OLEControl showing a document 2

[SitesMasstec]

I opened a New Form and dragged on it an OleControl from de menu, chose 'Insert Control', and for Control Type I chose 'Acrobat PDF Reader'.

Well, I have a PDF document named "MyManual.PDF'. In which item of Properties window should I type the name 'MyManual.PDF'? And in the Properties window of the Form or of the OleControl?

Thank you.

Thank you,
SitesMasstec

 

[SitesMasstec]

Dear colleagues:

After all I choose to use the ShellExecute() method, proposed by Mike.

Because the Microsoft Rich Text control method, that "worked fine" as I had said above, works fine for small RTF files (MyManual.rtf is a small one, for the purpose of tests here). The real file (application manual) with lots of pages and illustrations, took some minutes to load! And the user would think his/her computer halted!

I appreciated the help from all of you.


Thank you,
SitesMasstec

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Indeed large PDFs load slow, no matter if you navigate2 a file link of the PDF file or use HTML <object> or <embed> tags, so the ShellExecute might be the best approach, though the executed PDF viewr then also takes its time. What you're missing is the opportunity to show a certain page, an [tt]<object data="url/to/some.pdf#page=2" type="application/pdf">[/tt] as html content of a webborwser control document can do that.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Perhaps the ideal solution would be to display the information in the form of a Windows Help file. That would give you all the formatting and graphics you need, including hyperlinks, plus the ability to drill down into topics and sub-topics, plus searching. Above all, it could be made context-sensitive, which a PDF cannot. And it would be properly integrated into your VFP app. So, for example, the Help window would automatically close when the user exits the app.

All you would need is a decents Help authoring package, plus the time and energy to create the Help file.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Sure, the best form of an application manual is a chm help file, though a PDF printable manual also has its advantages. Help files don't nicely organize into a sequential flow of chapters, they are more a reference, though also books can have these two flavors of being narrative and just a comprehensive reference book.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[vernpace]

Large RTFs will work fine in a Rich Text control if you enable ActiveX dual interface support: SYS(2333,1) I have loaded RTFs larger than 100MB - very fast. Check it out.

For PDFs, we made a deal with Foxit Software for their ActiveX control. It has a great API and customers don't need to preinstall Foxit Reader. Furthermore, you don't have to deal with all the issues concerning Adobe. Here is a sample screenshot with the bookmarks open: