Support for Multiple PDF viewers on the same page (e.g. tabs)

[ishanuda]

Hi,
I would like to know any plan to implement the Multiple PDF viewers on the same page (e.g. tabs) for the amazing library.

Thank you very much.

[stephanrauh]

I wouldn't call it a plan - it's more like an idea. Maybe - just maybe! - a future version of ngx-extended-pdf-viewer is going to support displaying multiple PDF file simultaneously.

The idea of ngx-extended-pdf-viewer is to offer a tight, SEO-friendly integration of Mozilla's pdf.js project into your application. That means two things:

• I don't want to modify pdf.js much. If I do, the next update is going to break my changes. (It already did!). So, replacing the global variables of pdf.js by something allowing for multiple PDF viewers - well, that's out of scope. It can be done, but I can't do it in my limited spare time. Adding insult to injury, the pdf.js team won't do it because their primary goal is to write a PDF viewer for Firefox.
• I don't want to use iFrames.

However, I'm thinking about allowing iFrames as an option. By default, there's no iFrame. That's important, because I want my library to be Google-friendly.

But if you insist, you can activate iFrames, allowing you to display multiple PDF viewers simultaneously and independently. There's a SEO penalty, but as long as you know what you're doing, that's fine by me. Most inhouse applications aren't indexed by Google, so who am I to complain?

I'm not sure how much work that is, and if I'm going to manage it, but I'm positive I can do it in reasonable time. It's just not on my priority list, so it may take a couple of months before I start investigating the topic more thoroughly.

In the meantime, you can speed up the process by providing a pull request. Are you interested?

[ishanuda]

Hi,
Thank you for the quick reply,

As for the request,
I did some research about the PDF.js related to the topic and found some interesting discussions.

mozilla/pdf.js#5148
mozilla/pdf.js#5442
mozilla/pdf.js#6571

Would like to contribute to your amazing work, still, need to dig into the code, Could I be able to fork the repo and do some experiments first?

regards.

[stephanrauh]

Oh, sorry, it seem I've missed the second part of your question. Sure, pull requests are always welcome. Feel free to fork the repo. Actually, you need to do this to send me a pull request. :)

Best regards,
Stephan

[stephanrauh]

The discussion you've found mostly deal with the rendering engine (pdf.js and pdf.worker.js). The challenge is to teach the viewer.js file not to use global variables.

[stephanrauh]

I've tried to move the PDF viewer to an iFrame a couple of days ago. No go. If you need multiple PDF viewers on the same file, I recommend using https://www.npmjs.com/package/ng2-pdf-viewer. That's another fine library. The difference to my library is it put the PDF viewer into an iFrame from day one. That enables them to display multiple PDF file simultaneously.