Huge file size difference DoPDF 7/9

[Harmand]

I installed doPDF7 virtual printer a few years ago and I've been occasionally using it, since then, with success.
Today, while performing some system maintenance, I visited doPDF site just to see whether some newer releases were available.
So I discovered my installed version is outdated and thought an upgrade could be appropriate.
After downloading the doPDF9 setup file, however, I was surprised in noticing that the file size is more than ten times bigger (!) than the doPDF7 one stored in my old backups (about 59MB vs. 4.5MB).

I looked for some information about the reason for such a huge increase but I wasn't able to find any.
Maybe I didn't look in the right places, so I'm asking here, to the forum users:
do you know why the program has become so heavy? What new stuff does it contain?

Thanks in advance for any help. :]

[Claudiu (Softland)]

There are too many changes since version 7, you can see a changelog here:
http://www.dopdf.com/forum/announcement ... t4298.html (v9)
http://www.dopdf.com/forum/announcement ... t4055.html (v8)

Mainly the difference in size comes from using the Addins for MS Office and the platform behind it.

[Harmand]

Thanks for your kind and useful answer.
Which made me wonder:
supposing one does not need those Addins and platform, is there a way to install only the bare DoPDF9 virtual printer?
Does DoPDF9 driver on its own, as a driver, provide any substantial new features if compared to the DoPDF7 one?

So I decided to give it a try.
I discovered that the installation procedure actually allows to refuse the Addins installation.
However, as shown by the control panel, I ended up with two installed programs: the DoPDF9 printer driver (133 MB) and DoPDF itself (275 MB!).
I then uninstalled DoPDF, leaving just the printer driver, which seems to work fine, but also seems quite the same as the DoPDF7 one (which, by the way, is just 5 MB), apart from the options concerning NovaPDF.

In the end it seems that staying with DoPDF7 can be quite a good choice to anyone just wanting a "simple", light and reliable PDF virtual printer.

Thanks again for your help. :]

[Claudiu (Softland)]

You will not be able to use the Getting Started window if you only keep the printer driver.

Version 9 has several improvements (detailed in the links I sent you), but if you do not need the new ones you can continue using version 7 - this is unsupported now, so at some point it will have compatibility issues with newer Windows OSes.