Hi Peter, just had this from a new admin level user of DMX, regarding PDF files.

 

Hi Simon,

You credit the software with more intelligence than it has. For DMX the pdf is just a bunch of bytes like any other file. It is shifted to the data repository and shifted back upon request. There is no reordering or changing of these bytes. What you're observing is all client side (and sounds like something to do with disk permissions etc). It is up to Adobe to hook up to the browser and do something with the bytes coming out. This includes WebDAV. When Adobe supports Web folders, it will be possilbe to open PDFs through WebDAV.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Sorry to be a pain but could you explain what this means 'When Adobe supports Web folders, it will be possilbe to open PDFs through WebDAV.' Obviously theres a bit more to it than shifting bytes around, which makes the operation document format dependant.  

We figured out that we can add comments to PDFs and upload and download them in standard DMX fashion, its just that it would be great if it could be done using webdav as now users have had a taste of it, they can't understand why the PDF format is excluded.

best regards,

Simon

 

 

Hi Simon,

What I was trying to say is that the issue is with Adobe, not DNN, DMX, or IIS. WebDAV is a protocol. And like any protocol, for communication to be successful, the bits and pieces need to be able to 'speak' the protocol. Windows 'speaks' WebDAV and Office speaks it for starters. I don't know how many applications speak it but aparently the PDF reader (or Acrobat) does not. When you right click a file in a Web Folder, Windows finds out what type of file it is and what it can do with it. If it cannot 'Open' it it means it can't find software that will communicate back 'I'll open this'. It could equally be a breakdown between Adobe and Windows, but my gut feeling is that the whole protocol was never implemented in Acrobat.

I hope this makes the earlier remarks a bit clearer.

Peter