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Welcome  | 
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Welcome to the May 2008 issue of the Aspose  Newsletter! In this month’s newsletter, we will provide some introductory information  about our spotlight product: Aspose.AdHoc. We will also look at the new and  exciting features offered in the recent releases of Aspose.Words, Aspose.Cells  for Reporting Services, Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services, Aspose.Slides, Aspose.Pdf.Kit,  and Aspose.Cells. You will learn about the latest news from Aspose along with  the monthly Tech-Tip, which demonstrates how to efficiently use Aspose.Slides  in your applications, and an introduction to our featured technical article  which shows you how to convert DOC to PDF with Microsoft Office SharePoint  Server 2007 using Aspose components.  | 
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| Product Spotlight | 
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The Aspose.AdHoc Query Builder component is an ASP.NET component that can be used for a wide  variety of tasks, ranging from Ad Hoc reports to quick and easy search screens.  Developers can simply drag and drop the Ad Hoc component on to their web forms,  assign a DataTable object as the data source and let the component do the rest.  The Ad Hoc component uses a DataTable object as its data source allowing  developers to use virtually any back end database. The Ad Hoc component offers  a variety of outputs, including: SQL statement, Select statement, Where  statement, Order By statement, Filtered Data Objects and many more. Take the  time to download the free evaluation version today to see how Aspose.AdHoc can work for you.  |  |  
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Aspose using Sitefinity CMS to manage its web content  | 
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In an effort to better serve our valuable  customers, the Aspose website has been upgraded. We have moved few of our  website modules onto Sitefinity CMS. The new CMS based website modules are more  user-friendly & easily accessible and feature a sleek design with a  consistent layout throughout, making the content more appealing and easy to  navigate. We value your feedback greatly and would like you to explore our new  website and share your experiences with us. For more information please visit  this blog post.  |  |  
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Aspose.Words for .NET on latest platforms  | 
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Aspose.Words comes with two DLLs; one is targeted for .NET Framework 1.1 and the other for  .NET Framework 2.0. The DLL targeted for .NET Framework 2.0 can also be used in  Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 with both x86 and x64 applications targeted for  .NET Framework 3.0 and .NET Framework 3.5. For detailed information, you are  requested to view the relevant post.  Aspose.Words has also been tested on and confirmed to have no problems while being  used on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise  x64. More details here.
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New VBA based UI of the client tool for Aspose.Cells for Reporting Services  | 
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In the latest version 1.1.1.0 of Aspose.Cells  for Reporting Services, we have made some changes to the client tool which  is used to design reports in MS Excel. We have now used VBA to develop the UI  of the client tool and C# to develop its other features. This removes its  dependency on Excel PIA and makes installation and deployment easier. The  support for sub-report design, manual input report range and composite markers  have also been included in this release along with numerous bug fixes. The  latest version can be downloaded from here.  For more information please visit the official release page and the accompanying blog post.  |  |  
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Importing DrawingML graphics with Aspose.Words for .NET  | 
 |  Aspose.Words for .NET version 5.1.0.0 has been released. This new release brings  improvements to DOCX (Office Open XML) import of DrawingML graphics; some  images in the DrawingML format are now supported. ODT (OpenDocument) export has  also been improved as well as an option to export to a CSS stylesheet (embedded  in HTML or separate file) is now available when exporting to HTML. We have also  resolved some problems that customers were experiencing on 64bit Windows. In  addition to this, numerous other bug fixes and improvements have been  incorporated into this release. For detailed information please visit the  official release page and the accompanying blog post.  The latest version of Aspose.Words for .NET can be downloaded from here.
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Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services 1.1.5.0 released  | 
 |  The latest version  1.1.5.0 of Aspose.Slides  for Reporting Services has been released. In this release we have added the  capability to export Hyperlink actions. By RDL specifications, hyperlinks can now  be added to images and text boxes in a report. For more information please  visit the official release page.  The latest version of Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services can be downloaded  from here.
