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 3D 3D Photo Gallery (Part 1) 3D Photo Gallery (Part 2) Audio Poor Man's MIDI Make A Metronome iPod Tricks (Part 1) iPod Tricks (Part 2) iPod Tricks (Part 3) Laugh Track Machine Audio Player with Reverb Shepard Melody RB Phone Home Build a Drum Machine Custom Controls and Windows Double Click Listbox Draggable Metal Window Double Click Canvas Custom Buttons Custom Buttons Part II iTunes-style Listboxes Custom Controls General RB Scrolling Windows Using Mesage Dialogs Case-Sensitive Word Finder Introduction to Stacks Wiggle Window JPEG in PDF Listbox Checkboxes Background Applications Listbox Auto-Find Virtual Volumes Time Tracker Software Distribution (Part 1) Software Distribution (Part 2) Software Distribution (Part 3) Software Distribution (Part 4) Exceptions Tips and Tricks Text Clippings Made Easy Graphics Drawing a Simple Gradient The SpriteSurface: Space Game Image Spinner Cropping Graphics (Part 1) Cropping Graphics (Part 2) Cropping Graphics (Part 3) Cropping Graphics (Part 4) Shimmer Graphics Lissajous Figures Simple Screen Capture Vector Graphics Kaleidoscope Images Stegonography Spirals! Image Table RB Magnifying Lens Screen Capture Color Picker Tutorial Hacks Ghost Grab Speedy Mouse Extension iTunes Plugins iTunes Skinner Mac OS X Global Hot Key Event (Carbon Events) Login Welcomer (Carbon Events) Add/Remove Buttons Resizable Sheets Mac OS X Preferences Window Using Sheets in REALbasic Build a Bundle (Part 1) Build a Bundle (Part 2) Dock Your Passwords Mac OS X Debugging REALbasic Mac OS X Icon Tutorial Animate Your Dock RB and the Command Line Menus Window Menu Templates Menu Listbox Menu Novelty Guessing Game Calendar Trivia Tile Mixer Zip Code Finder Happy Valentine's Day Merlin Simulator (Part 1) Merlin Simulator (Part 2) Merlin Simulator (Part 3) Buzzword Machine AppleSoft BASIC Printing Print to PDF Registration Registration Code Validation Network Registration Codes Resources Picture Extractor (Part 1) Picture Extractor (Part 2) Serial Caller ID (Part 1) Caller ID (Part 2) Caller ID (Part 3) Speech Speech Recognition Socket Communication Easy Peer-to-Peer File Sharing MacPAD Version Checking Display Web Image In Canvas HTML IMG Tags Version Tracking Even Smarter Instant Messaging Web Tiler JavaScript and REALbasic Stock Ticker (Part I) Stock Ticker (Part 2) AIM Mate XML Manipulation Simple XML Introduction Video Big Brother Video Capture Note: All articles without a byline were written by Erick Tejkowski. When cleaning the site I removed them because the code differed from page to page, and I have yet to put them back in.
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This week we'll look at a significantly more advanced topic: PDF creation. In past years, I've tinkered with building PDF by hand using REALbasic. After many head-scratching hours, I managed to tackle text and simple drawing in a PDF document. Ever since I posted that code, though, I've been inundated with emails asking how to embed images in a PDF document. Well, I finally got off my duff and whipped up this week's example. This project is not your usual REALbasic tutorial on ResExcellence. It's decidely more complex and requires a lot of research on your part if you want to understand how it really works. If you don't care and just want to use it, it's pretty easy to adapt the code for use in your own projects. For any serious PDF hack, the Adobe web site should be your first stop. There, you can download a PDF (naturally) copy of the PDF specification. It is an extremely long document (Remember Steve Job's scrolling demo last week at WWDC? He was scrolling through this very spec.) and quite technical in nature. Don't fret if you don't understand it all. You probably won't. The basic premise behind the structure of PDF documents is the idea of an object. An object, much like an HTML tag, must adhere to a set of rules about its format. The PDF spec describes these objects in full detail. You can download one of my earlier PDF examples to see how the objects are strung together in a PDF file. It is a very touchy format in that the having the slightest thing off can result in an invalid (and often unviewable) PDF file. This can be very aggravating for the fledgling PDF newbie. Be patient. Creating PDF files by hand is a tedious task. If you happen to be an owner of Adobe Acrobat (not just the Reader), you're in luck. Your PDF hacking job will be much easier. Why? Because sometimes when you are piecing together your own PDF files, the format is very close to correct, but something subtle is off by a character or two. Whereas Acrobat Reader or Preview.app will puke on the file, Acrobat can sometimes repair the file for you. Not only is this good for viewing with the Preview, but it has an added side benefit. You can then open that repaired file in a text editor like BBEdit and compare the output with a copy of the file that hasn't been repaired. Within seconds you can often tell where you went wrong. Just a little tip from someone who's been there. ;) The Interface and the Code 
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