PDF viewing/annotating library for iPhone?

Question

I am currently working on an educational project where I would like to add some PDF reading functionality to an iPhone app. I know that it is possible to add a UIWebView and display the PDF there, however I would like to add the ability to show page number, 'next', 'previous' buttons etc. Is CGPDFDocument the direction that I should be headed or is there a better (ie more feature rich) library available? I have had a look around to try and find the capabilities of CGPDFDocument, but besides the API reference there is not much available.

Would it also be possible with this to annotate a pdf?

Thanks

JP

can please answer for this link i hope you can ..http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4321681/how-to-fit-pdf-page-in-entire-view — ajay, Jan 14 '11 at 05:21
@Jack have you found some solution how to select text and make annotation? — Matrosov Oleksandr, Jun 07 '14 at 08:51

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '10 at 10:09

5

Here is a good (working) example of the CGPDF functions: http://www.olivetoast.com/blog/2009/08/simple-uiscrollview-catiledlayer-pdf-example/

It uses a CATiledLayer + UIScrollView, this may not be appropriate for a reader of sorts, but it still shows you how to load and draw a PDF doc without UIWebView (which severely restricts your abilities).

Change the layer type back to a layer, add in page handling using CGPDFDocumentGetNumberOfPages and then CGPDFDocumentGetPage and you have a pretty good reader.

I don't know how to perform annotations, I suspect you would need your own data structure on top of the document.

answered Feb 08 '10 at 10:09

Mobs

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Yeah I had a look at this earlier today, it is really useful for drawing PDFs, thanks. My next problem is handling annotations - have no idea where to start. – Jack Feb 22 '10 at 17:52
this project is so, so cool :D I can recommend for others. :) – Infinite Possibilities May 31 '10 at 22:01

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 04 '12 at 19:07

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Update: 04 Feb 2012

Check out this project, it's opensource and very well made. I think it could be a great starting point for your PDF reader.

Project:
http://www.vfr.org/

Source:
https://github.com/vfr/Reader

answered Feb 04 '12 at 19:07

Cesar

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 29 '10 at 10:33

0

There are PDF reader apps, do these not support annotations?

Another angle could be for the iPhone app to read/download pages (images) from the internet, where one could add basic annotations to that (image/layer based), these coordinates could be saved to a server. Those annotations could then be added programatically to a PDF on the server for download?

answered Jan 29 '10 at 10:33

Mark Redman

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Thanks for the reply. I don't know if there are any apps available that do support annotations. However, having looked there is an app here http://bit.ly/3JiFiv that does support it. I was wondering if there was a built in library or similar that supported these features. – Jack Jan 29 '10 at 20:51

PDF viewing/annotating library for iPhone?

3 Answers3