Monkeybread Software - DynaPDF Manual

DynaPDF Manual - Page 672

Function Reference

Page 672 of 860

versions will also support specific flags to further improve the access time to external pages. So,

don't load PDF pages in a separate thread!

Notice:

DynaPDF is thread-safe but the condition is that every thread uses its own PDF instance and

anything that should be done must then be done in this thread. When we render pages in a

viewer then we must work with one instance in different threads. This tiny difference is very

important since it is a huge difference whether a library must protect all functions from

competing access or whether it must only isolate its data from one instance to another.

A viewer should only load the page from an external PDF file that should now be rendered. So,

don't call a function like ImportPDFFile() to import the entire file when it is opened. Instead, load

pages on demand as follows:

• When the user requests to open a PDF file then open it with OpenImportFile().

• Call GetInPageCount() to determine the number of pages in it.

• Create an array of pointers that holds the pointers of pages which were already loaded.

Initialize the array with NULL so that it can be used to perform a duplicate check.

• Initialize the scroll bars, zoom factor and so on, and create the image buffer so that the first

page can be displayed.

• When a page should be displayed then import it first in the main thread if necessary as

follows:

if (m_Pages[m_PageNum-1] == NULL)

{

// Important: Use EditPage() and not Append() to keep the pages

// sorted! Holes are filled with empty pages by EditPage().

pdfEditPage(m_PDF, m_PageNum);

pdfImportPageEx(m_PDF, PageNum, 1.0, 1.0);

pdfEndPage(m_PDF);

// Store the page pointer in the duplicate array

m_Pages[m_PageNum-1] = pdfGetPageObject(m_PDF, m_PageNum);

}

• Inititialize the structure TPDFRastertImage and create a new thread in the priority lower or

normal.

• Now you can start the thread. The thread executes only the function RenderPage(), finish!

The window must be updated via the TOnUpdateWindow callback function.

• When the user requests to load another page or PDF file then call rasAbort(m_RasPtr); from

the main thread (m_RasPtr represents the instance pointer of the rasterizer), wait until the

thread returns and delete it.

• Now you can load another file, page, or change the zoom settings and so on.

Make sure that you don't execute non-thread-safe code in the TOnUpdateWindow callback function

or in the error callback function.

Especially the error callback function should not directly add the error message to a list component

or something similar when the component is not thread-safe. Note that such components try to