While I have the pdf_output plug-in installed and usable in the editor, I don’t have the pdf rendering bean in the beans list I can add to my form…
any clue?
Search the forum for jpedal… That’s how the bean is called.
thanks for this quick one.
unfortunately, I don’t have this jpedal on my disk while it is supposed to be installed with v3.5 standard, and I do have the plug-in which goes with it. Sure it’s not been renamed?
BTW it used to work in my v2.2 I have now deleted! too bad…
moreover, I’d like to use the internal pdf viewer bean, the jpedal is using an external viewer.
Internal pdf viewer?
Hmm, you could use the OLE bean as an ‘internal’ pdf viewer.
More information can be found here
Marcel,
Yes, I could do this, but my intent was to use the bean mentionned in the doc, not use acrobat or any other pdf display utility you can never bet if present on the client’s machine; using the url method would be enough in this case, since most of the users have the pdf plug-in in their browser.
Jan,
What I call the internal pdf viewer is the bean mentionned in the help, in the PDF_Output topic:
“PDF rendering Rendering PDF forms on Servoy forms is accomplished with a third-party pdf rendering bean - not available as part of the Servoy installation - that is offered through a GPL license and can be downloaded from the Servoy Developer website at:”
at what???
in the pdf version of the help file, there is a link which is wrong after the “at”, it goes to css stuff, obviously an error…
Happy christmas to you 2.
Hmm…somehow I remember also that the jpedal beans could display PDF’s inside Servoy. Maybe I am mistaken.
Anyway, if someone feels the need to make a PDF Viewer here are some relevant links I found after a quick google session:
Adobe Acrobat Viewer JavaBean:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrviewer … ccept#java (see bottom of the page)
Accessing a PDF Document with the Acrobat Viewer JavaBean
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/ … abean.html
I am sure there is more info on this on other sites.
Hope this helps.
I will take a look at it over the upcoming days.
When it is not too much work I will make it a free Servoy bean.
Or when it is a little more difficult I will make it an almost free Servoy bean.
lesouef:
Marcel,
Yes, I could do this, but my intent was to use the bean mentionned in the doc, not use acrobat or any other pdf display utility you can never bet if present on the client’s machine; using the url method would be enough in this case, since most of the users have the pdf plug-in in their browser.
Jan,
What I call the internal pdf viewer is the bean mentionned in the help, in the PDF_Output topic:
“PDF rendering Rendering PDF forms on Servoy forms is accomplished with a third-party pdf rendering bean - not available as part of the Servoy installation - that is offered through a GPL license and can be downloaded from the Servoy Developer website at:”
at what???
in the pdf version of the help file, there is a link which is wrong after the “at”, it goes to css stuff, obviously an error…Happy christmas to you 2.
JPedal is the easiest way to go. We don’t bundle it with servoy because it has a GPL license, but you can download it and use it as the default viewer, many of our customers do so. you can download jpedal from their website. I think jpedal also gets installed if you run our included document management example.
It seems jpedal is offered in a dual license.
JPedal is available with full support under commercial and GPL licences and clients range from the largest corporations to single developers across the globe and a whole range of Open Source projects
If I read their site correctly you can only use jpedal under the GPL when your project is also under GPL.
The JPedal STD version is released under a dual GPL / Commercial licence. This means that if you are using JPedal in a genuine GPL project, which complies with all the GPL licence requirements, then you may use JPedal in your project free of charge.
Not sure how this translates to a Servoy environment. Anyone know?
There are thousands of GPL debates out there and much of GPL is a very gray area which is why at Servoy we have a policy of not bundling anything GPL with Servoy to avoid any discussion or liability. GPLv3 is trying to become more clear but it’s still very confusing.
Beside the many grey areas a couple of things are sure:
- For own usage GPL software is always free
- If your software itself is not GPL and you sell it you cannot bundle anything GPL with it
So essentially if you develop software for in-house usage you should be OK with the GPL. If you develop for a third party you cannot bundle however you could consider having your customer install it themselves (slightly grey area)
Hi Marcel,
does this bean (Adobe Acrobat Viewer JavaBean) work stand-alone? or must Acrobat Reader still be installed locally?
Haven’t checked it yet but as far as I have seen it would/should work standalone…
ok, thank you all, I’ll see if I can cope with this.
Jan, I have the pdf_form example installed if that was the question, but it did not bring any specific bean as far as I remember, but I did that on the very first usage, so too late.
I now understand something which is not quite logic to me, when I install the pdf support option, it installs the pdf_output plug-in, but not all its functions can be used, ie your doc states 3 functionalities (at the beginning of the pdf_output help) among which cannot be used without any extra file. On top the ref is missing.
I got the jdepal package, but it is shipped with a different plug-in, “pdfviewer” and none of the functions of pdf_output is common, so obviously your example mentionned in the doc does not apply to this package. where am I wrong?! I know a doc is a huge work, I did it before, but the coherence of the supplied package and its doc must be correct.
Viewed from far, this may lead to another discussion, should Servoy integrate more plug-ins, extensions and beans, etc… and raise the price? Trying to integrate external products is always hairy, and makes the user feel the product like an uncomplete one. This can be understandable for marginals needs, but do not behave like filemaker which is still unable to create a folder! and don’t beat me for criticizing!
lesouef:
Viewed from far, this may lead to another discussion, should Servoy integrate more plug-ins, extensions and beans, etc… and raise the price? Trying to integrate external products is always hairy, and makes the user feel the product like an uncomplete one. This can be understandable for marginals needs, but do not behave like filemaker which is still unable to create a folder! and don’t beat me for criticizing!
Well, how far should Servoy go? Today Servoy already is the most complete package of development and deployment tools on the planet and while we keep adding features to it there will always be room for third party products.
lesouef:
I now understand something which is not quite logic to me, when I install the pdf support option, it installs the pdf_output plug-in, but not all its functions can be used, ie your doc states 3 functionalities (at the beginning of the pdf_output help) among which cannot be used without any extra file.
This is an error in the documentation, I’ll ask Marc to correct it. The pdf-output plugin is as it’s name suggests a way to output to pdf, not to render pdf.
I have been trying the jpedal solution. very disappointing. they have a robot translated version, very bad. I complained and offered to translate it myself; they supplied me with the files to do it, took me several hours to do it, and I never got any answer back. very fine people indeed…
Marcel: it does work stand alone but is an external viewer, ie a plug-in calling another window.
Jan,
Confusion was due the fact that the doc is mentionning a pdfrendering bean which is in fact the pdfdecoder bean from the svyDoc example which has the same name as the pdfviewer plug-in, both are called jpedal.jar!!
So the pdf rendering bean mentionned in the doc is not linked to the pdf_viewer plug-in but to the pdfdecoder bean.
And has problems with recent pdfs. Not finished testing this yet…
Lesouf,
I just downloaded the JPedalSTD.jar file from the JPedal.org site, dropped it into the beans folder of my Servoy installation, started Servoy, opened teh bean selector window and was able to place the PDFDecoder bean on my form.
I think you wrongfully placed the JPedalSTD.jar into the plugins folder. Ofcourse you will then not see the beans that are part of it in the beans section in Servoy.
JPedalSTD.jar contains both the PDFDecoder AND the external PDF viewer components you refer to.
Paul