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Can anyone recommend a good Windows form component for displaying PDF documents and allowing users to add real annotation (by which I mean identical to that created by Adobe Reader).
Update: I've tried the AxAcroPDF component which Abobe installs alongside Reader, but this doesn't support annotation. I basically want AxAcroPDF combined with Reader's "Comment & Markup Toolbar". It seems that the Foxit SDK ActiveX supports this, so I'm going to try that. I just thought that there would be some more alternatives to choose from.
There's also http://a.nnotate.com which you can use as a PDF / Word annotation component in web applications - just uses AJAX / JS / HTML and displays the pdfs properly in the browser without needing adobe reader. (see http://a.nnotate.com/embed-guide.html for a working demo)
For editing the documents I have worked with SyncFusions Essential PDF and it worked quite well
The free version Foxit Reader does this, you can do Tools->Commenting Tools->Note, then click anywhere on the page of the PDF to place a little note icon which has text inside. Then just save the PDF. Later, if someone views the PDF in Acrobat or Foxit, just hover the mouse over or click on the little note icons on the page to view the comments.
If anyone's interested, it looks like we'll end up using jPDFNotes, from Qoppa Software.
To quote from the web site:
jPDFNotes is a Java™ bean that
integrates into your application to
display PDF documents and forms and
allow your users to annotate the
documents and fill the forms. After
editing documents, the library can
save them to a local file or the host
application can override the save
function to save the file to any
location locally or on a network.
jPDFNotes is built on top of Qoppa's
proprietary PDF technology so your
users do not have to install Acrobat
Reader or any other third party
software or drivers. jPDFNotes is 100%
Java so it is completely platform
independent and so can run on Windows,
Linux, Unix, Mac OSX and any other
platform that supports the Java
runtime environment.
It's not what we started looking for, but it seems to be exactly what we need. They seem a nice bunch of people too.
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I have a pdf file that I want to make responsive so as to view it in desktops as well as mobiles. Responsive in the sense that it should not only fit the page based on the device size, but also the content i.e. text, images inside the pdf should also be responsive when viewing on a mobile. Just like the image shown below, pdf content should be aligned based on the device. Is there any API or library to achieve this.
Thanks in advance. Please help me to achieve this.
As indicated by other answers, PDFs primary function was to be a visual representation of content and visual representation should typically be identical across different platforms / readers / devices. That was the goal of the file format and it's diametrically opposed to file formats such as XML that are all about structure.
However, in recent years PDF did get additional functionality that may help with this. PDF files now support tagging and the purpose of tagging is to add structure to the file. A PDF file that is properly tagged does know where paragraphs of text are, what are headers, what are lists etc... And that information in theory can be used to support (limited) responsiveness.
For example, see the link here (https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/reading-pdfs-reflow-accessibility-features.html) where Adobe explains how the reflow view in Acrobat Pro works. It states that Acrobat can use the tagging structure inside a PDF file (or even automatically create some semblance of tagging on the fly for documents that are not tagged) to give you a view of the PDF file adjusts itself to the available display size.
Whether or not this is going to work depends mostly on the reader technology you will be using on your mobile device and you should certainly not confuse the possibilities of this with full responsiveness where content is hidden, replaced, adjusted, repositioned etc... such as what you can accomplish with HTML and CSS on web sites.
But it is a start.
It cannot be done. PDF is a final layout. Unlike the web page, where you are never sure what you're getting, the whole purpose of a PDF is to look the same no matter what device, or even medium, you're accessing it from. It basically says, "there will be the phrase 'Hello, World' in this font, this point size, at these x and y coordinates". You might as well try to reflow a hardcover book to fit into your pocket better.
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I recently bought an Epson scanner so I can start digitizing a mountain of documents I've accumulated over the years. I've already learned how to scan documents into PDF's. However, I want to make sure my PDF's have searchable text - I think the technical term is OCR, but I'm thoroughly confused.
I can scan files into PDF's using my scanner alone. But if I understand correctly, I can't make them OCR searchable unless I make Adobe Acrobat and/or ABBYY Fine Reader part of the workflow. (I'm using a Mac running Mavericks, by the way.)
I guess the the first thing I need to ask is this: What software do I need for creating a PDF that's OCR searchable? Like I said, I already have the Epson scanner software installed, but it looks like I also need Acrobat and/or ABBYY Fine Reader.
I guess a second question I should ask is how do I know if a PDF has searchable text? Could I simply search for a word or phrase on a PDF page with a standard program like Dreamweaver or Apple's Spotlight? Thanks.
