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Creating an Adobe Reader Plug-In
This chapter describes the steps required to enable a plug-in to be loaded by Adobe Reader. Both technical
and licensing restrictions exist on what an Adobe Reader plug-in can accomplish.
A common cause of difficulty when Reader-enabling a plug-in is that the plug-in attempts to acquire one
or more HFTs during startup that are not available within Adobe Reader. To avoid this problem on
Windows and Mac OS, make sure that the
READER_PLUGIN
symbol is defined. On the Windows platform,
this can be achieved by placing
READER_PLUGIN
in the preprocessor definitions section of the project
settings. On the Mac OS platform, this can be achieved by placing
#define READER_PLUGIN
in
PIRequir.h. With this symbol defined, only those HFTs available in Adobe Reader are acquired. On the UNIX
platform, only those HFTs available within Adobe Reader are acquired by default. For information about an
HFT, see
“Working with Host Function Tables” on page 164
.
This chapter contains the following information.
Enabling an Adobe Reader plug-in
To create a plug-in for Adobe Reader, perform the following tasks:
1. Write the code for your plug-in. When possible, ensure that the plug-in works correctly in the full
Acrobat viewer (Standard or Professional) before trying to Reader-enable it.
2. Visit the Adobe web site and fill out an Adobe Reader Integration Key License Agreement. There is a fee
involved. The Adobe Reader Integration Key Licensing Agreement can only be submitted as a web
form. Information can be found at
http://www.adobe.com/go/acrobat_developer
.
Once your Adobe Reader Integration Key Licensing Agreement is approved, you will receive a contract
package that includes your contract number and other information that is unique to you.
3. Create the public/private key pair and public key files (see the platform-specific instructions below)
using the MakeKey utility provided in the Acrobat SDK.
Topic
Description
See
Enabling an Adobe Reader plug-in
Describes how to enable an Adobe Reader plug-in.
page 245
Creating resource files on the
Mac OS platform
Describes how to create resource files on the Mac OS
platform.
page 246
Creating resource files on the
Windows platform
Describes how to create resource files on the
Windows platform.
page 247
Troubleshooting
Describes how to solve problems that may occur with
an Adobe Reader plug-in.
page 249