Navigate a PDF file from C#

  • Thread starter Thread starter David
  • Start date Start date
D

David

Hi,

A project I am working on has at the base of it, a technical drawing in a
PDF file.

I have positional data which is fed to me from an XML file about a target
location in the PDF file.

Is there any way:
1. To load a PDF file as a sub item from within my application?
2. Zoom in to a specific zoom level (i.e. 100%)?
3. Position the viewed part of the PDF from the above mentioned positional
data?

If not, I could possibly get the PDF file converted to a bitmap of some
sort. The file can be located on a server. What I would then like to do is
to be able to navigate the bitmap like google earth does. Any ideas how I
can do that? (What would be cool is if I could cache the data on the local
memory card for offline working)

If anyone has any pointers or links or anything that could be of use, it
would be appreciated.

I am using C# in .NET 1.1 for compact framework.


--
Best regards,
Dave Colliver.
http://www.AshfieldFOCUS.com
~~
http://www.FOCUSPortals.com - Local franchises available
 
Well the CF doesn't inherently have and PDF support, so the first order of
business is to buy a PDF library with CF compatibility. Be careful when
selecting to make sure that the vendor supports CF 1.0 (there is no such
thing as 1.1).

You could do the library yourself from published PDF specs, but it's going
to be a lot more opportunity cost than just buying a library, and unless you
want your business to be about PDF libraries, buying is your best route.

From that point on, it's going to be simply zooming in on a document. Again
check with the vendor to see if the library does what you want.

All that said, I don't know of a library that does this, but then I've never
looked. Be prepared for your options to be limited and the strong
possibility that you'll need to do hacks to get it to work (like printing to
a stream, pulling that stream back to a bitmap then zooming the bitmap
manually type of thing).
 
Thanks Chris,

What would be my options if I used bitmaps then like the google maps way of
doing things?

Basically, the app I am writing is a mobile version of a desktop app, though
my version will have limited but still very useful functionality. It could
be that the desktop version already outputs the pdf file to a bitmap format
and if so, I could then perhaps use that instead. Possibly even bringing the
bitmap via a webservice.

--
Best regards,
Dave Colliver.
http://www.AshfieldFOCUS.com
~~
http://www.FOCUSPortals.com - Local franchises available
 
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