The scanner produces an image and saves it either in an image format or as PDF. Then you open the result in OCR software, such as ABBYY Fine Reader. You can also open it in Acrobat, as Acrobat itself has OCR components built in. If you were using Acrobat, you have a searchable document, unless Acrobat was unable to locate any readable character. Other OCR software may save a PDF, or another file format.
Another product has been mentioned in another answer; I don't know it, but it might be worthwhile having a look at it.
For the second question:
a) There is an Acrobat JavaScript Doc object method getPageNumWords(); if this methods returns a number greater than 0, the page you passed as argument has searchable text. You find more information about this method in the Acrobat JavaScript documentation, which is part of the Acrobat SDK, downloadable from the Adobe website.
b) There is a preflight check which finds out whether the page/document has Text objects. If so, it has searchable text. You will need Acrobat Pro, for this, however.
You can scan to multiple-page TIFF image and let Tesseract 3.03 create searchable PDF for you.
Most solutions are to use the scanner to generate an image file (like a nonsearchable PDF), then to move your body from your scanner over to your computer, log in, run some unwieldy outrageously priced software called ABBSGDS or something, click a ton of menu buttons, respond to a ton of dialogue boxes, twiddle your thumbs as you watch the OCR progress bar, and voila--a searchable PDF.
Or, you can get a Canon scanner (e.g. DR-M160) and use their free CaptureOnTouch software. In that case, you put a document in the scanner, choose a number on the scanner, and press scan. A few seconds later (even on a slow computer) a fully OCRd searchable PDF will be in the directory programmed to the number you selected. You never even have to touch your computer (although it must be on, of course)
Anything else is, in my opinion, utterly worthless for a busy office environment where you are scanning dozens of multi-page documents per day. I, e.g., stand by my scanner dropping in document after document in rapid succession. I never go to my computer, and all of my documents are searchable PDFs just about as fast as I can drop them in.
If anyone knows of a software solution with that kind of workflow only that works with general scanners, please let me know. I just made the mistake of buying a Lexmark multifunction that, since it came with ABBYYwhatever software is, effectively, a unifunction.
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My question is an extension of this one.
Is there any way to create a PDF that contains a fillable, saveable form using open-source software? Any development effort or library to this end gets points. Any software other than Acrobat gets points too.
Update as of February 2013
According to this answer Adobe Reader XI allows saving any kind of PDF forms. I tested it myself and it worked.
My old answer:
If you want to generate PDF forms that can be filled out and saved using Adobe Acrobat Reader, then you are out of luck. This kind of PDF files contain an encrypted digital certificate that only Adobe Acrobat can generate. Adobe Acrobat Reader verifies the presence of this certificate on PDF forms before enabling the possibility to save the modifications.
Your choices are then to use Adobe Acrobat to generate the forms, or to use alternative ways of getting your PDF files with the filled data inside. One common approach is to include a submit button on your PDF file that posts the values of your fields to a web server, then you can fill out your PDF file there using a library of your choice.
Here is an example that uses this approach with the commercial library Amyuni PDF Creator.
Editing PDF Forms (AcroForms) within a Silverlight Application (Usual disclaimer applies)
You can create documents and Export to PDF, fillable or not, using OpenOffice. I've done it and it's pretty easy. The not so easy part is setting up the submission of the filled out data.
OpenOffice and LibreOffice since version 3.2 have the ability to create fillable PDF forms. The only thing I can't get working properly in them is calculations. But for everything else these free open source office suites are great, including combo boxes with choices!
You can even set up a submit to email button very simply, no coding required! Wow. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are fantastice for creating fillable PDF forms that work!
Give it a shot. You have nothing to lose and it won't cost you a cent.
I think this should work. Try PDF Form Designer -- its an opensource application. See here
My 'goto' open source .NET PDF library is ITextSharp. Not sure if it supports fillable forms though, I've never needed to do that. Worth a look anyway.
With the latest version of Adobe Reader, Adobe Reader XI, it seems that you can save the form.
From their webpage: Type your responses right on the PDF form, or click through and fill in the form fields. Then save and submit
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I am looking into using a wiki (prefer mediawiki, but not a req.) as the repository for developer generated documentation (User Guides, Release Notes, Application Notes, Errata, etc.) from a collaborative/easy-to-update point of view a wiki seems like a good match, however since this documentation will ultimately ship to customers we want to be able to export the documents in their final state (e.g. during the release cycle) to static versions that no longer include histories.
