Q: I am learning to use PDFNet SDK in my project and have some questions about linearization and on-demand (incremental) download / viewing.
My requirements are:
Step 1: Put one PDF file on server [for example, called AAA.pdf]
Step 2: On iPad(iPhone) / Android device, user can view the first page of the PDF content by linearization way
Step 3: On iPad(iPhone) / Android, user can click on different chapter (for example, chapter 3) and view the first page of the chapter content (for example, chapter 3) by linearization way
Step 4: When the user view the partial pages on chapter 3, he/she might change his/her mind to view chapter 5 on device, then the program can start stream the first page of the chapter 5.
From what I know, we have to convert AAA.PDF to linearized format, such as AAAoutput.PDF. After that, put the AAAoutput.PDF onto the server. User can launch client side program to download the AAAoutput.PDF content page by page and use linear parser to parse and render the content.
A:
Yes, PDFNet SDK (on all platfroms including iOS and Android) supports downloading linearized PDF files and displaying them as they are downloaded. It automatically prioritizes the pages that the user is viewing. This is demonstrated in both of the sample applications. On iOS (Samples/PDFViewCtrlDemo/PDFViewCtrl.xcodeproj), after clicking the yellow file folder, you will notice the UIPopover has a navigation option to Open URL. On Android, the menu that pops up from the bottom of the screen after clicking the Android button with three vertical dots includes an icon of the Earth, which also allows you to open a PDF from a URL. (The downloading functionality works well, but we are continuing to improve it and will have an update available later this month.)
If you have not already done so, you can request a trial of both libraries using the form on this page: