View SDK Observations and Expectations

[RaviPonduru@m-ize.com]

I'm looking for an open source PDF custom viewer for our web application along with the capability of saving PDF with annotations. I'm glad to found the solution (Though its cloud based) from the leader. With 2 days of knowledge from your documentation and other posts, I'm posting my observations and questions:

• View SDK is free to use. This is mentioned in blog and forum posts. But if it mentioned clearly in documentation page, whats free and whats not then it will be very helpful.
• View SDK is free now. Its great but will it remain same in future ?
• Free View SDK includes annotation tools and callback APIs (Like save, user profile etc...) ?
• We understand from the exisitng posts in forum that you are collecting events information for analytics. We are OK that you are NOT collecting any user related/generated information. But whats the need of collecting our app URL (externalUserId in post body of https://dc-api.adobe.io/system/log)
• As per posts in the forum, lot of new changes/enhancements in road map in this year like drawing shapes annotation tool etc... Please publish the road map document. It will be helpful for us alot.
• It will be good to have annotation tools in all the modes.
• Forcing <CLIENT_ID> for localhost web application may not be required. Only if you want users to create account in adobe.
• Any plans of View SDKs for native mobile apps (iOS, Android) ?
• Any plans of supporting offline web applications ?
• There is no concept of versions as we are using cloud SDKs or Any plans of providing version wise cloud SDKs ? So,
  • Any new change/enhancement in SDK/UI will reflect immediately in our web application. It will be good to have them immediately but Clients may get confused for significant UI changes.
  • There will be no change in the existing callback APIs in future ?

[Test Screen Name]

You write "Forcing <CLIENT_ID> for localhost web application may not be required. Only if you want users to create account in adobe." Maybe I misunderstand how the SDK works, but it seems to me that the file to be rendered must be sent to Adobe's servers, which render it and return it. This would be just as true for localhost. So a client id is still applicable, and this could not be used offline, nor if security prevents the local PDF from being sent for rendering. Do I misunderstand?

[RaviPonduru@m-ize.com]

No. I misunderstood, you are correct. I should have looked at it with the analystics perspective. As I mentioned, I wrote the above with the 2 days knowledge of  reading.

Thanks for your information.

[Joel_Geraci]

Maybe I misunderstand how the SDK works, but it seems to me that the file to be rendered must be sent to Adobe's servers, which render it and return it. This would be just as true for localhost.

You misunderstood. The View SDK rendering is entirely client-side. It cannot be used offline though since the JavaScript rendering engine itself must be loaded from the Adobe serves first.

[Test Screen Name]

Thank you, Joel, for the update. This is surprising but excellent news. It also answers my concern about what business model Adobe would use for the server farm I imagined to be needed.

[Test Screen Name]

Also... what leads you to say it is open source? My reading says they are proudly NOT open source because this helps deliver the other objectives?

[RaviPonduru@m-ize.com]

Actually, we are looking for a open source lib like PDF.js to customize for our needs. But adobe View SDK is providing more than what we are looking for. Thats what I mean.

[Test Screen Name]

I may be completely wrong, and may completely misunderstand the capabilities of JS. But my thought is that there would never be a PDF viewer in native JS - which rendered without sending to a rendering engine on the same or a different host, written in another language. My thought is that JS would be far too slow for this task, even before dealing with the complexities of writing arbitrary graphics to the screen in an efficient way. Server side rendering typically rasterises and delivers images.

[Joel_Geraci]

Nope. It's all client-side. Text, including embedded/subset fonts, vector graphics, and images. Fully scalable, not a bitmap. What you do lose is multimedia support and working with annotation types and form fields with calculations and validations that View SDK doesn't support... yet.

[RaviPonduru@m-ize.com]

Adobe team, please provoide information pointwise. Please suggest if I need to post each point as a separate post ?

[Joel_Geraci]

This is primarily a user to user forum but I have forwarded your request to the View SDK team inside Adobe to respond. 

[RaviPonduru@m-ize.com]

Please let me know if you get any response from adobe team. Or is there any other way to reach them ?

[RaviPonduru@m-ize.com]

Adobee team, This is mentioned in the FAQs document of view SDK.

"If the SDK is free to use, how does Support work, if I have any issues? 

• Support questions should be posted in here, in the Document Cloud SDK Forum."

Please clarify my doubts mentioned in my post.

[Test Screen Name]

I think this post has clearly shown the level of support you may expect for this service. I have no specific information on support for this service, however Adobe do not in general provide any support at all for free services - neither free nor paid - and direct customers to the forum for community discussion. Customers are not directed to forums because Adobe staff are waiting there to support. 

