Acrobat Developer Center

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Bates Numbering in PDF documents (PDF, 123K)

Adobe (Jan. 15, 2007)
Learn how to locate the Bates numbers and get the syntax to extract the numbers from PDF documents.

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Getting started

Understand the basic and advanced concepts of Acrobat.

Fundamentals

Acrobat SDK Overview (PDF, 476k)

(Oct 2006)
This guide provides an introduction to the Adobe® Acrobat® Software Development Kit (SDK). It provides a general overview of the types of things you can do with the SDK and the technologies that are available to you through the SDK.

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Developing Plug-ins and Applications (PDF, 4.6M)

(Oct 2006)
This guide describes Acrobat plug-in and PDF Library application development concepts and how to develop Acrobat plug-ins and PDF Library applications. It shows how your plug-in can manipulate and enhance the Acrobat and Adobe Reader® user interface and the contents of underlying PDF documents. This guide also describes how to upgrade plug-ins from Acrobat 7 to Acrobat 8, provides platform-specific techniques for developing plug-ins, and lists the Acrobat SDK header files.

This guide is intended for C/C++ developers responsible for developing Acrobat or Adobe Reader plug-ins or PDF Library applications. This document assumes that you are familiar with the Acrobat product family and are an experienced user of Acrobat products.

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Developing Acrobat Applications using JavaScript (PDF, 2.7M)

(Oct 2006)
This guide provides an overview of how to use JavaScript for Acrobat to develop and enhance standard workflows. It also contains detailed descriptions of the capabilities of JavaScript for Acrobat and how to access them.

Developing Applications Using Interapplication Communication (PDF, 510k)

This document explains the Interapplication Communication (IAC) support concepts, such as objects and commands universally understood by applications. This guide is for developers that want to communicate with Acrobat from another application or to render PDF files in their own application.

Guide to SDK samples (PDF, 510k)

(Oct 2006)
This guide contains a roadmap to help direct you to sample applications plug-ins, and scripts that demonstrate the usage of the APIs in the Adobe Acrobat products.

Advanced topics

Guidelines for Developing Cryptographic Service Providers (CSPs) for Acrobat on Windows (PDF, 102k)

This document provides guidelines for developers who need to develop a Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) for use with Acrobat® on the Windows® platform. A CSP is a software module that uses cryptography algorithms for authentication, encoding, and encryption. The CSP makes it possible for MSCAPI-compliant applications to access digital IDs through an API rather than requiring the developer to provide a custom interface for each application to access a stored digital ID. These guidelines have changed since Acrobat 6.0, where MSCAPI support was first introduced and apply to the PPKLite.api plugin used with Acrobat 6.0 and above. Guidelines for specific versions are noted where necessary.

Tools

Use the following tools to ease your development with Acrobat.

Note: All tools on this page are provided as source code and need to be compiled before they can be used with Acrobat.

Note: Please check back soon; these files will be available before the end of the year.

SnippetRunner

The SnippetRunner allows developers to quickly prototype code containing Adobe® Acrobat® or PDF Library API calls without the overhead of writing and verifying a complete plug-in or application. It provides an infrastructure and utility functions to support execution and testing of code snippets, which are small but complete portions of Acrobat plug-in or PDF Library application code.

For additional information, see the SnippetRunner Cookbook (PDF, 441k).

APILocator

The APILocator is an Acrobat SDK tool for the Windows and Macintosh platforms. The APILocator provides the ability to browse all C, OLE, JavaScript, and AppleScript APIs supported by Acrobat in a class hierarchical manner, and provides descriptions of those APIs.

For additional information, see "APILocator" in the "Tools" chapter of the Samples Guide (PDF, 483k ).

Plug-in Wizard (Windows Only)

The Plug-in Wizard extends Microsoft Visual Studio to simplify the creation of Visual Studio C++ projects, the framework for plug-in creation in Acrobat 8. This wizard offers many high-level choices about the plug-in to be created. As a plug-in developer, the wizard allows you to select the features you want and the wizard will create the project and populate it with the necessary files.

For additional information, see “Plug-in Wizard” in the Samples Guide (PDF, 483k ).

Show Permissions (Windows Only)

The ShowPermissions plug-in sample is used to check permissions. This is a Reader-enabled plug-in that calls the PDDocPermRequest() function to check operation permissions for the front PDF under the current Acrobat product. The result is saved to a text file.

Documentation

The documents listed below are guides to using the Acrobat 8.1 SDK. Download all of the documents in a single ZIP file below. Documents in the Other category are available only from this site. Unlike previous versions of the Acrobat SDK, documents are no longer included in the SDK download.

Download the Acrobat 8.1 SDK documentation (ZIP, 53.2 MB)

Introduction to the Acrobat 8.1 SDK

JavaScript

PDF creation APIs and specifications

Plug-ins

Custom configurations

Interapplication communication

Other

SDKs and downloads

Download the following Acrobat Software Development Kits (SDK).

Acrobat 8.1 SDK

The Acrobat 8.1 SDK includes enhancements such as  Windows Vista support, additional content to support Adobe Acrobat 3D Version 8 including U3D Elements, PRC (a new 3D file format), and 3D JavaScript API additions.

• Download the Acrobat 8.1 SDK

Note: The Flash-based SnippetRunner Common Interface will not function as intended with the Safari browser in MacOS X 10.4.8. It is recommended that you use the FireFox browser freely available from the Mozilla Foundation if you want to exercise this sample. We are working on this issue and will post an update as soon as possible.

Acrobat 7.0.5 SDK

For Windows:

• SDK705Installer.zip (ZIP, 57MB)

For Macintosh:

• SDK705Installer.dmg (DMG, 59MB)

Acrobat 7.0 SDK

For Linux:

• linuxAcrobat70rdr_sdk.tar.gz (TAR.GZ, 50MB)

For Solaris:

• solarisAcrobat70rdr_sdk.tar.gz (TAR.GZ, 50MB)

Acrobat 6.0 SDK

Note: By downloading these files, you agree to the terms as stated in the End-User License Agreement.

For Windows:

• acro6sdkr3.zip (ZIP, 40MB)

For Macintosh:

• acrosdkr3.hqx (HQX, 53.5MB)

Acrobat 5.0 SDK for UNIX

For HP-UX and IBM AIX:

• Acrobat5SDK.tar.gz (TAR.GZ, 487K)