Rendering PDF application in C# application

Question

Hey guys, before you guys say anything I have searched and can not find specific information on what I am looking for.

I am looking to display a PDF in my winform application without dependancy. I know of a library (open source) that does this however, it is old. What I mean is that I want the render to be using the latest (or somewhat newer) specification for PDF. Two things I am mainly looking for is bookmarks (which this library supports) and clickable links (like the table of contents) which this library does not support.

I am not a very advanced programmer so if you give me Ghostwriter + PDFsharp or itextpdf or something like that, i can not put together what I need and in time also. So I am looking for links to libraries (open source please) that do this for me.

My alternative is to just use a webbrowser control and set the URL to the pdf but I am looking for something without this dependancy.

Answer 1

One perhaps not so great option is to convert it to an XPS document which is very easy to display in WPF.

Answer 2

Have you checked out reporting systems, like Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, or Crystal Reports, or any of the many reporting solutions (like Devexpress XtraReports, ActiveReports, SyncFUsion Essential Reporting and quite a few more) for .NET out there? Most of those have some more or less advanced PDF rendering capabilities.

Several vendors also have separate, stand-alone PDF generators, something like Essential PDF by Syncfusion or Aspose.PDF - but those get quite involved if you want to get good results. But it might be worth a look at least...

Yet another approach

Answer 3

Hey guys, still looking for an answer :(