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Powerful all-in-one PDF library for .NET

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Home » Newsletter » April 2009

By V. Subhash

Recently, we had a customer who wanted to create a PDF that would automatically prompt the user to print the document. Our initial suggestion involved adding a "JavaScript PDF action" to the "open" event of the document.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Gnostice.PDFOne;

namespace Create_Auto_Print_PDF {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      PDFDocument doc = new PDFDocument();
      // Use this statement to make the viewer application display
      // the Print dialog and allow the user to specify the print settings
      doc.AddOpenActionJavaScript("this.print();");

      // Use the following statement (instead of the previous one)
      // to make the viewer application attempt to silently print the 
      // document (to the default printer using default settings). 
      // Note: There still will be a confirmation dialog prompt to the user
      doc.AddOpenActionJavaScript("this.print(false);");

      doc.WriteText("This PDF will attempt to print itself when you open it.");
      doc.Save("Auto_Print_PDF1.pdf");
      doc.Close();
    }
  }
}

Our customer came back saying that the document worked fine in Adobe® Reader but not in another PDF viewer. Even in Adobe Reader, the document may not have worked as intended if JavaScript scripting was turned off.

Our alternative solution involves the use of "print named action" in place of the JavaScript action.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Gnostice.PDFOne;

namespace Create_Auto_Print_PDF {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      PDFDocument doc = new PDFDocument();
      doc.AddOpenActionNamed(PDFActionName.Print);
      doc.WriteText("This PDF will attempt to print itself when you open it.");
      doc.Save("Auto_Print_PDF2.pdf");
      doc.Close();
    }
  }
}

When we checked, the second PDF document worked as intended in both viewers. However, we would like to introduce a caveat here that the "print" and several other named actions available in PDFOne .NET are undocumented features* that are supported by Adobe Reader.

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* - As of PDF Reference Version 1.7.