If you plan to do ZUGFeRD or Fracture-X invoices in FileMaker or Xojo, you may sooner or later see our DynaPDF offering. Our MBS FileMaker Plugin help reading and writing the XML data in the PDF document. We also have XML functions to help building or parsing the XML document. And DynaPDF can help to make a correct PDF/A document for the output and optionally sign it digitally with a certificate.
Read embedded XML
To read a PDF, you need DynaPDF Lite or higher. Once you opened a PDF document for import, you can check access embedded files.
With the Lite version you can import from multipel documents to merge them together. Or extract images or text from the document to analyze them.
Write PDF with embedded XML
Creating a PDF document with an attachment only needs a Starter license. This way you can have a main document with links to embedded sub documents and Adobe Reader can show them to you. Same for embedding a XML document. Starter version could do that, but for PDF/A, you need more.
Write PDF/A from scratch
Since you can create PDF documents from scratch in DynaPDF, these can be PDF/A if you want. You'd run the steps to make it a PDF except using the PDF/A converter add-on for DynaPDF, if you just have a Lite or Pro license without it.
The steps to make a PDF/A from scratch are:
- Create the pages you need
- Set language metadata
- Create structure tree
- Set the exact subtype of PDF/A you like.
- Verify with CheckConformance
- Add the output intent required
Read PDF, add something and write PDF/A
If you import an existing PDF document, you would need the PDF/A converter for DynaPDF. This is an add-on we sell to the Pro and Enterprise licenses. This add-on allows you to convert any existing PDF document to PDF/A standard in various levels. Basically you call CheckConformance and instead of returning you an error if something is wrong, it will go and convert anything needed to make the PDF a valid PDF/A one.
If you plan to make a PDF in FileMaker or let your users create a template file in Word and use that, you'd need the converter add-on.
Summary
If you like to do ZUGFeRD in FileMaker, you have two choices:
Either build the PDF from scratch with DynaPDF Lite and save it as PDF. Or you let FileMaker make a PDF and import that or let the users bring their template to import. And then you need to convert to PDF/A and order DynaPDF Pro with the PDF/A add-on.