Adobe Acrobat is a family of computer programs developed by Adobe Systems, designed to view, create, manipulate and manage files in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF).
Acrobat plug-ins are dynamically-linked extension to Acrobat or Adobe Reader. They can hook into the user interface in a number of ways and can registered to be called when a variety of events occur in the application. A plug-in is a program written in ANSI C/C++ that uses Acrobat public APIs. The Acrobat API is divided into several layers, each layer controls a different aspect of the Acrobat environment. Plug-in projects consist of header files, SDK source files, user source files, user GUI resource files. The Acrobat SDK provides tools to help create these projects. The output file is a dynamically linked library file, with the extension .api, that should be placed in the Plug-ins folder under Acrobat.
There are three types of plug-ins:
- Regular Acrobat plug-ins—These plug-ins run on Acrobat Professional and Acrobat Standard. Plug-ins for Acrobat Professional can use any of the Acrobat SDK APIs. Plug-ins for Acrobat Standard do not have access to some APIs.
- Adobe Reader-enabled plug-ins—These plug-ins use a restricted set of APIs. Adobe Reader-enabled plug-ins are developed with permission from Adobe and require special processing to load under Adobe Reader. Plug-ins for Adobe Reader can use additional APIs if the PDF document has additional usage rights.
- Certified plug-ins—These plug-ins have undergone extensive testing to ensure that they do not compromise the integrity of Acrobat's security model. A checkbox in the Acrobat and Adobe Reader user interface can be used to ensure that only certified plug-ins are loaded. Certified plug-ins can be provided only by Adobe.
The Acrobat SDK is a set of tools that help you develop software that interacts with Acrobat technology. The SDK contains header files, type libraries, simple utilities, sample code, and documentation.
