comparison experience. Related issues: AR-16958

Color palette no longer truncated in annotation editor Fixed a regression where the color palette in the annotation editor was truncated when the document display panel was reduced below a certain width. Related issues: AR-17689

Ghost broken-image icon on arrow annotations Fixed a visual artefact where a broken-image icon appeared when creating or editing arrow annotations. Related issues: AR-18205

Comments on arrow annotations now saved correctly Comments added to arrow annotations were previously lost after saving and reopening the document. They are now correctly persisted. Related issues: AR-18121

Escape key closes hyperlink URL creation popup Pressing the Escape key while creating a hyperlink URL in the quick menu now correctly closes the popup. Related issues: AR-17315

Pagination selection fix Selecting a thumbnail and then navigating with page buttons no longer leaves the original thumbnail in a selected state. Related issues: AR-17647

Area hyperlink creation after disabling DocLinks Fixed an issue where area selection for hyperlink creation stopped working after disabling the DocLinks feature. Related issues: AR-18094

Developer / Integrator Perspective​

JavaScript API: first page rendered event A new JS API event fires when the first page of a document finishes rendering, allowing integrators to measure perceived load time independently of full document loading. This enables more accurate performance monitoring and user-experience metrics. Related issues: AR-17877 More information: Document JavaScript API

JavaScript API: all document layouts resolved event A new JS API event fires when all DocumentLayout objects have been resolved for every document in the session, including child documents such as ZIP entries or email attachments. This is useful for integrators who need to perform actions only after the complete document structure is known. Related issues: AR-18225 More information: Document layout JavaScript API

Exploitation Perspective​

Improved email rendering Fixed incorrect display of certain emails: Gmail emails that were incorrectly split into separate documents (body vs. attachments) and Outlook emails that rendered without visible text. Root cause was NUL byte characters in MSG file content interfering with HTML detection. Related issues: AR-15321

Correct file extensions for annotation downloads When downloading annotations in XFDF, FDF, or ZIP format, the source document extension is no longer incorrectly included in the target filename. Documents with dots in their name (e.g., hello.world.pdf) are also handled correctly. Related issues: AR-16322

Redaction annotations excluded from FDF downloads FDF annotation downloads no longer incorrectly include redaction annotations. Redactions are security-sensitive and must not be exported as standard annotations. Related issues: AR-16562

Faster layout generation for certain Office documents Optimized the Excel cell counting process in the Aroms rendering engine (upgraded to Aroms 4.1.0) to avoid slow getDocumentLayout responses when processing certain Office documents. A timeout mechanism now prevents excessive processing time. Related issues: AR-16690

Redaction always protected on print Redactions are now always preserved when printing, regardless of whether annotations are included or a watermark is applied. Previously, certain print configurations could strip redacted content. Related issues: AR-17073

LibreOffice lock file cleanup Temporary lock files (.~lock.*.pdf#) left by LibreOffice during DOCX-to-PDF conversion are now cleaned up after the conversion completes, preventing them from blocking subsequent conversions of the same file. Related issues: AR-17225

Improved PDF signature display Fixed an issue where PDF digital signatures showed the signatory as "unknown" in ARender while Adobe Acrobat correctly displayed the signatory information. ARender now uses the signature name or Common Name (CN) from the certificate. Related issues: AR-17892

Document title sanitization for MS Office conversion Office documents with trailing spaces in their title no longer cause InvalidPathException during MS Office Windows conversion. Related issues: AR-17921

Race condition in annotation cache resolved Fixed an IllegalArgumentException ("Annotation already exists") that occurred when rapidly moving sticky notes. The race condition between user modifications and asynchronous save callbacks is now handled gracefully. Related issues: AR-18011

Bookmark annotation with invalid page index XFDF files containing bookmark annotations with page="-1" (parent folder nodes) no longer cause an IndexOutOfBoundsException when downloading with annotations. Related issues: AR-18023

Free-text annotation positioning in PDF download Fixed misalignment of free-text annotations in downloaded PDFs, particularly for annotations with large border widths or annotations created by click (vs. drag). Related issues: AR-18102

SVG documents now rendered as images SVG files are now correctly detected and rendered as image documents in ARender, including in Docker environments. Related issues: AR-18114

Helm chart configuration fix Fixed the combined use of environment: and envFrom: in the rendition Helm chart by using nindent instead of indent for proper YAML indentation. Related issues: AR-18127

PDF/A document save in FileNet Fixed a regression where saving or updating built PDF/A documents in FileNet stopped working. This was caused by the document accessor not being reloaded after PDF/A conversion. Related issues: AR-18136

Improved PdfOwl error logging PdfOwl error log messages now include the documentId, making it easier to correlate rendering errors with specific documents, especially when the watchdog timeout triggers. Related issues: AR-18140

Rendition server failover Fixed an issue where the HMI did not failover to a secondary rendition server when the primary server became unavailable. The WebClientRequestException is now correctly converted to trigger the failover mechanism. Related issues: AR-18168

Configurable conversion coordination timeout The internal conversion coordination timeout in the rendition broker is now configurable via arender.conversion.timeout.ms, aligned with the arender.server.rendition.rest.read.timeout property. Previously, this was hardcoded to 120 seconds, causing heavy document conversions to fail even when the HTTP timeout was extended. Related issues: AR-18170

Improved Office document rendering on Linux Fixed incomplete rendering of certain landscape Office documents (e.g., 15 pages rendered instead of 18) when using LibreOffice on Linux. The rendering now uses generateDocument instead of page-by-page generation for Word documents. Related issues: AR-18206

Redaction applied in all download scenarios Reinforced redaction application to ensure redacted content is properly removed in all download scenarios, including the "Download All As PDF" action for archive documents. Related issues: AR-18220

Document comparison download fix Fixed an HTTP 500 error when downloading a document with comparison results. The AlterContentDescriptionCompare handler was missing in the UI layer. Related issues: AR-18252

Encrypted perishable document ID handling Improved the handling of reverted EncryptedPerishableSelfContainedDocumentId to correctly preserve the end-of-life timestamp, ensuring the re-generated document ID after reversion matches the original. Related issues: AR-17686, AR-18217

Changelog​

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