PDF XChange in corporate environment

[dpinckard]

As a recent purchaser of a 1000-user license of PDF Xchange Pro, I'm in the process of rolling it out to our desktops/laptops and terminal servers. I have a short list so far of feature requests which I believe would be helpful in a corporate environment.

1. Support for Microsoft Installer Transform files (.MST). We can create our own MST's if the install/docs supported it better. Helps standardize our installation routines.

2. MSI installer option to uninstall all previous versions of all Tracker products. We've eval'd some earlier products and the free viewer. Installing the purchased product put it alongside the others and we had some issues with eval watermarks still showing. I managed to track down the MSI uninstall GUID's and added that to my installer, but having it built in would be nice. Looks like the new installers all use standardized file locations, but not sure it that would clean up/consolidate "Add/Remove Programs" entries.

3. Group Policy support for most settings. Found the KB to turn off the Ad bar and the search providers, but the provided ADM file sets registry settings, not policy settings. Also, these settings are per user and as a big terminal server environment, would rather prefer to set them per machine. INI files are so '90s


Great job with the app. It was less the get the 1000 user license with multiple years of support than it was to renew maintenance on our 25 copies of Acrobat! AND we were able to get rid of our previous PDF printer's maintenance cost as well.

Support has been fantastic even as a free viewer customer.

I'll update my list with any FR's that I find.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi dpinckard,

thanks for the kind words, we have worked hard to bring this product forward and we are proud of it. It's always nice to hear feedback like this.

1. Support for Microsoft Installer Transform files (.MST). We can create our own MST's if the install/docs supported it better. Helps standardize our installation routines.

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking for in point 1. as MST transform files can be used with our MSI installers. I'm sure you are aware that this is dictated my Microsoft and is common to any MSI installer. can you elaborate on what you would like to see from us here?

2. MSI installer option to uninstall all previous versions of all Tracker products. We've eval'd some earlier products and the free viewer. Installing the purchased product put it alongside the others and we had some issues with eval watermarks still showing. I managed to track down the MSI uninstall GUID's and added that to my installer, but having it built in would be nice. Looks like the new installers all use standardized file locations, but not sure it that would clean up/consolidate "Add/Remove Programs" entries.

An interesting suggestion that I will forward to the development team. Uninstalling MSI based existing installations may be practical, I'm not sure how we would deal with exe based existing installs. I'm sure there will be feedback on this soon.

3. Group Policy support for most settings. Found the KB to turn off the Ad bar and the search providers, but the provided ADM file sets registry settings, not policy settings. Also, these settings are per user and as a big terminal server environment, would rather prefer to set them per machine. INI files are so '90s

"Group Policy Support for system administrators and deployment" is a feature that is planned for V3 of the Viewer slated for release Q2 of this year.

I have created a formal "Feature Request" around this thread (RT#854: Feature Request: PDF XChange in corporate environment) so any discussion here will be included in the ticket. With V3 on the horizon I can't say at this point how much of what you are asking for will be included in the initial release but your voice has been heard and we will pay due consideration to the points you make.

hth

[dpinckard]

For MST's, just some better docs of the properties would be nice. I'm not an expert in MSI's or MST's, more like a trained monkey that's learned one trick!

Normally to create an MST, I'd open the MSI in ORCA.exe and go to the "Property" section. I'd then adjust the properties to how I want the app installed. Some of PDF XChange Pro's MSI properties match the command line options and are self evident, such as "PNAME".

Other command line options have multiple matching properties: For example, which property corresponds to the command line option "DESKTOP_SHORTCUTS": "DESKTOP_SHORTCUTS" (my guess) or "_CreateDesktopShortCuts"

Some properties have numeric values, but their command line options are strings: "ALLOWLAUNCHEMBEDD_value"="0" vs. "ALLOWLAUNCHEMBEDD"="YesToPDF". What are the numeric values for text strings?

Some properties don't exist, but are listed as values of "MsiHiddenProperties": "KEY;ORGANIZATION;USERMAIL;USERNAME" I'm pretty confident that if I manually add those properties, they will work, but there is a "KEY_REG" already set to "TRIAL". Not sure if that's where I should put my registration key.

And lastly, the "ADDLOCAL" command line option doesn't exist in the Property table. Again, I think I can add that key using the same values as the command line, but . . .

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi again dpinckard,

Orca is probably the most common way of creating an MST. This has prompted me to look at the PDFX4Man.pdf that ships with PDF-XChange 4 Pro and I see that the SI switches and options are missing. They are in the Viewer only manual so we'll get that added in the update to the Pro bundle manual.

For all our MSI installers there is a help button available in the first screen when the MSI is launched in a GUI that details the install options available. For your convenience I've attached it to this post. It is from build 192 (current). Even if the manual is not updated, any changes to the installer options will be available through this help button and will be sure to be pertinent to the build in use so it might be prudent to look there before deploying.

ADLOCAL are publicly available properties defined by PDF-XChange and as such won't be documented elsewhere. From the attached document:

Public properties defined by PDF-XChange installation may be specified as well as standard MSI public properties. For complete list of standard public properties please refer to: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library ... S.85).aspx>
Most useful properties are:

and it goes on to list them.

Take a look at this and let me know if you have any further questions. Again this thread is part of the Feature Request ticket so this is all going to be considered.

hth