PDF Viewer Preferences

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The command-line option /PDFPREF enables users to specify which features of a PDF reader are to be displayed on the screen. Here is an example of the normal appearance of Adobe Acrobat Reader (shown at reduced scale):

The Menu bar, Tool bars, Navigation bars, Title bar and Window may be individually controlled by setting the /PDFPREF flagbits as tabulated below:

Flag bit value

Action

Comment

1

Toolbar hidden.

CTRL key shortcuts may still be used.

2

Menu bar hidden.

ALT key shortcuts no longer exist.

4

Navigation bars hidden; only the document’s contents are displayed in the document window.

Ensure that the page is set to an appropriate scale otherwise the user may not be able to view the contents properly.

8

Window sized to fit the document's first page.

It would be better to override the default page magnification with this option because otherwise it will use the user's default which could be inappropriate.

16

Window centered on the screen.


32

Document title is displayed rather than the filename in the title bar.

A document title must be specified for this option to be valid. See PDF document summary

64

Full-screen mode: the entire screen displays document content only.

Toolbars, menus etc. become inaccessible. The user can escape this state using the ESC key; the program then adopts the configuration that would have been used if this option had not been given.

128

Scale width of the page to fit the document window.

To "fit page to window", use 128 and 256, i.e. 384.

256

Scale height of the page to fit the document window.

To "fit page to window", use 256 and 128, i.e. 384.

To control several features, add up the appropriate numbers to get the PDFPREF flagbit value.

Example

To hide the tool bars(1), hide the menu bar(2) and centre the window(16) you would use:

ESCAPEE /PDFPREF 19

Alternatively, it can be stored in the RT.INI file in the PCLVIEW section as for example

PDFPREF=19

Note:

Care should be exercised as you are overriding user-set preferences. You should consider unexpected consequences since a user who has chosen rather unusual or extreme defaults may find he cannot view a document at all if the wrong combination of these settings is used.

Tip

If you want to inhibit the user from activities like printing or editing the document, then you should consider requesting an encrypted PDF but with no password specified rather than turning off menus etc. with the above options, as the encrypted option flags are enforced with more certainty.

See also

Command line syntax

Running EscapeE from the command line

Exporting files to PDF