PDF Reader ActiveX Control

[saturnian]

This is my first post! I am an old French VB6 programmer and you will forgive me for using Google translation furiously!

I have needed an OCX PDF viewer for a long time.

Olaf Schmidt made me discover PDFium.dll in the following post:
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...-ImageExports)

Thank you Olaf!

I made the draft of an ActiveX component PDF viewer which allows
• View PDF files
• Print PDF files
• Extract the text content if it exists
• Practice Character Recognition on the PDF file in conjunction with Tesseract-OCR, open-source OCR software under Apache 2.0 license (https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tes...ster/README.md)



Like Olaf, I use the PDFium version 2018-04-08 / Pdfium-x86-no_v8-no_xfa available on the build service provided by Pieter van Ginkel on GitHub here: https://github.com/pvginkel/PdfiumBu...lds/2018-04-08

As Olaf says: "PDFium (licensed under BSD by Google / Foxit) is the only PDF-reader / viewer-tool I know of, which can be used (and deployed) also in commercial Apps ..."
PDFium.dll must be in the same directory as the ActiveX component
The component has no other dependency than PDFium.dll and the common VB6 files

For Tesseract OCR, Windows installer is available on the following Wiki: https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/tesseract/wiki
I use the 32bit version

A Doc.pdf file in the zip lists the events, methods and properties of the control

Besides Olaf Schmidt, I thank LaVolpe, Dilettante, The Trick, Ellis Dee for their modules gleaned from CodeBank !

PDFReader.zip

NB: I wanted to thank all the contributors to this forum for their work, which makes it possible to maintain VB6 and to adapt it to Windows evolution. With additional thought for LaVolpe whose codes and tools accompany my work for so many years!

[yokesee]

very good project and control.

Greetings

[Thierry69]

Pas mal du tout.
Quelques petits soucis quand on scroll un long PDF trop vite avec la molette, certaines pages ne sont pas affichées.

And for the other
Nice control.
A minor bug when scrolling with the weel mouse oa long PDF. Some pages are not rendered

So now, other can also learn french

[saturnian]

Merci Thierry,

Cela est du au temps de conversion de la page PDF en bitmap par la dll PDFium. Je vais chercher à optimiser ça

And for the other...
This is due to the conversion time of the PDF page to bitmap by the PDFium dll. I'm going to try to optimize it

[Thierry69]

Saturnian, in this case, I suggest to start a new thread that convert in the background all the PDF to BMP

[Nouyana]

I can't load any pdf file. Anybody, please, help me. Error #53 "File not found: PDFium".

I have unzipped the PDFReader.zip archive and placed the pdfium.dll in the same folder. Then I have run the PDFReader.vbg and the main form was displayed successfully. But trying to load a file caused the error #53.
I could not register the PDFium library, but, as I understand it, this is not necessary because of LoadLibraryW and FreeLibrary are used.

What am I doing wrong? Shall I compile and/or register an OCX-file?
I have never had a deal with project groups before. So I need help here.

[saturnian]

Hello Nouyana
in what procedure and on which line does the error occur?

[Nouyana]

Hello Nouyana
in what procedure and on which line does the error occur?

Bonjour saturnian! The only line.

Private Sub Command2_Click()

PDFReader1.SelectPDFFile App.Path

End Sub

Updated1:
in my Error Trapping settings the "Break on Unhandled Errors" option is selected.

Updated2:
When I set the Error Trapping settings to "Break on All Errors" the error occurs on the last line:
Public Function Load(ByVal FileName As String, Optional ShowPDF As Boolean = True) As Boolean

Dim F As Integer, B() As Byte
If Exist(FileName) Then
If PDFLib = 0 Then 'If the PDFium library is not loaded, we load it and initialize it
PDFLib = LoadLibraryW(StrPtr(App.Path & "\PDFium.dll"))
FPDF_InitLibrary

Updated3:
The
Debug.Print App.Path & "\PDFium.dll"
line returns correct path.
OS: WinXP, VB6 professional.

[saturnian]

Nouyana
Your PDFium version probably looks corrupt or not correct. Try reloading it and tell me if things get better

NB you can use this mirror link www.ordoconcept.net/pdfium.dll
this is the dll i use

[Nouyana]

Nouyana
Your PDFium version probably looks corrupt or not correct. Try reloading it and tell me if things get better
NB you can use this mirror link www.ordoconcept.net/pdfium.dll
this is the dll i use

saturnian
these DLLs are really have different md5 sums:

• ordoconcept.net
• github.com

But bouth are work fine under Win10. The problem is only under WinXp.

