The ARender team presents you the release notes of version 4.0.9, mainly bringing a large set of corrections compared to ARender 4.0.8, while adding new functionalities to our ECM connectors and Docker images.

This list of new features and corrected issues aims to describe the major part of the new features having a direct impact on the use of ARender. A detailed list is available (in English) at this address: Changelog

New features:

‣ New interface functionality: resetting rotations

By activating the configuration parameter topPanel.rotation.reset=true you will be able to activate a button allowing to reset the rotations on the document. This will allow you to quickly revalidate the original state of the document before you have rotated it.

‣ Alfresco connector: change of annotation storage mode

The annotations will now be stored in metadata of the document being viewed and no longer in the tree structure of the Alfresco files. This corrects:

• Rights issues associated with the « SuperAnnotations » historical folder (rights now follow document rights)
• Annotations appeared in the user’s recently opened documents panel Finally, you don’t have to do anything to take advantage of this new feature. ARender will go to check if annotations are to be migrated before making annotations in the new operating mode so that your old annotations are migrated seamlessly.

‣ FileNet connector: Support for annotations on videos

In 4.0.9, we introduced in our annotation model stored in FileNet the necessary elements (specific to ARender) in order to be able to annotate videos.

‣ Including annotations in the « Crop Image » feature

The configuration parameter image.cropbox.include.annotations=true is now active by default and allows you to include annotations when you export part of the visible image.

‣ Javascript API

The getCurrentUserName(function(username)) method of the ARender Javascript API allows you during your integrations to retrieve the name visible by ARender of the current user.

‣ For your integrations

ARender HMI (front end web application) is now in Spring 5, if you already use this version of the Framework, you can also use it in your integrations with HMI ARender without conflicts.

This also introduces Spring Security 5 in ARender, which brings a large number of facilitators in the implementation of OAuth, OpenIdConnect, etc… for ARender.

‣ Third-party software in the docker conversion image

We have updated our taskconversion Docker image to recompile ImageMagick with more efficient conversion parameters, without losing quality.

So, if you base your packages/application on our docker images, you will automatically benefit from this optimized packaging which is both faster and consumes less memory.

‣ New behavior in version 4.0.9 backend rendition server

Rendition 4 has the functionality of « repairing » itself if it detects a service that has broken down or not started.

In 4.0.9, the micro services monitor will allow during a scheduled restart of a micro service or a micro service failure detection to put requests in a pending state during processing while the micro service returns to good working order.

This will generally reduce (when the platform is not in good general operating condition) the cases of failure to view / convert documents. A 4.0.9 rendition that will often restart its services though is generally an indication that a parameter is not correctly placed in relation to the use made of the application.

Fixes:

‣ Focus and text fields

We have corrected issues related to text fields in combination with the submenus. This will make it easier to access the text fields when the browser width allocated to ARender is small.

In the same logic of improving the use of the application in particular contexts, it is now possible to annotate documents in full screen, which will allow users with a reduced size of ARender to work in full screen mode easier.

‣ Stamps and zoom

Text and image stamps will now follow the zoom level of your current document. On the document you are working on, no matter what your zoom level, the stamp will always be the same size. It will be easier to put a stamp in a signature box now that you know in advance exactly what size your stamp will be on the document!

‣ Watermark and redact consolidation

The functionality of redacting and watermarking when opening documents (configurable in your ARender integration) has been consolidated in ARender 4.0.9. The functionality should be available and functional on a wider range of documents than in 4.0.8, and with a better accuracy on images.

‣ Memory usage fixes

We reduced the memory consumption of micro services after detecting a non-optimal use of resources in an object cached for one hour. Depending on the load, the use can become substantial and we have removed this involuntary use of the memory by the object.

Also, when generating new documents (PDF to print, PDF with annotations, etc.) we have reduced memory usage compared to previous versions of ARender.

‣ Tiff documents consolidation

The Tiff documents were introduced with a particular behavior in 4.0.7 to recover the historical ARender 3 behavior.

In this version, we have consolidated the logic which generated the Tiff images in order to refocus it in the core API of ARender 4 micro services. Thus, although the Tiff have a unique behavior, their code logic crosses the micro service core and finds the same stability as the other documents.

‣ Consolidation of the PDF rendering micro service

In resource-constrained environments we have identified cases that could cause the rendering micro service to stop without warning. The rendition detected this crash and restarted the service, but the user experience was sub-optimal.

We have corrected this stability issue and the PDF rendering micro service should no longer stop during work except in the case of explicit errors / expected restarts of the micro service by the monitoring.

Known Bug :

After viewing a video, the annotation panel becomes blocked and does not allow editing of annotations. Annotations can still be edited on the document but no longer via the dedicated panel.
This behavior disappears the next time ARender is loaded (new document opened under FileNet, Alfresco, etc.)
You can also refresh your browser window to work around the problem.
As this problem has workarounds and has a low impact, it did not delay the release of the version and this problem will be fixed in 4.0.9-1.