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I need to find or develop an app that will load in a pdf file from the web, allow a user to make simple annotations and save these annotations back to a webserver.

I'm curently using the zurb javascript annotator with the pdf rendered to a .jpg with imagemagick. Just now, I was told that they need the ability to zoom in to 3000% or more on some files. clearly rendering to a jpg would create gigantic files.

So I need to create either a java app or a flash app that will load the original pdf, allow the user to mark it up, and save either the annotated pdf, or the annotations themselves back to the webapp.

This also needs to live IN the web browser, launching acrobat reader, or an air app that must be downloaded and installed are not going to work here.

Alternative strategies are more than welcome.

Hutch
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  • Gah..... a PDF reader/editor in Flash? Flash is bloated enough already... – Marc B Aug 05 '11 at 17:36
  • Why not use Adobe Reader to annotate the PDF? The applet should allow you to display it in the page and the user will be able to mark it up in an adobe sanctioned way. The only challenge would be getting the modified version back to the server. – Devin M Aug 05 '11 at 17:38
  • @marc b: that not really constructive. – Hutch Aug 05 '11 at 17:50
  • @devin m: is there a way of actually ensuring that acrobat reader is launched? and not a different app? – Hutch Aug 05 '11 at 17:50
  • @Hutch: hence it being a comment, and not an answer. – Marc B Aug 05 '11 at 17:52
  • Nope, not that I know of. If there was I imagine it would be quite hackish anyway. Perhaps the best way to do it would be to render the images client side. Maybe you can use an intermediate format like postscript and use this http://www.feiri.de/pcan/ Edit: New rendering lib is 2x faster. – Devin M Aug 05 '11 at 17:56

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There are many options out there (paid as well as free).

Try http://www.axmag.com/ or http://lvolume.net/

For a free implementation the best would be to go for open source projects. One of them is flexpaper.

Also if since you mentioned other options to be open too, you may try ajaxdocumentviewer or connect to Google doc viewer itself.

loxxy
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