Win32 and Acrobat

Question

Hello, I have a simple Win32 app writen in C, in which I would like to open PDFs. I know I can compile and link to Poppler library, but is there a way to use Acrobat Reader? Kind of like what browsers do, if you have Reader installed, they are automatically able to display PDF in a window though some plugin interface. The problem is, I never used a plugin, not wrote such an interface. How to? Is it also possible to install Reader afterward and somehow make the app aware of its presence?

I would also like to control, say, the zoom. And what the PDF could be in memory, as well.

Edit:

I just found this [1]: "If you have installed Adobe Reader, you can add a COM reference to the PDf viewer ActiveX control in VisualStudio and use it inside a WindowsFormsHost control." but I don't understand what does it says: how do I create "COM reference" and use "WindowsFormsHost" in plain Win32 C?

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2014658/pdf-libraries-to-display-a-pdf-document-in-wpf

Answer 1

On windows if you type mypdf.pdf and hit return in a Command Prompt it opens the pdf in the associated application ^{_{(in most cases Adobe Reader)}}. So in c# I start a new process with the pdf as the file to run.

You should be able to do something similar in c without bothering with plugins.

Answer 2

In addition to what Nifle said, if instead of running it as a separate application you want to run Acrobat Reader as a plugin within your application's window (as for example IE runs it within IE's window), Adobe Acrobat Reader download page says,

An ActiveX control for Internet Explorer and a plug-in for Netscape Navigator are included and automatically installed in the browser of your choice.

The plug-in technology is probably the technology called ActiveX.