So, I suppose that pdfium.dll doesn't work under Windows XP.

[saturnian]

Nouyana
I have not worked under XP for a long time.

Pieter van Ginkel on GitHub said : "the V8 version does not support Windows XP so if you need support for Windows XP, you need to choose one of the libraries that does not contain V8 support and include an updated version of the dbghelp libraries. These can be found in the Support\dbghelp directory."
Have you tried to download this library? (see : https://github.com/pvginkel/PdfiumBuild )

[saturnian]

I created a virtual machine under XP.
In fact, I have not found a way to make PDFium work.
Despite the claims, this dll does not seem compatible with XP, indeed

[Nouyana]

I created a virtual machine under XP.
In fact, I have not found a way to make PDFium work.
Despite the claims, this dll does not seem compatible with XP, indeed

Maybe. Then what was Pieter van Ginkel talking about?
Do you know what the phrase "include an updated version of the dbghelp libraries" means in relation to VB6? Maybe I need to rebuild the pdfium.dll project with dbghelp.dll included? Do you know how to do it?

[saturnian]

Nouyana, voici un lien sur un autre thread ou Olaf Scmidt donne des compléments d'information sur l'absence de support de PDFium sous XP :
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...=1#post5412903

[saturnian]

Nouyana, here is a link on another thread where Olaf Scmidt gives additional information on the lack of PDFium support in XP :
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...=1#post5412903

[Nouyana]

Nouyana, here is a link on another thread where Olaf Scmidt gives additional information on the lack of PDFium support in XP :
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...=1#post5412903

Thank you, saturnian!
So I need someone who can rebuild the project and remove the dependencies on "ieshims.dll" and "wer.dll". It seems too complicated task for me.

ieshims.dll is an artefact of Vista/7 where a shim DLL is used to proxy certain calls (such as CreateProcess) to handle protected mode IE, which doesn't exist on XP, so it is unnecessary. wer.dll is related to Windows Error Reporting and again is probably unused on Windows XP which has a slightly different error reporting system than Vista and above.

stackoverflow.com

[Schmidt]

So I need someone who can rebuild the project and remove the dependencies on "ieshims.dll" and "wer.dll".

If I may ask, what's wrong with the suggestion I made at the end of the "XP-Issue-posting":

IMO (regarding "time to invest" on your end), you'd be better off,
to just move your VB6-stuff over to at least a Win7-installation (or -VM).

If it's your "personal dev-machine", why not simply upgrade to a newer Win-OS?

And in case this needs to be deployed to potentially "thousands of hardcore XP-Users" - is that situation really given in your case?
(do you have information, that there is still a significant percentage of XP-Users among your target-audience)?

Olaf

[Nouyana]

If it's your "personal dev-machine", why not simply upgrade to a newer Win-OS?

Olaf,
I'm not really a developer. I'm, say, power user. The economist. But sometimes i develop programs as a freelancer. There are a lot of reasons for me to use WinXP:

1. I know how WinXP works. I have been using it for 16 years.
2. At least 200 programs are installed on my computer, and some of them do not work under Win10, including, for example, my old Agnitum outpost firewall. I do not know any really good firewall for Windows today.
3. My next OS is Debian Linux + Wine. Not Win10 or 7. Low system recurements are better for Wine (or maybe ReactOS).
4. New OS is worth of money. WinXP is still enough for me. If it's interesting for you, I still use MS SQL Server 2000 Developer edition, MS Access 2002 and a lot of other old (but good) stuff in my work.
5. Do you need more? I still use floppy and MS-DOS. Why? Just for fun But Victoria (official site in Russian and direct link fo latest version with English interface) works better under WinXP, because Win10 API doesn't provide direct access to the ports of the hard disk.
6. Here I can say a few bad words about Win10, but I will not do it.
7. And yes, I'm not alone. WinXP have at least 5% of market share (I think - even more, especially in Russia, but they are offline)
8. I can continue...

Olaf,
if you can rebuild the project, please do it. You will help a lot of people 0.831% of programmers uses classic VB. And if 5% of them uses WinXP, and if we have about 20 million developers in the world then 8310 programmers in the world will thank you.

[Darkbob]

Very nice project! Thanks for posting.

[RonaldVG]

Hi!

You did a great work with this project ... regrettably, I get a error message when I try to load the sample PDF:

Error 453
Cannot find DLL entry point _FPDF_InitLibrary @ 0 in c:\code\PDFReader\pdfium.dll

I've copied pdfium.dll (Pdfium-x86-no_v8-no_xfa) from https://github.com/pvginkel/PdfiumBu...lds/2018-04-08 into my project folder.
Size: 3,83 MB (4.016.128 bytes)

I've tried to register it with 32 bits regsrv32, but it seems it's not registrable.

