Before we purchase, please verify...

[William_Bell@adobeforums.com]

I've created a C# application using the Acrobat 7 SDK (using inter-app communication).

This app allows me to modify a hidden PDF's form's fields from the application's dialog fields.

Everything is working fine with the app. It wasn't till the end of development that I discovered that this will only work with Acrobat 7 and above (a lot of non-developer folks have Acrobat 6 Pro here).

So, my manager is going to purchase upgrades to our v6 packages for the testing phase - apparently v8 is what's offered for sale right now.

JUST TO MAKE SURE, Verion 8 of Acrobat STANDARD will allow me to still using my interapp comm app, AND save the modified PDF file back to disc??
(I'd hate to purchase all of this and not have it work with my app - I felt bad that it wouldn't work with v6 but it was understandable since IAC apis were new to the v7 sdk...)

We're also going to have to recommend to any customers that to use our app will require Acrobat v7 Standard or higher.

Again, I'm just writing to verify that the IAC apis will work with Acrobat 8 Standard before we order the upgrades??

Any replies are appreciated - thanks!

-Will

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

> It wasn't till the end of development that I discovered that this will only work with Acrobat 7 and above (a lot of non-developer folks have Acrobat 6 Pro here).

What API are you using? Generally the documentation notes things like
this.

Or was the problem that you used Designer to make the forms?

>
>JUST TO MAKE SURE, Verion 8 of Acrobat STANDARD will allow me to still using my interapp comm app, AND save the modified PDF file back to disc??

What is the API you are using? This matters very much.


Aandi Inston

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

The other thing to bear in mind is that Acrobat Standard 8 may be
viewed as a massive downgrade for people currently with Acrobat
Professional 6. You should audit ALL of the features they use to make
sure every one is in Standard.

Aandi Inston

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

(Oh yes, and the upgrade may cost more, as there isn't a path from
Professional to Standard that I can see).

Aandi Inston

[William_Bell@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Aandi - granted those that need PDF >authoring< would prolly want the Pro version.

We have folks that just have reader but need to save out their PDFs (in addition to printing) so I believe they don't need the Pro version to do this.

My app is using the AcroForm interfaces from C# in particular the IField stuff that allows me to get and set the text, radio and checkbox field data...

For what I wanted to do, the C++ apis just seemed way to complicated (opening a file requestor dialog for instance looked to be way too painful...)

The interapp APIs allow me to open a hidden document, access the form fields and then save the data back out - the only downside was instead of doing it all "right in the PDF", I had to recreate all the forms in my C# app (along with our custom data verification logic...)

Anyway, for our customers that just need to save PDFs files, I figured Acrobat 8 Standard is the way to go.

I'll definitely mention that anyone who needs to do serious authoring work still needs to use Pro...

-Will

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

>My app is using the AcroForm interfaces from C# in particular the IField stuff that allows me to get and set the text, radio and checkbox field data...

I don't see a reference to IField in the IAC Reference, but the
AcroForm interface is not new, and I don't see that it has even
changed in Acrobat 7.

You didn't answer: "was the problem that you used Designer to make the
forms?"

By the way, I checked the Adobe store. Acrobat Pro 6 -> Acrobat Pro 8:
there's no mention of an upgrade path from Pro 6 to Standard 8. Take
care or you could end up paying almost twice as much for this route.

Aandi Inston

[William_Bell@adobeforums.com]

It's chapter 13 in the IAC documentation...

If you reference the objects in VisualStudio 2005, you'll see FieldClass and IField objects - I was using the IField objects.

You now have me wondering if I did something wrong and if what I've done should be useable under Acrobat 6???

Whenever I launched my program with Acrobat 6 Pro installed, I would get a crash warning dialog that would let me continue; my app would then start and open up but all the communications between Acrobat wouldn't work. Is it just a matter of compiling with version 6 of the SDK?? Is that still available?

Running the app with Pro 7 on my develop machine and the trial of 7 Pro works okay, that's the basis of my assumption that the IAC doesn't work with anything less than V7??

I'm not sure what was used to create the PDFs I'm working with. Of course I have designer, but I haven't modified the forms except to straighten out some of the export values of the radiobuttons to get them working right with my program (and I did that from Acrobat Pro.)

If this IAC stuff SHOULD work with version 6 of Acrobat Standard or Pro, I'd certainly like to know since that was really the basis of this post - I had just already assumed that v6 couldn't be used and was attempting to make sure it would work with v8.

-Will

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

I'm not an OLE developer (I work with plug-ins) but my concern is that
it isn't shown as IField in the documentation. Don't know if that is
important.

