Rules
Please don't use this blog to post technical or commercial questions.
RULE #1: DO NOT CONTACT DEVELOPERS PERSONALLY.
Read the support page, and decide which situation applies:
- You need iText documentation.
- You're looking for examples.
- You want an answer for free.
- You have a license / support contract.
There are thousands and thousands of iText users, but there are only a limited number of iText developers. You can't expect individual iText developers to answer each and every question for free. If you break this rule, please understand that your company risks receiving an invoice!
There's also a second rule:
RULE #2: DO NOT POST QUESTIONS WITHOUT AN EXAMPLE REPRODUCING THE PROBLEM.
It's no use sending a mail to the mailing-list saying: I've tried X and it doesn't work. The standard answer to posts like this is: It works for us; case closed!
Don't post code snippets expecting that we'll copy/paste it into something we can test on our system. If you've tried something and it doesn't work, create a small example that can be executed as a standalone application using a recent iText version, and post it to the mailing list. Please don't expect us to debug problems in iText versions that are more than 2 years old!
For those who want an answer for free, please read the third rule:
RULE #3: SUBSCRIBE TO THE MAILING-LIST!
You should understand that, as long as you don't subscribe, somebody has to MANUALLY approve your mail among a huge load of SPAM. This is a boring administrative job and genuine questions risk to be treated as SPAM. In that case, your question is lost, and you may accidentally end up on a black list.
RULE #4: GIVE A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF YOUR PROBLEM IN THE SUBJECT LINE.
Don't use Subject:-lines such as "Need help", "Help me", "small iText problem", etc... Be clear and concise. For instance: "Image in table problem", "missing characters in font", "using Unicode in PdfGraphics2D",...
RULE #5: USING THE WORD URGENT IS FORBIDDEN.
Please understand that using the word "URGENT" in the subject line is very rude. If you post a question to the free mailing list, you're using iText for free (otherwise you'd send your question to the premium support address). If you're not paying for iText, you're asking us to do you a favor, and we're willing to grant you that favor, BUT it's very rude to SHOUT when asking for a favor, and trying to force us to give you an answer by using the word URGENT is counter-productive.
RULE #6: DON'T EXPECT YOU'LL ALWAYS GET AN ANSWER FOR FREE!
We offer Free Software, we don't offer Consultancy for free. Our time is valuable, so if we say your question goes beyond what can be offered for free, be prepared to pay for our time. Also don't assume that the word Free in Free Software should be interpreted as the word Free in Free Beer. When we say Free, we mean Free as in Free Speech. It boils down to this: if you use iText in an application that is offered under the same Free Software license as iText (the AGPL), you don't have to pay anything. The moment you create a closed source, proprietary, commercial application using iText, you'll probably have to buy a license! If you don't understand this, please read Gratis versus Libre (on Wikipedia).
RULE #7: DON'T EXPECT SUPPORT FOR A VERSION THAT IS 2 YEARS OLD
If your code contains classes from the com.lowagie domain, please don't ask any further. You're using an old and obsolete iText version. We've discontinued giving support for all versions prior to iText 5 in 10Q3. You should upgrade to a more recent iText version.