SWF to PDF conversion

[P_Dport]

I have been searching for tools with an API or CLI that can programmatically automate assembly of SWF files into a vector-based format and then export the result as a report into a PDF document.

The needed capability will combine hundreds of individual .SWF files representing 2D-view parts, with a larger .SWF file representing the body of an object into which these parts will be installed.

I believe I can use SWFTools (SWFCombine) to assemble the part images and combine them with the body SWF image.

I need to find a tool that can programmatically output the vector-based SWF image in a PDF document as part of a report.

It is not clear to me whether any Adobe product is capable of performing any of the above functions programmatically.

If necessary or appropriate, conversion from SWF to SVG or another vector-based format will be considered prior to creating the PDF document.  The key challenge here is automation of the process.

All information about such a programmatic capability, either Adobe's or otherwise, will be appreciated!

[P_Dport]

It looks like a forum administrator moved this into the Acrobat SDK forum topic without bothering to post a reply indicating the relevance of this move from the CreateSWF forum topic.

I am not aware that the Adobe SDK provides any tools for opening SWF or SVG files for export into a PDF file.

Could someone post a link to relevant information about how Adobe or other products could be useful for this purpose?

[lrosenth]

That is correct, we don't support conversion of SWF to PDF.

However ,you can embed a SWF into a PDF and it will play.

[P_Dport]

I speculate that Flash Actionscript could be used to load swf files, combining them with a master border image swf in the proper positions, rotated and sized appropriately, and then save the result as a single large .swf file.  If the Flash runtime cannot do this, then SWFTools SWFCombine.exe could do it.  Then perhaps XXXXXX can be used to automate embedding the final SWF into the PDF.  If anyone can think of any other way to do it, even if it would be more cumbersome, that would be helpful just so that I can document a potential alternative approach.

[lrosenth]

Adobe Acrobat, as I noted, can be used to embed any SWF into a PDF for display on a page.  It can either be static or fully interactive.

Acrobat has an SDK that can used to do this programmatically.

[P_Dport]

OK.  I will write up Acrobat SDK as one of the alternatives to embed the SWF into the PDF programmatically.  Would each user of my application need to purchase an Acrobat license to do this, or could this work via a free runtime version of Acrobat (if any exists)?

[lrosenth]

Either the user would need to have Adobe Acrobat present OR you could purchase a license to Adobe PDFLibrary and include that with your application.

[Guest]

You can produce a report in PDF format with any number of SWF files added using LaTeX and the media9 package. The LaTeX input is a text file (ASCII) providing the content and structure, which could be generated automatically (Perl, PHP whatever) if you don't want to write it by hand. LaTeX does the 'pretty-printing' (layout according to typographic rules).

See media9 documentation on CTAN http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/media9/doc/media9.pdf