Is it possible to start a new process and set it's main window as a child window of my MDI application?

Question

Is it possible to start a new process and set it's main window as a child window of my MDI application?

The scenario is: I have a MDI application and I want to start Adobe Acrobat as a child window of my MDI application.

Answer 1

In theory, I believe it's possible using SetParent.

However, in practice, this may be a bit more difficult than you'd expect. Also, you'll need to do work to syncronize the styles, etc.

Just a thought, though - If you are trying to embed Acrobat Reader (not full Acrobat), you may be able to do this easier by embedding a webcontrol and having the acrobat reader plugin used in that...

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Here are some samples of people making this work (at least partially):

Related SO question with workarounds for specific issues.

CodeProject article using SetParent

Experts-exchange question about embedding a java app in a win32 app.

Answer 2

I don't believe this is possible, at least not using SetParent. To quote from the SetParent documentation:

An application can use the SetParent function to set the parent window of a pop-up, overlapped, or child window. The new parent window and the child window must belong to the same application.

Answer 3

I don't think what you want is easily done, but it could be an option to try to integrate one of the open-source PDF-viewers (if you're prepared to go GPL as that is probably the license on most of them). Some links:

• epdfview
• xpdf
• evince
• okular