Brava! is gone — Here's why Nutrient SDK is the alternative you've been searching for
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Brava! is discontinued. Nutrient SDK is a modern replacement with full support for PDF, CAD, Office, annotations, redaction, and collaboration, plus easy migration and active maintenance.
Explore the SDK or request a demo to get started.
OpenText™ Brava!™ was once a widely used solution for secure document viewing, markup, and redaction, especially in engineering, legal, and government environments. But support ended in early 2022, and for more than three years, organizations have faced the reality of maintaining unsupported legacy deployments.
At Nutrient, we’ve seen the demand firsthand. Enterprises need a replacement that not only matches Brava!’s features, but also extends them with a modern, API-first foundation. That’s exactly what the Nutrient SDK delivers.
Brava! users need more than just a viewer
Brava! wasn’t just a static viewer. It supported high-stakes workflows like:
- CAD and Microsoft Office file rendering
- Scale-aware measurement and annotations
- Legal redaction workflows
- Custom markup tools and collaboration
- Integration with ECMs, DMSs, and enterprise platforms
Nutrient SDK supports all of the above and more — purpose-built to be embedded, extensible, and cloud-ready.
Why customers are switching to Nutrient
Organizations in legal, engineering, construction, and government sectors are switching to Nutrient SDK for:
- Comprehensive file support — PDF, CAD, Office, and more, rendered securely in the browser
- Redactions done right — Permanent, audit-compatible, and automatable
- A modern viewer experience — Zoom, pan, annotate, and collaborate in real time
- Flexible SDK integration — REST APIs, JavaScript SDKs, and web components
- Future-proofing— Actively maintained and continuously improved
Meeting the functional requirements of Brava! and extending them
Brava! enabled a range of document workflows. Nutrient SDK covers the same capabilities and extends them through modern architecture and broader integration support.
Core features
| Capability | Nutrient SDK support |
|---|---|
| Document viewing | PDF, Office, image viewing, iOS viewer |
| Annotations | Comprehensive markup suite |
| Measurement | Distance, area, arc, perimeter |
| Redaction | Permanent redaction |
| Security | Access control, encryption, watermarking |
| Forms | Interactive forms, UI form builder |
| Document comparison | Side-by-side and text-based comparison |
| Collaboration | Real-time replies and syncing, instant sync |
| Offline support | Collaboration offline |
| Signatures | Electronic, digital |
| Conversion | Client-side conversion |
Comprehensive file format support
Nutrient SDKs support a wide spectrum of file formats, including specialized and regulated formats, across different deployment targets.
- PDF (v1.0–2.0), PDF/A (Parts 1–4), XFDF, Instant JSON
Microsoft Office
- DOCX, DOC, DOTX, DOCM
- XLSX, XLS, XLSM
- PPTX, PPT, PPTM, PPSX, PPS
Image
- PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF
- WEBP, SVG, HEIC, EPS, TGA
- DICOM, RAW (3FR, ARW, BAY, etc.)
CAD
- DXF
- DWG (via Document Engine)
Other formats
- HTML, MHT, MHTML
- MSG, EML
- TXT, RTF
- ODT
ℹ️ Nutrient file format support varies by SDK:
- Web SDK — 15+ formats
- XtractFlow — Widest coverage
- Document Engine — Specialized file support by license module
Migration considerations
Brava! used proprietary XRL annotations. Nutrient supports standards like XFDF and Instant JSON and provides APIs for annotation import/export. For customers migrating at scale, Nutrient SDK supports batch processing, metadata extraction, and annotation transformation.
Replacing Brava! is not optional — it’s necessary
More than three years after Brava!’s sunset, continued reliance introduces risks:
- No compatibility with modern browsers
- Growing security vulnerabilities
- Increasing incompatibility with modern file types
- Unsupported proprietary annotations
Nutrient SDK is the stable, supported, extensible path forward.
Ready to see it in action?
Contact us for a personalized demo and see how Nutrient can step into Brava!’s place — and take your workflows further.
