PDF - Capturing events in PDF forms

This may be a little off-topic for a VB forum, but since I program in VB, this is the first place I go (naturally .

Currently we have a browser activex control embedded in a VB form of ours. This loads up PDF files we generate on the fly and works just like the MSIE browser, with very limited options. We are looking for a way to be able to allow the user to click on something within the PDF document that will be "captured" by the Visual Basic program, do some computations, create a new PDF file, and refresh the file. The part we don't know how to do is link a button click in the PDF document back to the executable we're running in (and we also don't know IF it is possible at all).

I am hoping for a 'yes this can be done'/'no this can't be done' response and why. If it can't be done, is there another way to go about this? If it can, can you provide examples?

Thanks in advance,
Keith

Hi!

I need to straighten out some question marks in order to be able to help you.

1) You wrote: 'a way to be able to allow the user to click on something within the PDF document'.
Question: What should the user be able to click on? Anything or specific 'objects'/information?

2) You wrote: 'create a new PDF file, and refresh the file'.
Question: Should both a new PDF be created and the original file be updated, or do you mean that that the original PDF will be updated by creating a new PDF with the new information along with the old information from the original PDF file.

3) What kind of information are the PDFs built of? Graphics, graphics w/ text or just plain text/numbers? Are they simple or complex?

4) You wrote: 'link a button click in the PDF document back to the executable we're running in'
Question: Do you have buttons in the PDF document?

5) What version of PDF are the PDF documents created in? Or, do you have any specific requirements on which version of the PDF standard they should be created in?

6) What 'PDF generator' do you use today in you application?

Regards,

1. We haven't decided. In our base system, we have similar functionality in a "viewer" of our own creation and we actually click on the column of data we wish to revise. But buttons (or any other suggestion) would be fine.


2. This wasn't clear. We are either going to overwrite the existing PDF or create new. If we overwrite, all we have to do is "refresh" the browser with the open PDF.


3. The output for our systems is a life insurance illustration. The illustration contains mostly text. Some graphs, shapes, images and lines are also placed throughout the document.


4. Not yet. This was just referring to one of the ways I was thinking about handling the link from PDF back to the executable (if possible)


5. Currently 4.0, but we are going to be moving to 5.0 when our "PDF generator" (see below) has been approved for the next version.


6. PDFLib: URL

Still waiting on an answer to this...Thanks.