ActiveX Adobe Reader Zoom Tools Missing

[Ekaj18]

Hi guys,

I have made a simple vi to open a pdf in an ActiveX container. This works fine, however i wanted to be able to use the adobe reader pan&zoom tool. 

If I open the PDF on the computer I have the tool but when i load it in LabVIEW 2015 it is missing. 

Is there a way to select this specific tool? Do I need to download some drivers or a library?

Thanks in advance 

[rolfk]

That's something you should take up with Adobe support or an independent Adobe support channel. The LabVIEW Active X container simply embeds an externel component in LabVIEW. It shows whatever that component wants to show and the only way for you to change things about this is through the API exported by that component. If it doesn't provide it, LabVIEW can do nothing about it.

There is a good chance that Adobe Acrobat Reader does not provide this feature when it is embedded in another application. That could be for technical reasons (as Active X component the software has not the same extensive control of the mouse and keyboard as when it is directly running in its own application) or it could be a marketing desision, where Adobe wants to have extra features in its own software compared to when it is embedded, or the interface for controlling that feature has simply not been added yet.

[daveTW]

As far as I know, the keyboard shortcuts work the same than in Acrobat Reader, so

<space bar> + left mouse button --> pan

Ctrl + mouse wheel --> zoom

and:

[Ekaj18]

Thanks for your reply. I think you are correct.

Do you know if there is a simlair tool in LabVIEW to create an outlined box ontop of the PDF? I want to zoom to a point on a PDF single page and have a reference for the user to where they are in the document.

Cheers

[JayJayHella]

Hi Ekaj18,

Have you seen the related forum post below? 

OLE Automation Methods for Acrobat Reader in ActiveX Control

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/OLE-Automation-Methods-for-Acrobat-Reader-in-ActiveX-Control/td-p/95...

One forum participant explained that Adobe Reader Active X control is limited. Are you looking to make the outlined box in LabVIEW? Could you explain in more detail what you are looking for? 

[rolfk]

Active X generally does not allow overlaying of drawing from the host application onto an Active X control. Active X theoretically does support some limited masking, but in practice no Active X control I'm aware of does support that. And LabVIEW doesn't either.

[Ekaj18]

Hi JayJay,

I am using the setVewRect method to zoom to a particular position on a PDF within an activeX container. I am looking for a way to give user a reference to where they are within the document. The Adobe Reader Pan&Zoom tool would work nicely but it seems to be unavailable.

Heres an example of what im after: Where the area inside the red box is what the user is seeing.

 Regards

[rolfk · Accepted solution]

As explained in my last post, if the ActiveX component doesn't provide that functionality itself you can not implement it on top of the Active X component yourself. Your drawing of that part would continously getting overwritten by the Acitve X components own drawing, resulting in a very ugly flickering as the two drawing routines try to fight against each other.

You have three options:

1) Get a PDF viewer control that supports the functionality that you want.

2) Retrieve the full image and the viewable area somehow, resize it to the thumbnaiil view you are after and display it besides the Active X control rather than on top

3) Call it a fit and leave it as it is.

Don't ask me how to do 2). It would require you to somehow get an image view from the full document, which the Adobe Active X control probably doesn't support either. Then do some kind of picture resizing which is pretty easy to do when you have IMAQdx but a pitta to do on your own (simple pixel resampling alone gives an abominable result). Displaying the result in a picture control besides the Active X control would be the trivialst part of this.