[Joel_Geraci]

An official Adobe response is being crafted. Several of the questions involve disclosing the roadmap which they cannot do. Determining which of the points we can respond to directly and publicly vs. responses that would require an NDA takes some time. Other responses will end up being along the lines of "we don't know yet" or "what would work best for you".

I monitor this forum throughout the day. While I am not currently an Adobe employee, I do work closely with the team. Were this a technical question, it'd be answered by now.

[Test Screen Name]

That's good to know, Joel, thanks.

[Arpan Bhattacharya · Accepted solution]

• View SDK is free to use. This is mentioned in blog and forum posts. But if it mentioned clearly in documentation page clearly, whats free and whats not then it will be very helpful.

Thanks for the feedback. We will look into this.

• View SDK is free now. Its great but will it remain same in future ?

Viewer in its current form will continue to be free in the foreseeable future.

• Free View SDK includes annotation tools and callback APIs (Like save, user profile etc...) ?

Yes the free viewer includes annotation tools and call back APIs

• We understand from the exisitng posts in forum that you are collecting events information for analytics. We are OK that you are NOT collecting any user related/generated information. But whats the need of collecting our app URL (externalUserId in post body of https://dc-api.adobe.io/system/log)

This is required for product analytics.

• As per posts in the forum, lot of new changes/enhancements in road map in this year like drawing shapes annotation tool etc... Please publish the road map document. It will be helpful for us alot.

As you correctly noted there are several changes/feature enhancements that are there in our roadmap. For any specific feature we encourage you to post those requests in this forum. We are always listening to our customers and you will get to know when these features are made available. Annotation tool is already available in View SDK. You can check the documentation to see what is supported currently within Annotations.

• It will be good to have annotation tools in all the modes.

Thanks for the feedback. We will look into this request.

• Forcing <CLIENT_ID> for localhost web application may not be required. Only if you want users to create account in adobe.

An adobe account is required to use our services.

• Any plans of View SDKs for native mobile apps (iOS, Android) ?

We will continue to evaluate different options and then decide on our future product strategy. Native mobile SDK is being evaluated.

• Any plans of supporting offline web applications ?

We will continue to evaluate different options and then decide on our future product strategy.. You can share more details on your use case which will help us understand your requirement.

• There is no concept of versions as we are using cloud SDKs or Any plans of providing version wise cloud SDKs ? So,

Any new change/enhancement in SDK/UI will reflect immediately in our web application. It will be good to have them immediately but Clients may get confused for significant UI changes.

Our View SDK is on a continuous release cadence. Any significant UI changes are always behind an option to avoid any customer confusion. In case there are other specific requirements that you have for a versioned View SDK, please reach out to us and we will see how we can help you.

• There will be no change in the existing callback APIs in future ?

We do not foresee changes in the existing callback APIs. Having said that it is not possible to comment on all future changes.

[RaviPonduru@m-ize.com]

Thanks for your detailed response. It would be great if you have a adobe badge or something to identify that you are from adobe.

The current Viewer SDK is providing lot of features for our web app. We are interested about the following,

Native mobile SDK is being evaluated

- Excellent. Glad to know this. Please let us know when can we expect it. Please let us know the tentative date.

Regarding supporting offline web application. You can share more details on your use case which will help us understand your requirement.

- We will allow users to download data (Data, files etc...) in our web app which they want to access without internet (Offline). We are using html5 app cache to cache the js, css, image, html etc

- They can modify data when they are offline. When they come online, our application will sync the modified data.

Others,

- Please consider role capability like admin user should be able to delete/edit any comment/annotation. And other users should edit/delete their own comment/annotation.

- There are limitations mentioned under mobile support. Any plans to overcome those in the future ?

[oydang]

Is the Adobe DC View SDK free for commercial use? Is there a license somewhere that explicitly states the free usage terms?

[Joel_Geraci]

The developer terms are at the link below.

http://www.adobe.com/go/developer-terms

[Shakti5E16]

We are facing issue like if opened a big file with 15 to 16 pages rendering pages is very much slow. After scrolling to a page you have to wait for teh page to be loaded.Do you have any solution. ADOBE ONLINE Viewer SDK.

[Test Screen Name]

Shakti, please don't add to an unrelated thread. Please start a new one to avoid confusing everyone (since all contributors get all replies). When you post you should probably include info like (at least) file size, and how many system types and network you have tested. DO NOT REPLY WITH THIS INFO, start a new thread. Thank you.