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Cloning slides inside PPTX presentation  | 
 |  Aspose.Slides for .NET version 2.8.3.0 has been released. This was soon followed by the release  of version 2.8.4.0. The new release now supports cloning of slides inside one  presentation for PPTX format. Also supported is the rendering of headers,  footers, slide numbers and all types of automatically generated dates, etc. on  thumbnail, SVG and PDF. Many internal improvements for reading/writing PPTX and  numerous other bug fixes have been incorporated into these releases. For more  information please visit the official release pages here and here.  The latest version of Aspose.Slides for .NET can be downloaded from here.
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Digital signature supported in Aspose.Pdf.Kit for Java  | 
 |  The latest version  2.0.0.0 of Aspose.Pdf.Kit for Java has been released. In this release the support for digital signature  has been added. Users are now able to secure the PDF document with digital  certificate. Also added is the support for extracting various comments  (annotations) including types of text, highlight, stamp, attachment, etc. as  well as the support for CJK font for filling fields and stamping texts. Also  included in this release are numerous bug fixes and improvements. Please visit  the official release page and the accompanying blog post for more information. You can download the latest version of Aspose.Pdf.Kit for  Java from here.
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Aspose.Cells for .NET 4.4.3.0 released  | 
 |  Aspose.Cells for .NET version 4.4.3.0 has been released. This was preceded by the release of  version 4.4.2.0 earlier. The new release now supports the DAYS360 function in  formula calculation engine, and the 2007 XLSM format. In addition to this, two  new methods, Cell.GetStyle and Cell.SetStyle, have been added to optimize  memory usage. Also included in this release are numerous bug fixes and  improvements. For more information please visit the official release pages here and here,  as well as the accompanying blog post.  The latest version of Aspose.Cells for .NET can be downloaded from here.
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Aspose.Slides for Java supports OLE1 native objects and bidirectional writing  | 
 |  The latest version  1.8.3.0 of Aspose.Slides for Java has been released. The new release includes support for OLE1 native  objects and bidirectional writing. Also included is the support for any number  of meta characters (which represent slide numbers, header, footers and etc.) in  a text frame through TextFrame.getMetaCharacters() method. In addition to this  the rendering of headers, footers, slide numbers and all types of automatically  generated dates, etc. on thumbnail, SVG and PDF is also supported. Numerous  other bug fixes and improvements have been incorporated into this release as  well. For more information please visit the official release page.  The latest version of Aspose.Slides for Java can be downloaded from here.
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Technical Article – Converting DOC to PDF with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 using Aspose Components  | 
 |  This article describes how you can add the  ability of converting DOC to PDF (DOC2PDF) to Microsoft Office SharePoint  Server 2007 (MOSS) using Aspose.Words and Aspose.Pdf.  The article will guide you in creating a small console application in Visual  Studio that works as a document converter for SharePoint and invokes the Aspose  components to perform the conversion. It is easy to add even more types of  document conversions by following the example in this article. You can find the  complete article here.
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Technical Tip – How to efficiently use  Aspose.Slides in your applications  | 
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Speed optimizations    Aspose.Slides has many features for managing presentations. Some of these features are quite efficient  in terms of execution speed while others are a bit time consuming. The main  idea of speed optimization is replace slow operations with their more efficient  alternatives where possible. Following are some useful operation replacements: - When creating  presentations from templates try to avoid cloning slides from one presentation  to another. Sometimes it’s better to open template and delete unnecessary  slides instead of cloning each slide from the template to an empty  presentation.
  - If you are creating a  presentation with several similar slides then avoid cloning each slide from  template. You should do it only once and after that clone this created slide  inside your target presentation. Cloning local slides is more efficient than  cloning between presentations.
 - Create whole table at  once if possible instead of adding new columns and rows later. This can also  reduce memory usage.
 - Fill table cells row  by row from left to right and from top to bottom. Another order can slow down  the process dramatically.
 
 Size optimization    Most of the optimization  tasks related to size of the presentation are executed automatically by  Aspose.Slides when you save the presentation to a file or stream. However there  are several additional ways to further reduce the size of the presentation:  
  - Don’t       forget to delete unused master slides and handout.
 - Reuse       fonts and images in a presentation.
 - Delete       alternative text from shapes if you are not going to use it later.
 - Insert       common shapes and images to master slide.
 - Minimize       the number of text portions if possible.
  
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