Q: Native SL PDF Viewer

[Ben Hayat]

Hello Team;

Can you please provide a roadmap or timeline when we can see a "Native" SL PDF viewer control? Rather using the HTMLPlaceHolder to open up the PDF reader, customer wants to be able to see the PDF in SL application.

If yes, will it have the ability to Zoom, Pan and etc.?

Thanks!
..Ben

[Nikolay]

Hi Ben,

The PDF viewer is on its way for the upcoming Q3 release. Pan and Zoom are on the roadmap, too. Even if we do not succeed to add these features in the Q3, we will include them in the following Q3 SP1 release.
 
Regards,
Nick
the Telerik team

[Ben Hayat]

Excellent!

Thanks Nick.
..Ben

[gk]

Great news!
Is there a sneak peek (coming soon)?

[Simeon]

I would mind a sneaky peak to.   I might finally get rid of some horrendous code that scraps pages out of a pdf file server side as images to render natively client side.

Simeon

[Nikolay]

Hi there,

The first public release of the control will come along with Q3 2011 in November. 

Best wishes,
Nick
the Telerik team

[gk]

The PDF Viewer didn't seem to make it int 2011 Q3 Beta; is this still planned for Q3?
GK

[Nikolay]

Hi Gk,

Yes, it is on track for the official Q3 version.

All the best,
Nick
the Telerik team

[Misha]

Is there any way to briefly describe the functionality of coming PDF Viewer?
In particular:
1. Will it be possible to run the report directly via PDF Viewer,
avoiding Report Viewer usage completely?
2. Any idea about Q3 shipping date? Mid or late November?

Thanks in advance!

[Iva Toteva]

Hello Misha,

The PDF viewer will be able to show PDF documents client-side natively in Silverlight without the use of any external components. However, you should have in mind that the control will be shipped in a Beta state in the Q3 release. As for the timeline of the release - it will be in late November.

Greetings,
Iva Toteva
the Telerik team

[James]

This sounds all very interesting. Is there a page somewhere that documents its functionality? (e.g. annotations, selecting text etc would be very useful)

Thanks, James.

[Nikolay]

Hi James,

Not yet, but stay tuned as we will announce all these resources with the Q3 official release. In addition we will create a detailed technical blog post discussing on the questions you asked.

Kind regards,
Nick
the Telerik team

[danparker276]

I see it on the demos page, thank you!

Are there any plans to provide more PDF functionality like importing PDFs to the Rich Text box,  merging PDFs or filling out PDF templates?

[Boby]

Hi Dan,
We do not plan to implement loading of PDF documents in RadRichTextBox, as the latter is an editor for flow documents, which are quite different from fixed ones (which PDF represents).
For the next official version we are planning to improve our compatibility with PDF and expose an API for creation of custom FixedDocuments. This API can be used for merging documents, but it would not be possible to save the result as a file - this will be eventually implemented in future releases.
Filling PDF templates is quite a complex task and for now it is out of the control's planned scope.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have other questions about RadPdfViewer.

Best wishes,
Boby
the Telerik team

[Mike]

I am also excited about this new control.  It's not clear to me in looking at the beta version, but will there be an ability to download/save the pdf file to the users local machine via the tool bar? I dont see a save option in the Beta version online.

Thanks!

Mike

[Kammen]

Hi Mike,

Such functionality is not available for now. In the first official version of RadPdfViewer, which is to be released in Q1 2012, we will consider exposing the stream that has been used to create the PdfDocumentSource. Due to the fact that the document cannot be modified, it would be possible to save it using this stream.
I hope this answers your question.

Greetings,
Kammen
the Telerik team

[Nuno Oliveira]

Hi,

I believe one of the most wanted functionalities has to be annotations.
Are there plans to include this functionality in the control?
At least a way of drawing them visualy and then obtain their properties (page, position, size, etc) even if they were not to be saved in the pdf, this would be much valueable and really would make a huge difference against concurrency

Thx,

Nuno

[Kammen]

Hi Nuno,

Thank you for your feedback. We also believe that extending RadPdfViewer with annotation functionality will be a valuable enhancement to the control.
This feature has not been scheduled yet because at this point improving the quality of the PDF rendering is of higher priority. However, we have it on our roadmap and will probably commence work on it for 2012 Q2 or 2012 Q3.

Kind regards,
Kammen
the Telerik team