Generate PDF Thumbnail

Sorry, the post was a bit unclear.  I am programming in REALBasic (to allow for multiple OS) and am trying to find a way to work with PDF files.  Basically I want the end user to be able to select a PDF file (or even batch process a folder full of PDFs, but that isn't as important), somehow extract a thumbnail (jpg, png, gif, etc) of the first page, save the thumbnail to the filesystem, and read any "meta data" (ie, Author, Title, etc) for the PDF that is available.

When searching on my own there seems to be ways to do this kind of thing with VB/VB.net, but I am struggling as to how to accomplish it in REALBasic (if it is even possible).  I am not currently using any type of PDF toolkit or framework as I haven't been able to find one for REALBasic.  If this is even possible within REALBasic and requires I use some type of toolkit I would appreciate as in-depth directions as possible as I have never written any application that interacted with a PDF file before.

Hope this makes sense, please let me know if additional clarification is needed.  Thanks in advance!!

The reason why you can use PDF related functions in VB is that Adobe provides an API. This of course limits you to just the Windows environment. There are a number of 3rd party toolkits, but again, they are usually available for one environment, and you cannot write portable code with them.

I am aware of one toolkit for REALBasic, but that only allows you to create PDFs, and not to read and process existing PDF documents.

If you can read from files, you can certainly implement your own routines to access the information in a PDF file, but that's a huge job, and nothing that I would recommend to anybody. You first need to be very familiar with the PDF spec (which you can download from Adobe's web server). You then need to implement the necessary functions to read PDF files, but then you need sample files from all sorts of applictions (especially non-Adobe apps), because there are a lot of files out there that are "challenging".

You will be able to extract meta information out of PDF files without too much problems, but rendering the first page is a much more complicated task, and may just make the whole project impossible to implement.

Why are you trying to do this project? Do you  have a need to perform this task in three different operating systems?

Have you thought about a different programming environmenet? There are probably more resources available for Java based projects.

khkremer,

My only reason for trying to make this project work on multiple operating systems was to appeal to as many potential users as possible.  I personally always am annoyed (not at the developer, just in general) when a piece of software I would like to use only works on certain operating systems (as in, not the one I am using at that moment).

I chose REALBasic because of it's similarities to MS Visual Basic which I have spent a lot of time using in my career and schooling and felt it would be the easiest and fastest transition for me to develop my application.  REALBasic also will assist in compiling for Windows, Mac, and Linux so you don't have to recode the entire project (or even sections of it really) to work on different platforms.  I have some experience working with Java, but not to the level of making detailed user interfaces and running processes.  My Java experience is limited to web applications and even there I have done much with it for a year or so now.

I would not be opposed to switching to Java, as I haven't really begun any development other than planning things in my head and working some things out on paper.  My only concern is the amount of time I would need to invest to learn what I need to learn to build my application (not a huge deal though).  Do you think that (or know if) Java will allow me to do what I am trying to do in terms of working with PDF files?

And not to take the "easy" route, but is there an application similar to VB or even Dreamweaver to assist developers in building Java applications (especially GUIs)?  Or would I be looking at doing everything in like notepad?  I don't mind a more challenging route if it will get me the flexibility and functionality I am looking for.  So any advice or ideas, suggestions, etc are appreciated.  Thanks!