A very cursory glance suggests it was the same in 6.0, but is in a
different document.

Aandi Inston

[William_Bell@adobeforums.com]

Thanks again Aandi for your time on this - I understand that when you purchase the SDK, you get access to a "developer's network" (which I didn't receive from my manager) - do you recommend that I go there and see if I can locate say the version 6 SDK? Or ask about this issue there (if possible)?

I'd really rather stay with v6 (and above) rather than requiring any current v6 users to upgrade (to now v8) if it's not necessary.

I thought the IAC was >totally new< to the Acrobat 7 SDK, if IAC is in the v6 sdk, that's prolly the one I should be using as I'm NOT doing anything API spectacular!

I need to get my manager an answer on this soon so we can decide on what to do...

-Will

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

> I understand that when you purchase the SDK, you get access to a "developer's network"

Not really, "Adobe Developer Network" or "Adobe Solutions Network" is
just what they call the organisation you join. You don't get access to
any special forum, though you may be purchasing support cases
(otherwise $199).

Purchasing the SDK, $99, does NOT give you membership to this
organisation, just the SDK.

>
>I thought the IAC was >totally new< to the Acrobat 7 SDK

Nope. Been there since before 3.0, when I started looking. AcroForms
was a more recent addition, but it's still pretty old.

Aandi Inston

[Leonard_Rosenthol@adobeforums.com]

The IAC/COM functionality to Acrobat Standard/Pro is unchanged since version 6 - meaning 7 & 8 do the exact same things in the same ways. What was introduced in version 7 is a new OCX for displaying PDFs in your own application - but that doesn't effect you.

Leonard

[William_Bell@adobeforums.com]

Okay, so then I need to start determining WHY when only Acrobat Pro v6 is installed, my app gets an error dialog and then runs without any IAC operating???

If I have version 7 (as on my development machine), everything works fine???

This is (obviously) important to me because I can then move forward to the QA phase (with the v6 users) as I originally wanted, instead of waiting on this upgrade path (not to mention everyone involved would be happier... $$$)

I thought I remembered reading in the docs that some of the stuff I was using was v7 only?? I'll have to now go back and see what the heck I'm doing API wise.

We did purchase the $99 option... Is the v6 SDK still available if I get the info from my manager and go to the download site?

Somehow I feel all of this is due to using the v7 SDK whereas having say the v6 DLLs (using the same APIs) would eliminate the error I'm receiving at the start of my application.

-Will

[Leonard_Rosenthol@adobeforums.com]

Well, one thing of note is that Adobe only supports the use of C# (and other managed languages) with Acrobat 7 and later. Perhaps that is what you are seeing.

When we release the Acrobat 8 SDK, in the coming weeks, we will also be making earlier versions of the SDK (incl. v6) available as well. However, it is not currently.

Leonard
Adobe Systems

[William_Bell@adobeforums.com]

Thank again Leonard for chiming in here.

Again, I believe that is my problem.

Another note, I'm using VisualStudio 2005 w/.NET 2.0 and I noticed mention in the docs that "earlier projects would need upgrading to VS2003..." Since everything works on my development machine, I'm assuming that VS2005 is supported as well.

Well the first error msg I figured out - I had forgot to include the "Interop.Adobe.dll" file in my installer.

However now I receive an error when it is attempted to open the PDF document:

"System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
at Acrobat.AcroAppClass.Hide()
at Canon.MEAP.MEAPSelfCheckDoc.set_Visible(Boolean value)
at Canon.MEAP.MEAPSelfCheckDoc.CloseDocument()
at Canon.MEAP.MEAPSelfCheck.MEAPSelfCheck_FormClosed( Object sender, FormClosedEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnFormClosed(FormClosedE ventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.RaiseFormClosedOnAppExit ()
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ExitInternal()
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Exit(CancelEventA rgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Exit()
at Canon.MEAP.MEAPSelfCheck.MEAPSelfCheck_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)"

So at this point I'm just going to say that Acrobat 7 or above is required...

Is it feasible to perhaps write a non-.NET DLL that likewise uses IAC calls and then perhaps call that from my C# app?

Granted it's more development for me but it's worth it if I can move forward to QA using v6 for now.

Again, thanks for confirming my suspicions.

-Will

[Leonard_Rosenthol@adobeforums.com]

Actually, for the Acrobat 7 SDK we only officially support VS2003 - we don't support 2005. The Acrobat 8 SDK, however, is based on VS2005.

As for writing a "bridge" - that's certainly up to you. If you are going to automate version 6, you will need to use a non-managed language. What you do to call on that non-managed code is your problem ;).

Leonard