Difference between com.lowagie.text and iText 2.1.

问题:

First of all, this is NOT a duplicate of this question: What is the difference between lowagie and iText?　 In this question, I'm only referring to the version used by both Jasper and BIRT, that is the 2.1.7.

What is the difference between BIRT's com.lowagie.text-2.1.7.jar and Jasper Reports' iText-2.1.7.jar?

I have been trying to integrate BIRT and Jasper Reports in my application and decide later which should I use. BIRT 4.6 uses com.lowagie.text-2.1.7.jar, while Jasper Reports 6.3 requires iText-2.1.7.jar. The framework I'm using for my application already has a MPL licensed iText-2.1.2.jar in it.

If I use BIRT and include com.lowagie.text-2.1.7.jar in my app's library, it works perfectly fine. However, if I use Jasper and include iText-2.1.7.jar it doesn't work well since it directs to the older iText-2.1.2.jar which lacks some function(setTabs() in PdfWriter). I have to delete the pre-existing iText-2.1.2 from the framework in order for Jasper Reports to work.

In what way did com.lowagie.text-2.1.7.jar differ from iText-2.1.7.jar for it to work without causing a conflict with the iText-2.1.2.jar?

回答1:

Note: I can only guess - one of the BIRT maintainers should answer this!

However, looking inside the "about_files" directory inside com.lowagie.text_2.1.7.v201004222200.jar delivery with BIRT 4.3.0 (it's probably basically the same with BIRT 4.6.0), you'll find the file "misc_licencses.txt".

As far as I understand it (but I'm not really sure), BIRT's version of iText 2.1.7 is identical to the original iText 2.1.7, with some bug fixes for code not written by Bruno Lowagie.