Folks, for some months now (it seems even longer) I have been seeking a
solution to the problem of reading PDF-formatted images into Livecode stacks.
What I'm looking for is solution that looks like an 'import paint' command: in
other words, I want to be able to load a small subset of the possible contents
of a PDF - just bitmap images - into a stack via script. Sadly I want to do
this on a PC, running at a minimum Windows XP. My users want a simple solution
that makes reading from a PDF no more complicated than reading a JPG.
I have explored several possibilities, including using a 'free' PDF reader that
is somehow hidden from the user of my app, and using say 'shell' to control it
and to pass an image to LiveCode. However I have not found a realistic way of
doing this, particularly when I include the need to have a very simple
installation process - the user should not see any additional application, nor
be obliged to provide substantial additional resources, as would be true for
example if one used ImageMagick in this way in a PC context.
Short of RunRev itself extending input formats to include PDF (not impossible,
but not likely in the short term), the solution would seem to be to licence a
third-party library component and integrate it into my app by the use of
bridging ('glue') code. I got pretty near with this one, having identified a
component with suitable licensing terms and functionality (Sorax DLL). RunRev
suggested that I could do the gluing with the aid of a 'C' programmer. It turns
out after a lot of research by Thierry Douez, who has been helping me, that
what I need is a person familiar with Visual Studio to accomplish this - but I
despair of finding such a person who would also be familiar with the externals
interface of the LiveCode engine. Maybe I will find such a person, but the
trail does seem to have gone cold.
Has anyone any suggestion as to how I might proceed? My app works so nicely
with JPG and PNG files, and I have (a little) belief that I could make it work
with TIFF files, but without PDF input I am dead in the water.
TIA
Graham
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