Ideally the export would leave the document in a form (i.e. word doc, or legible HTML) where updates could be easily made by a non-programmer.
It would be good if niceties like section ordering and table of contents were available, or easy to add after the fact.
Are any tools with features like these available?
It sounds like you need a step in your dev cycle that will take your HTML wiki contents and "documentify" them - doc/pdf/html for simpler delivery. If that's right, you could try something like Docmosis or JODConverter which can act as engines to do the conversion. The last step would be working out how to integrate it and have it automatically extract your wiki content to transform into a document.
I'm a little confused.
If you want to ship the documentation in a formal like HTML, how would users continue editing? (use DumpHTML to generate HTML).
If you want to ship the documentation in Wiki form and allow users to continue editing, why not just replicate the database and get rid of the change history until a certain point? AFAIK MediaWiki has some support for this.
One option would be Mylyn WikiText, which is used by some Eclipse projects to generate Eclipse documentation from the Eclipse wiki (which is based on mediawiki). WikiText also supports other wiki markup (trac, textile, etc.) and other output formats (docbook, HTML, etc.).
In MoinMoin Wiki you can export to DocBook. DocBook can be converted to professional looking PDFs.
DokuWiki uses plain text files as storage backend which can be simply copied to your project as documentation.
First, don't discount that MediaWiki has a permanent link function. So, if you allow the readers to access your wiki, you can just send them a URL to a specific version of the page.
Alternatives - you can print a PDF. Wikipedia uses the Collection extension but there are others.
Finally, if you use Firefox and want a client side solution, use PrintPDF
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We would like to prepare the software usage documentation for a web application. This mainly contains the screen shots ( along with relevant documentation ) in most of the pages. Also we would like to have a top menu links using which we can jump to the corresponding pages.
Please suggest the tools which can be useful to fulfil the above requirements.
Dr Explain is pretty nice.
http://www.drexplain.com/
It will analyze your page and create a list of controls, buttons, etc. that need callouts.
If you write your documentation with a particular documentation tool in mind, outputting to HTML is relatively simple. LaTex, markdown (with Pandoc in mind), reStructuredText (with Pandoc or Sphinx in mind), AsciiDoc (with DocBook tools in mind) and DocBook (with Docbook tools in mind--see Pandoc).
All of those formats would allow you to easily organize your documentation then export them into HTML however you deem appropriate (probably by major heading, then build a simplistic wrapper around the files). Sphinx can also just output web-based documentation (see Python.org's documentation).
For screenshots I suggest using a standalone app on your platform of choice, Ideally one that lets you do annotation within the program. Skitch for Mac, Jing for Windows, Shutter shutter-project.org or Jing in linux.
Finally I would suggest also doing screencasts as they can be especially helpful to show off the interestingness/power of a web-app.
This may be overkill for your project, but I've favored preparing documentation in docbook (xml), since it's fantastically portable/convertable.
To simplify the document creation, you could turn to http://www.oxygenxml.com/, but you can also do the same work in just about any other xml (or even text) editor.
Once your document is prepared, it's trivial to generate html (multi-page, or single page), and pdf versions.
I don't know what king of language you are writing your code, but in the case of Java, you can use Maven.
With maven you can use many plugins, like JavaDoc, site that create a site with many informations about your API/software and contains the top menu that you want.
This is a screenshot of the site that maven generates: link
I hope these could help!
Cheers
I'm sure there's some awesome tool out there that integrates everything needed for usage documentation but I'll tell you what I use!
I use wink to grab screenshots of the application in use. I tend to fire it up and just grab loads of screenshots as I walk through the application, or even just a part of the application. Next, I edit the project in wink to remove redundant screen captures, re-order them and position the mouse on each frame. I then add highlighting which is usually just a nice box around the part of the screen I am demonstrating. Wink allows you to overlay the images with informational boxes and arrows, I then export the project as html and use the numbered, exported png images as the base for my documentation.
I tend to drag them into OpenOffice Writer (or whatever you are using for typesetting) and supplement them with more information - ie a few paragraphs top explain what the user is doing and why.
We use acrobat to output this documentation and providing your table of contents is done properly, it can insert bookmarks in the pdf to enable jumping to relevant sections.
The main benefit we get from wink is that it is very easy to re-grab shots when things change and it can output to flash to provide nice, snazzy demos of small pieces of functionality for posting on the web.