PDF-Plugin vs. PDF.js - web technologie API not good enough

florian...@makler-waesch.de

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Jan 30, 2017, 4:45:38 AM1/30/17

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Hello,

after taking out NPAPI support pdfs only can be viewed with the internal pdf.js - OK. We have asked PDF-XChange for creating an alternative for displaying PDF in the browser, because in the Firefox release notes it is written:

"The Web platform is powerful and can usually do everything that a plugin can do."

But the feedback of PDF-XChange is:
"Until a stable and powerful alternative API is provided, I'm afraid that our hands are tied."

Could this be? What are the options for the future, beside PDF.js?

Kind regards

Florian Wäsch
Dittmeier GmbH

Benjamin Smedberg

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Jan 30, 2017, 11:02:12 AM1/30/17

to florian...@makler-waesch.de, dev-tech...@lists.mozilla.org

There are two questions here, I think:

Is PDF.js itself not good enough? PDF.js is an open-source PDF renderer
used by various websites, as well as built into the Firefox browser. We
know that it's missing some important features like form fill, and we'd
love assistance adding those features to it.

Is the web platform good enough to implement a PDF renderer. We believe so.
PDF.js is evidence of that. If there are specific technical limitations
which you believe are preventing a good renderer from being implemented on
the web platform, please let me know (with details).

--BDS

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Chris Peterson

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Jan 30, 2017, 2:34:29 PM1/30/17

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Mozilla is also adding support for the open-source "PDFium" plugin which
should improve rendering performance over PDF.js and add functionality
like form fill:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.planning/j834iDIG3yY/V84Rzw0cEAAJ

chris

Christian Rottler

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Feb 6, 2017, 4:14:27 AM2/6/17

to Chris Peterson, dev-tech...@lists.mozilla.org

Hi everybody, I guess I'm not going to make some folks at Mozilla happy
with this.

I've been using PDF.js since an early beta and I freely admit it has become
*a lot* better yet being in charge of our enterprise browser I still don't
recommend it for use in production at my company.

There's a reason why we've been using Acrobat Reader instead of 3rd party
products: It's the only solution covering all our various needs concerning
rendering / printing PDF(/A) documents including its browser plugin.

PDFium comes in a close second and PDF.js has become a viable alternative
for everyday use (hardly any probs at home so far!) but not for our
production environment -- I just can't afford telling users, "Well, it
works in 98% of all cases, so what the heck?"

So I'd like to ask the Mozillians on here if there's any news concerning
the progress of your 'Mortar Project' aka PDFium / Flash via PPAPI [
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mortar_Project].

Is it possible to get my hands on an early pre-pre-pre-alpha, perhaps?

Regards,
Chris

Chris Peterson

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Feb 6, 2017, 1:37:00 PM2/6/17

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On 2/6/2017 1:14 AM, Christian Rottler wrote:
> So I'd like to ask the Mozillians on here if there's any news concerning
> the progress of your 'Mortar Project' aka PDFium / Flash via PPAPI [
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mortar_Project].
>
> Is it possible to get my hands on an early pre-pre-pre-alpha, perhaps?

AIUI, the Mortar PDFium project has some prototype code but it is not in
a state where it can run on its own or be integrated into Firefox yet.