Getting Acrobat SDK plugin samples working in Visual Studio 2019

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
June 1, 2021
2 replies
2936 views

I am running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit and Visual Studio 2019 and downloaded Acrobat SDK 2021, which claims to be 64-bit - but all kinds of sample subdirectories are still called 'win32'. I would have expected the sample files to build without errors but I am getting all kinds of errors about incorrect references or unavailable Windows SDK versions.

I need to retrieve table borders (visibility and positions) from a PDF and want to create a plug-in for this as JavaScript does not allow me access to those properties in a PDF. Existing commercial plug-ins focus on OCR - which is not what I need. If there are better ways of getting this layout info from a PDF file I would love to hear about it. If I do have to create a plug-in then how do I get the Acrobat SDK to work with Visual Studio without throwing all those critical errors?

Windows

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Read this:

https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/acrobatsdk/64bitdev.html

4everJangAuthor

Legend

After a lot of searching I found the method to add the specific Windows SDK version that seemed to be missing. So now most of the samples do build. Except in the ShowPermissions project there is a reference to an afxres.h include file that does not exist. Oh well, at least I have something working, so I know my Visual Studio is set up as required. Thanks for the pointers.

A

adhirath_7243

Known Participant

Hi @4everJang , I am new to adobe and trying to get the acrobat sdk sample plugin to run. I am facing an issue similar to you. Can you tell me what you did to fix it? I am on Windows 11, Visual studio 2022, Acrobat version 25.1 and it's a 64 bit machine.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

I shouldn't worry about the directory names. Focus on the specific errors. Expect it to take a week or two to resolve all of them and get your first sample built ok. It's no good saying, "I get errors", we all get hundreds when we start. Read each one very carefully, focussing on the very first one. If you can't resolve it, please post that one message. No use looking at subsequent errors until you've fixed the first.

Anyway, do you actually have 64-bit Acrobat Pro installed?

4everJangAuthor

Legend

Thanks for the advice, but a week or two is all I have to get the initial proof of concept done. Needing a week or two to get standard samples compiled on the specified environment is not at all going to work. It looks like I will have to ditch the entire Adobe Acrobat SDK in that case and try other ways of getting the info out of a PDF.

FYI - I downloaded and installed the Adobe FrameMaker FDK and compiled samples. All I needed was retarget the existing samples to my 64-bit Windows and they worked fine with FM2020. I just don't understand why the Acrobat SDK team cannot do this. I have a fully standard Visual Studio 2019, nothing omitted or changed. Should this not be tested a little more thorougly before releasing an SDK ?

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

So, you aren't going to share the error messages you get? (A couple of weeks is just my guesstimate, an experienced Visual C++ programmer should be able to resolve the issues quickly and get past compiling (then stuck on deploying), but most questions here are not from experienced Visual C++ programmers.

But... table borders... do you have any idea how you would approach this? Do you know how it would be represented graphically, or are you execting to work with tagged PDFs with table structures? Are you already familiar with ISO 32000-1? I'd expect to budget a month for a proof of concept of this (or, quite possibily, a disproof of concept), for an experienced C++ programmer, but with time cut if ISO 32000-1 is part of your regular reading and the Acrobat API somewhat familiar.

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