I've installed 32 bits Tesseract (but I guess it's not needed if I do not use OCR option)

Error ocurs on:
PDFLib = LoadLibraryW(StrPtr(App.Path & "\PDFium.dll"))
>> FPDF_InitLibrary

I've also copied pdfium.dll from:

https://www.nuget.org/packages/Pdfiu....no_v8-no_xfa/

But no way (I think it's the same)

I'm working on Windows 10 64 Bits / VB6 SP6.

Can anyone help me ? I was searching for such a tool several time, and now I'm so near ... and so far .... :-(

Regards!

Ronald

[saturnian]

Hello Ronald

have you tried the dll downloadable by this link? www.ordoconcept.net/pdfium.dll (see Post #9). This is the one I use under Windows 10 64 bits with VB6-SP6 whithout any issue.

Regards
François

[RonaldVG]

Hello Ronald

have you tried the dll downloadable by this link? www.ordoconcept.net/pdfium.dll (see Post #9). This is the one I use under Windows 10 64 bits with VB6-SP6 whithout any issue.

Regards
François

Hi François.

Thank you for your quick answer :-)

I've just downloaded this dll, it's the same I'm using with you code (same SHA512 Hash).

As I see with Dependency Walker (https://www.dependencywalker.com/), the entry points seems right, but I get some errors. I'm not sure if they are relevant:
Error: At least one required implicit or forwarded dependency was not found.
Error: Modules with different CPU types were found.
Warning: At least one delay-load dependency module was not found.

Anyway, I've just installed VB6 on another computer and now it works like a charm. The GetPDFText function is so useful for me .... (automatic invoices accounting).

You've done a great job !

[saturnian]

Hi François.

... Anyway, I've just installed VB6 on another computer and now it works like a charm. The GetPDFText function is so useful for me .... (automatic invoices accounting). ...

I am pleased,
although this does not solve the problem on the initial machine?? VB6 Installation issue ??


Kindly
François

[darjeeling]

Hi saturnian

With the link in your post #21 all works fine.

Thank you

[RonaldVG]

I am pleased,
although this does not solve the problem on the initial machine?? VB6 Installation issue ??

Not sure. I've compiled OrdoPDFReader.ocx on the new VB6 machine.

I'm trying to use it on a third machine (Windows 2008 32 bits) with correct PDFium.dll, using VBA.

I get same message (Cannot find DLL entry point _FPDF_InitLibrary@0 in PDFium).

I guess PDFium.dll requires some specific configuration.

I shall try more configurations to see if I can find the pattern ....

[Crapahute]

Hi,
Thanks a lot for your code. My problem is that when printing, it is in low quality. Is there a way to define print quality ?

La qualité d'impression est comme floue par rapport à une impression avec Acrobat. Comme si on imprimait une image en basse résolution.

[RonaldVG]

Hi,
Thanks a lot for your code. My problem is that when printing, it is in low quality. Is there a way to define print quality ?

Maybe you can print directly your PDF file:

ShellExecute 0&, "Print", "C:\yourfilepath.pdf", "", "", vbNormalFocus

Regards!

[Crapahute]

Thanks. I knew this way but I was looking for a solution without using Adobe Reader

Anyway, thanks again.

[saturnian]

Hi,
Thanks a lot for your code. My problem is that when printing, it is in low quality. Is there a way to define print quality ?

La qualité d'impression est comme floue par rapport à une impression avec Acrobat. Comme si on imprimait une image en basse résolution.

Hello Crapahute,
C'est très sympathique de voir quelques mots en français sur ce forum !

It's very nice to see a few words in French on this forum!


The component is a simplified version that prints PDFs in Draft mode.


To improve print quality:
In the PDFReader Control add, in the declarations:

Public Enum oPrinterQuality
    [opqDraft] = 72
    [opqLow] = 150
    [opqStandard] = 300
    [opqHigh] = 600
    [opqMax] = 1200
End Enum

In the same module, replace the PrintPDF procedure with the following procedure:

Public Sub PrintPDF(Optional Copies As Integer = 1, Optional Orientation As oPrinterOrientation = oAuto, Optional FromPage As Integer = 0, Optional ToPage As Integer = 0, Optional PrinterName As String = "", Optional PrinterQuality As oPrinterQuality = opqStandard)
    Dim X As Printer, Imp_defaut$, F As Integer, i As Integer
    Dim imp_actuelle$
    Dim Page_Height As Double, Page_Width As Double
    Dim row As Integer
    Dim column As Integer, Width As Double, Height As Double, top As Long, left As Long, zoom As Double, columns As Integer, rows As Integer
    Dim vpos As Long, hpos As Long
    Dim margin As Integer, colour As Long, backcolour As String
    Dim HZoom As Double
    
    If NbPage = 0 Then Exit Sub
    'We keep the current printer
    imp_actuelle$ = Printer.DeviceName
     'Check if the right printer exists
    If PrinterName <> imp_actuelle$ And PrinterName > "" Then
        'If yes, change the default printer
        For Each X In Printers
            If X.DeviceName = PrinterName Then
                Set Printer = X
                Exit For
            End If
        Next
    End If
    If Copies < 1 Then Copies = 1
    If Copies > 999 Then Copies = 999
    If FromPage < 1 Then FromPage = 1
    If FromPage > NbPage Then FromPage = 1
    If ToPage = 0 Then ToPage = NbPage
    If ToPage > NbPage Then ToPage = NbPage
    If ToPage < FromPage Then ToPage = FromPage
  
    'Printer.Copies
    For i = 1 To Copies
        'Printer initialization
Start:
        'Here we set the print quality *****************************************************
    Page_Height = PageHeightPoints(0) * ConvertPointToTwips * (PrinterQuality / 72)
        Page_Width = PageWidthPoints(0) * ConvertPointToTwips * (PrinterQuality / 72)
        PictureOCR.Height = Page_Height
        PictureOCR.Width = Page_Width
        If Page_Height - PictureOCR.Height > 2 Or Page_Width - PictureOCR.Width > 2 Then ' we have exceeded the maximum size of a picturebox
            PrinterQuality = PrinterQuality / 2 ' we reduce the quality and start again
            GoTo Start
        End If
        If Orientation = oAuto Then
            If Page_Width <= Page_Height Then Orientation = oPortrait Else Orientation = oLandscape
        End If
        Printer.Orientation = Orientation
        margin = 0 ' 150
        top = Printer.ScaleTop '+ margin
        left = Printer.ScaleLeft '+ margin
        columns = 1 '  to modify if you want to print several pages per sheet
        rows = 1
        Width = (Printer.ScaleWidth + margin) / columns - margin '(margin * 2)
        Height = (Printer.ScaleHeight + margin) / rows - margin '(margin * 2)
        hpos = left + (columns - 1) * (Width + margin)
        vpos = top + (rows - 1) * (Height + margin)
        'check whether width or height is limiting factor
        zoom = Width / Page_Width
        If zoom < Height / Page_Height Then
            ' width limited
            vpos = vpos + (Height - Page_Height * zoom) / 2
            HZoom = Width / Printer.Width
        Else
            ' height limited
            zoom = Height / Page_Height
            hpos = hpos + (Width - Page_Width * zoom) / 2
            HZoom = Height / Printer.Height
        End If
        For F = FromPage To ToPage
            'we draw, store and print the image of the page
            KillFile AddDirSep(KnownFolder(kfUserAppDataLocal)) & "Temp\OrdoPDF.bmp"
            PictureOCR.Cls
            PictureOCR.Picture = Nothing
            Page_Height = PageHeightPoints(F - 1) * ConvertPointToTwips * (PrinterQuality / 72)
            Page_Width = PageWidthPoints(F - 1) * ConvertPointToTwips * (PrinterQuality / 72)
            PictureOCR.Height = Page_Height
            PictureOCR.Width = Page_Width
            DoEvents
            RenderPageToDC PictureOCR.hdc, F - 1, 0, 0, PictureOCR.Width, PictureOCR.Height
            PictureOCR.Picture = PictureOCR.Image
            DoEvents
            ' We print the picture box content
            Printer.PaintPicture PictureOCR.Picture, hpos, vpos, PictureOCR.Width * zoom, PictureOCR.Height * zoom
            Printer.NewPage
        Next F
        Printer.EndDoc
    Next i
    'Possible replacement of the default printer
    If imp_actuelle <> Printer.DeviceName Then
        For Each X In Printers
            If X.DeviceName = imp_actuelle Then
                Set Printer = X
                Exit For
            End If
        Next
    End If
End Sub

It is then possible to choose the print quality from 72 dpi to 1200 dpi, by entering the optional PrinterQuality variable.

Best regards

François

[Thierry69]

Vive la Belgique aussi

[saturnian]

Vive la Belgique aussi

Absolument !

[Crapahute]

Génial, cela fonctionne, un énorme merci.

Thank you very much, you rock.

[jtw400]

This is a great project! I modified it a little to draw to an offscreen DC and then bitblt to the picture box. That helps display more complicated PDFs faster.

In the list of PDFium functions from Olaf's PDF project I saw the FPDF_RenderPage_Start and FPDF_RenderPage_Continue functions which use a callback to progressively draw a page. With more complex PDFs (architectural plans, etc.) an app can appear to hang while drawing so perhaps these functions could provide some indication to the user of the drawing progress.

Anyone have any ideas implementing this is VB? Thanks!

[saturnian]

This is a great project! I modified it a little to draw to an offscreen DC and then bitblt to the picture box. That helps display more complicated PDFs faster....

Hello jtw400,

it would be nice to post these changes in this thread, so that the community can test and integrate them.


Thanks in advance


Best regards
François

[jtw400]

Hello jtw400,

it would be nice to post these changes in this thread, so that the community can test and integrate them.


Thanks in advance


Best regards
François

Here you go... use this whenever needed to draw a page from a PDF already opened with "PDFLoad"

Dim TempDC As Long, TempBMP As Long, hDesktop As Long, hBrush As Long, pRect As RECT

hDesktop = GetDesktopWindow()

GetClientRect PDFView.hwnd, pRect

TempDC = CreateCompatibleDC(GetDC(hDesktop))
TempBMP = CreateCompatibleBitmap(PDFView.hdc, pRect.Right, pRect.Bottom)
   
SelectObject TempDC, TempBMP

hBrush = CreateSolidBrush(RGB(255, 255, 255))
FillRect TempDC, pRect, hBrush

RenderPageToDC TempDC, nPage - 1, 0, 0, pRect.Right * Screen.TwipsPerPixelX, pRect.Bottom * Screen.TwipsPerPixelY

BitBlt PDFView.hdc, 0, 0, pRect.Right, pRect.Bottom, TempDC, 0, 0, vbSrcCopy

DeleteDC TempDC
DeleteObject TempBMP
DeleteObject hBrush

'///// Declarations

Type RECT
        Left As Long
        Top As Long
        Right As Long
        Bottom As Long
End Type
 
Declare Function GetDesktopWindow Lib "user32" () As Long
Declare Function GetDC Lib "user32.dll" (ByVal hWnd As Long) As Long
Declare Function CreateCompatibleBitmap Lib "gdi32" (ByVal hDC As Long, ByVal nWidth As Long, ByVal nHeight As Long) As Long
Declare Function CreateCompatibleDC Lib "gdi32" (ByVal hDC As Long) As Long
Declare Function DeleteDC Lib "gdi32" (ByVal hDC As Long) As Long
Declare Function DeleteObject Lib "gdi32" (ByVal hObject As Long) As Long
Declare Function GetClientRect Lib "user32" (ByVal hWnd As Long, lpRect As RECT) As Long
Declare Function SelectObject Lib "gdi32" (ByVal hDC As Long, ByVal hObject As Long) As Long
Declare Function BitBlt Lib "gdi32" (ByVal hDestDC As Long, ByVal X As Long, ByVal Y As Long, ByVal nWidth As Long, ByVal nHeight As Long, ByVal hSrcDC As Long, ByVal xSrc As Long, ByVal ySrc As Long, ByVal dwRop As Long) As Long
Declare Function FillRect Lib "user32" (ByVal hDC As Long, lpRect As RECT, ByVal hBrush As Long) As Long
Declare Function CreateSolidBrush Lib "gdi32" (ByVal crColor As Long) As Long

[saturnian]

Thanks a lot, jtw400

[xiaoyao]

miniblink.dll ,maybe can show pdf ,it's like chrome

[SomeYguy]

And here we are, some 2+ years later . Thank you for your hard work on this, it works well for me. I'm using the demo program as my default PDF viewer on my personal computer because it is small, fast, and not annoying like Acrobat reader and others. Bravo to you and all of the other contributors .

[saturnian]

And here we are, some 2+ years later . Thank you for your hard work on this, it works well for me. I'm using the demo program as my default PDF viewer on my personal computer because it is small, fast, and not annoying like Acrobat reader and others. Bravo to you and all of the other contributors .

Glad this code can help you!
Thanks for this kind message and thanks for thinking of all the contributors!
Sincerely
Saturnian

[KFrosty]

can't make an executable file out of it. Says the .vbp is not a compatible binary file. Anyone else have this problem ?