The cross-platform .NET PDF library now runs on Alpine Linux, converts HTML forms into fillable fields, and moves wkhtmltopdf code to Chromium unchanged.

Signed invoices, archived contracts, accessible reports: 26.5 adds hardware-key signing, long-term validation and new PDF/A levels for the documents that have to last.”

— Florentin Badea, SelectPdf

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA, October 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — SelectPdf, a developer of HTML to PDF and PDF tools for .NET since 2014, today released version 26.5 of SelectPdf.Universal, its cross-platform .NET PDF library and HTML to PDF converter for Windows, Linux and macOS on Apple Silicon. The release adds a remote engine for containers and clusters, automatic tables of contents with page numbers, fillable PDF forms from HTML forms, signing with hardware keys and long-term signature validation, faster parallel conversions, and compatibility packages for applications built on wkhtmltopdf.

A remote engine for containers, clusters and Alpine Linux. Conversions can now run in the ghcr.io/selectpdf/engine container, on another machine, instead of on the application’s own machine. The application then needs no native engine package, which brings SelectPdf to Alpine Linux and other musl-based systems, where the native engines do not run; this was verified with an application on the official .NET 10 Alpine image. The engine image is available for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. A Helm chart and tested setups for Docker Compose, Azure Container Apps, Amazon ECS, Google Cloud Run and Kubernetes are included. In the commercial library, HTML to PDF, HTML to image, PDF to text and PDF to image all run through it, and the free SelectPdf Community Edition supports it too.

Tables of contents with page numbers. A new TableOfContents option builds a table of contents during HTML to PDF conversion in three ways: it can add leaders and page numbers to a table of contents the page already contains, write one into the page from its headings, or insert separate table of contents pages at the start, after the first page or at the end. It works with right-to-left and non-Latin pages and with headers and footers.

HTML forms become fillable PDF forms. With CreateFormFields, text inputs, check boxes, radio buttons, drop-down lists and text areas are converted into PDF form fields at the place of each control, with their values, labels and options. This also works with PDF/A and PDF/UA output.

Signing with keys the library never sees. SelectPdf.Universal can now sign with a key held in an HSM, on a smart card or on a USB token through PKCS#11, with a certificate from the Windows, macOS or Linux certificate store, or through a remote signing service in two steps. Signing was verified with a qualified certificate on a USB token, and Adobe Acrobat reports the result as a qualified electronic signature. Long-term validation (PAdES B-LT) embeds the revocation data of the certificate chain, so signatures can still be validated after the certificates expire. Signatures can use SHA-256, SHA-384 or SHA-512, and the visible signature can carry the company’s logo.

More archiving levels. PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-2a and PDF/A-2u join the PDF/A, PDF/X and accessible PDF/UA-1 and PDF/UA-2 output the library already produces. PDF/A-1a is the PDF/A-1 level that combines with PDF/UA-1.

Faster where it counts. Conversions running in parallel are much faster in 26.5: in our tests, the number of conversions per minute more than doubled on Linux and rose by about half on Windows, with the exact gain depending on the machine. Long HTML documents convert faster, and saving a loaded document takes a fraction of the time it did.

Smaller files and better text. A new ImagesMaxResolution option resamples oversized images, which makes documents with large photos much smaller. FitWideContent scales content wider than the page to fit, instead of cutting it at the right edge. Text search now finds Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Thai and Arabic terms, and text elements shape Indic, Thai and other complex scripts.

Moving off wkhtmltopdf without rewriting code. wkhtmltopdf, the HTML to PDF engine behind many .NET applications, is no longer maintained: its GitHub repository is archived, and its last release dates from June 2020. Four new compatibility packages, SelectPdf.Compat.DinkToPdf and SelectPdf.Compat.WkHtmlToPdfDotNet with their .Licensed versions, keep the API of the DinkToPdf and Haukcode.WkHtmlToPdfDotNet wrappers, so existing converter code builds as it is, and render with Chromium instead of wkhtmltopdf’s Qt WebKit. Layouts keep their size, headers and footers stay in place, and applications no longer ship native wkhtmltopdf files. The packages are open source under the MIT license, on GitHub.

Simpler installs. Both the commercial library and the SelectPdf Community Edition, free for commercial use for documents up to 5 pages, can now be installed with a single package per platform: Windows, Linux x64, Linux ARM64 or macOS on Apple Silicon. For the Community Edition these are SelectPdf.HtmlToPdf.Windows, SelectPdf.HtmlToPdf.Linux, SelectPdf.HtmlToPdf.Linux.Arm64 and SelectPdf.HtmlToPdf.MacOS; for the commercial library, SelectPdf.Universal.Windows, SelectPdf.Universal.Linux, SelectPdf.Universal.Linux.Arm64 and SelectPdf.Universal.MacOS. A new result property tells an application when the 5-page limit shortened a document.

SelectPdf.Universal targets .NET 8, .NET 10 and .NET Standard 2.0, so it runs on everything from .NET Framework 4.6.1 to the current .NET releases. Version 26.5 is also verified with .NET 11 RC 1 on Windows, Linux x64 and ARM64, and macOS on Apple Silicon.

Availability and pricing. SelectPdf 26.5 is available now on NuGet as SelectPdf.Universal (commercial) and SelectPdf.HtmlToPdf.Universal (free Community Edition), with a native engine package for each platform, and the compatibility packages. One perpetual license, from $499 for a single developer, covers both the cross-platform SelectPdf.Universal and the classic Windows library. A free trial is available.

More information: https://selectpdf.com/pdf-library-cross-platform/

About SelectPdf

SelectPdf makes HTML to PDF conversion and PDF manipulation tools for developers: a perpetual-license .NET library and an online REST API. SelectPdf libraries have been downloaded more than 23 million times from NuGet. SelectPdf is a brand of Outside Software SRL, Bucharest, Romania.

Florentin Badea
SelectPdf
support@selectpdf.com
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