Re: Opening an Acrobat document from an application

["Thomas Michanek" <thomas.michanek@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I seem to recall that it is possible to have an application
> call Acrobat to open a PDF and display a specified page
> (bookmark? Named Destination?). This way the application can
> treat the PDF like online help.

No, that's not possible using the Acrobat Reader.
I think there are plug-ins to full Acrobat to achieve this,
or it's supported directly in the API. But that requires your
users to have full Acrobat instead of just the Reader...

> Is this possible, and if so what do I need to put in my FrameMaker
> files to make it possible?

It *is* possible by calling a web browser with a URL pointing
out a PDF file and appending "#P.nn" (I think) or "#destination"
to the PDF file name, e.g. "http://somewhere.com/file.pdf#dest";
However... this is only fully supported using Netscape (on any
platform) or Internet Explorer on Mac. Internet Explorer on
Windows has a limitation that only certain types of URLs will work.
(I can send you details on this if you want.)

In FrameMaker you can specify named destinations by using the
newlink hypertext command. These can then be accessed through a
URL according to above if you add a specific string to the
destination name, e.g. "#M8.newlink.destination".
(I can send you details on this too if you want.)

I investigated this thoroughly fairly recently, and the conclusion
is that you *can* get online help using PDF files to work, but
it has limitations and is a little complicated. Then the appearance
and behavior of PDF files are quite different from WinHelp or
HTML-based help... I don't personally think it's worth the effort.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Writer, IAR Systems, Uppsala, Sweden
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@telia.com
http://go.to/framers/    (updated on Oct. 11)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **