Adobe acrobat 7.0.5 sdk User Manual

Technologies Supported by the Acrobat SDK

The core API methods are organized into the hierarchy shown in 

.

The Acrobat Viewer (AV) layer, also known as AcroView or AV Model, works with the Acrobat 
or Adobe Reader application. Its methods allow plug-ins to manipulate components of the 
Acrobat or Adobe Reader application itself, such as menus and menu items. 

The Portable Document (PD) layer, also known as PDModel, provides access to components 
of PDF documents. Its methods allow plug-ins to manipulate document components such 
as document pages and annotations. Two method groups are closely related to the 
PD layer, each controlling a different aspect of a PDF document:

●

PDFEdit methods deal with the physical representation of a PDF document. More 
specifically, PDFEdit methods treat page content as a list of objects whose values and 
attributes can be modified by a plug-in. The methods allow your plug-in to read, write, 
edit, and create page contents and page resources, which may contain objects such as 
fonts and images.

●

PDSEdit methods deal with the logical structure-tree information of a PDF document. A 
PDF document’s logical structure is built independently of its physical representation, 
with pointers between the logical structure and the physical representation. PDSEdit 
methods allow your plug-in to add, modify, navigate, search and extract data from PDF 
documents. For example, PDSEdit methods can obtain logically-ordered content, 
independently of drawing order. 

For more information about logical structure and tagged PDF files, see 

.

(menu selections, other user-level actions)

(bookmarks, pages, thumbnails, annotations, ...)

(page content)

(strings, numbers, dictionaries, ...)

(file access,

platform-

independent

utilities, callbacks,

exceptions, ...)

(structure info)