hi, i'm currently on developing an application using java and needed some suggestion on the best APIs on inserting microsoft documents(words and excel) to pdf.

The "best" API would be undoubtably the principal Acrobat ActiveX objects model itself.

Thanks anthony_yio, but other than that? didn't want to popout the acroread when running my application..

.. went medc and men, they give away 10 iPaQ 6828 ><

Sorry, I couldn't catch your question. Are you referring to:

1. Loading and displaying PDF files from a Java application?

2. Converting Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to PDF format?

There are some Third Party Java libraries/programs that can generate/display Adobe Acrobat/PDF file. Google? Btw, the stock Java API does not support ActiveX or any other native libraries (Windows DLL/OCX, GNU/Linux native .so or .o).

Suggestion, instead of Java, you can use Microsoft .NET Framework, Visual Basic 6.0 or C/C++ for that purpose. These tools are more suitable to work with ActiveX controls and Windows DLLs.

This post has been edited by dopodplaya: Jun 28 2006, 03:35 AM

yup, referring to the no. 2 only, and includes editing that converted spreadsheet.



at first going to do on .net, but it seems that we needed the framework installed on every client, which consist of OSes ranging between windows 98 to 2003 and some on linux/unix and thousands of them

Do you mean to embed a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet into a PDF document (like how one can embed spreadsheets, Visio drawings, Charts etc in to a Microsoft Word document), and allow editing it at later time (double-click, use Excel to change, then save...)?

I don't think this is possible. Even if it were, that would violate the main purpose of PDF.

Converting Excel to PDF is possible. There are many options available. You could simply use any PDF Converter tools (e.g. Adobe Distiller, GhostScript), which acts as a printer. So all you need to do is print the spreadsheet, but target the PDF Converter software as a target printer.

Alternatively, if you wish the Java-rise the process, take a look at OpenOffice.org. Try opening an Excel spreadsheet, then simply export as PDF. If it gives you the result you want, read through the Developer's Guide, and learn how to use Java to integrate with the OOo API. It's getting popular, and I've seen some companies using OpenOffice.org widespreadly.

try google around sourceforge.net...i believe there are tones of open source API available.....