Product Documentation
Abstract
The following article documents the generic file formats that are supported in the Daeja ViewONE Virtual viewer with notable caveats and exclusions.
Content
Daeja ViewONE Virtual supports the following file formats:
Supported image formats
- Bitmap (image/bmp)
- GIF (image/gif)
- JPEG (image/jpeg) (image/jpg) (image/pjpeg)
- PNG (image/png)
- TIFF (image/tiff)
- PDF (application/pdf)
- TEXT
Supported Microsoft Office formats (requires ViewONE Office Module):
Microsoft Excel (application/vnd.ms-excel) (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet)
Microsoft PowerPoint (application/vnd.ms-powerpoint) (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation)
Microsoft Word (application/msword) (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document)
Email MSG (application/vnd.ms-outlook)
Email EML (message/rfc822)
*Miscellaneous Supported formats:
CALS Raster (image/cals)
Paintbrush (image/pcx) (image/x-pcx) (image/x-dcx)
Lotus Spreadsheet (application/vnd.lotus-1-2-3) (application/x-lotus123)
Lotus Freelance (application/vnd.lotus-freelance) (application/x-lotus-freelance)
Lotus Word Pro (application/vnd.lotus-wordpro) (application/x-lotus-wordpro)
OpenOffice Calc (application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet) (application/x-vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet)
OpenOffice Writer (application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text) (application/x-vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
OpenOffice Draw (application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics) (application/x-vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics)
OpenOffice Impress (application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation) (application/x-vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation)
Rich Text Format (application/rtf) (application/x-rtf) (text/richtext)
* Important Note
Annotation editing is disabled for these document types. If the document has annotations set they will be displayed but are read-only.
Caveats:
Comparison with native renderers
IBM Daeja ViewONE Virtual is designed to support as many file types as possible. However, the product is not able to render every type of file with the same accuracy as native applications, such as Microsoft Word. The flexibility of the viewer can lead to differences in the way that the documents are displayed between the native application and the viewer. The severity of the differences varies depending on the complexity of the file type. In particular, PDF files and Microsoft Office files are difficult to render with complete accuracy in a universal viewer.
IBM Daeja ViewONE Virtual requires the fonts used in the document to be available on the server where the viewer is deployed. Without the matching document fonts you may find alignment issues and\ or unknown characters being rendered where a font substitution has occurred. For further details on Office document font handling, follow the Office Fonts link.
The IBM Daeja ViewONE Virtual libraries used for rendering of MS Word documents do not support the following features:
1) Only the single column page layout view is supported and misalignment may occur if the document uses a page layout that has multiple columns.
2) Vertical text
Text Files
Supported text files (.txt) with UTF-8 and UTF-8 BOM encoding
Limitation: If the document file size exceeds 30 MB, depending on the system configurations, it may take more time to render the document or sometime it may not render the document.
Tiff Files
Nearly all variations of the TIF format are supported according to the published standards with the following notable exceptions:
- TIF documents that use 24-bit Packbit compression are not supported and do not render.
- TIF documents using CMYK color scheme - This format of TIF will be rendered but since IBM Daeja ViewONE Virtual uses the RGB color scheme and makes a fixed translation from CMYK->RGB, this will often result in some color distortion and differences when compared to other TIF viewers that handle this color scheme in full.
Excel spreadsheet load times
Excel spreadsheet load times are impacted based on the size and complexity of the Excel document. In order to improve load times, IBM Daeja ViewONE does support tuning capabilities, such as breaking up the Excel document presentation into multiple pages. Please be aware, as this behavior may not be optimal for your user viewing experience.
Emails with embedded images
Currently the viewer scales emails on the page based on the text content of the email, not any embedded images. This can mean that where there is a large embedded image in an email, it is possible that a portion of the image may not be rendered in the viewer since it will get cropped at the width calculated based on the embedded text.
Dynamic Content
The Daeja viewer is a static bitmap based viewer so cannot honor dynamic content that can be included in specific document types - known examples include but not limited to:
1. PDF LiveCycle documents
2. PDF Portfolio documents
3. Macro-enabled documents
4. PDF forms containing dynamic signatures
Incorrect file extension\MIME type associations
IBM has encountered several scenarios where the delivered MIME type is incorrect and led to issues with viewing specific documents. For certain formats, the viewer is intelligent enough to work out the format regardless of the MIME type but for others, the MIME type is critical so please ensure your repository has the correct MIME type associated with the content to ensure it be rendered correctly in the viewer.
Redaction of PDF Forms
Due to restrictions in the PDF redaction engine used to redact PDF documents, PDF forms are not supported unless "flattened" before the redaction process ( (Forms flattening is the process of removing the separate form data (such as text boxes, radio buttons, etc) and adding it as text, images and shapes into the actual PDF data stream.)
Protected Documents
The DocBuilder and Redaction features do not support PDF and MS Word documents which have protection applied such that it disables reading, copying and/or alteration of the document.
RTF Documents
RTF documents containing embedded images may encounter rendering issues due to known limitations in Java when handling embedded images within RTF files.
The IBM Daeja ViewONE Virtual does not support 32-bit bitmap (image/bmp) images.
Original Publication Date
21 May 2025
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Modified date:
22 May 2025
UID
ibm10730429