If you need to include PDF files displaying support to your application then you will have to look for some ready-to-use tool, because
PDF is a very complex document format, its specifications take more than 700 pages:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
In fact, software from Adobe is the only software that displays all PDF files correctly. All other programs and developer tools that don't use
PDF engine from Adobe may display some PDF files incorrectly, may contain errors in PDF engine implementation, may not support latest versions
of PDF format, and so on.
Sometimes the best way is to use latest Adobe Acrobat Reader v9.0 or higher: it is a freeware and has ActiveX component for PDF displaying,
so you can use this component in your application and it will display PDF files. The main problem is that this ActiveX component has too few
methods and properties, you cannot even get number of pages of PDF document it displays! You also cannot get size of pages, get full page screenshots or
display pages in some different way.
Advanced PDF Viewer is a wrapper for public Adobe Acrobat Reader COM component, it implements additional methods that allow you to do much more with
that component, please refer to online help for more information and the complete list of methods.
Main benefits of such approach:
- Advanced PDF Viewer uses public Adobe Acrobat Reader COM component, it guarantees the highest quality of PDF engine used for pages displaying.
- Advanced PDF Viewer is not expensive and royalty-free.
- Advanced PDF Viewer Source Code license allows you to have complete source codes if necessary.
Advanced PDF Viewer can be used from such Win32 programming languages like C++ or Delphi, also it provides a COM interface for all functions
so you can simply use it from VB or such .NET languages as VB.NET or C#.
The full-featured trial version of the Advanced PDF Viewer library is available for download,
it contains detailed documentation as well as examples of applications for various programming languages that
will allow you to start working with Advanced PDF Viewer immediately.
Adobe, Acrobat and Acrobat Reader are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
