Primer: a PDF viewer
for Windows CE

View PDF documents on your Windows CE PC Companion.

BY CHRIS DE HERRERA

PC Companions are promoted as mobile data access tools. With them, you are supposed to be able to access the information you need, wherever you are. For the most part this is true. But there have been some notable gaps in this information access. One of the big ones relates to PDF files.

The de facto standard

Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for electronic document distribution worldwide. A PDF file is a read-only document that can display text and graphics. You can cut text and images from a PDF file and paste them into other documents. PDF documents are displayed on screen in a page-by-page format, similar to a printed document.

PDF is used by many public and private organizations to store documentation and other information. In fact, many PC Companion manufacturers store their user manuals and documentation in PDF format. You can go to their Web sites and download the PDF file to your desktop PC. You can view a PDF file on a desktop PC using Adobe's Acrobat Reader (www.adobe.com). But until recently there was no way to view a PDF file on a Windows CE Handheld PC or Palm-size PC. Fortunately, a company named Ansyr Technology is about to change that with the release of Primer, a PDF viewer for H/PCs and P/PCs.

Primer: a PDF viewer for Windows CE

Primer offers Windows CE users capabilities similar to Acrobat Reader, providing core functions for viewing PDF documents on PC Companions. Primer supports most PDF image formats, as well as bookmarks, hyperlinks, and Table-of-Contents. Multiple levels of magnification are available, including a box zoom feature to enlarge a selected area.

Primer's main "Splash" screen (see Screen 1) prompts you to open a PDF file. After you select the PDF file, Primer, displays the first page of the PDF file you selected (see Screen 2). Ansyr has optimized the display to allow you to view as much of the document as possible. Scroll bars and control buttons let you move around a page, change pages, and zoom in and out on a page (see Screen 3).

Screen 1: The opening "Splash" screen prompts you to select a PDF file for viewing.

Screen 2: The first page of the NEC MobilePro 800 User's Guide in PDF document, displayed on a Palm-size PC. Note the up/down and left/right scroll bars and the control buttons for moving around a document.

Screen 3: Like any PDF reader, Primer lets you zoom in on a document, or out.

You can specify the zoom level (assuming you have enough RAM for program execution). Primer also supports user-defined bookmarks so you can quickly jump to specific pages in your PDFs. You can easily page up, page down or jump to the last page viewed. Another great feature is the ability to begin and continue to search for text in the PDF file. Click on the document info button to see the document title, the name of the program used to create the PDF file, the subject, author and keywords. It also tells you whether or not the document has been modified. Options menus let you select the Display Options (Display Images, Render Inline, Fill Shapes, Accurate Stretch, Extract Text Enable) and Program Options (Process Log, Progress Indicator, Show Splash) to optimize the display and function of Primer.

Using Primer

Primer can use plenty of your PC Companion's system resources. I recommend that you close all other applications. This will help Primer render the PDF pages as fast as possible. Also, you may need to increase the amount of RAM used for program execution to allow for higher zoom levels. This can be done from Start - Settings - Control Panel - System by sliding the bar to the left. Note: With the first release, you can not print PDF files.

Could be a "killer app"

In addition to this PC Companion version of Primer, versions will be available for Psion PDAs and devices using the Palm OS. Ansyr also hints at the possibility of Primer for set-top TV boxes, bar-code scanners, machine controllers, and Net appliances that use the Windows CE operating system.

I tested the beta version of Primer. The commercial version is scheduled to be released in the beginning of January and will be priced at $49.95. The commercial version will be available on Ansyr's Web site, www.ansyr.com.