This document describes new features of the PageMaker 6.5 SDK. You should refer to this document for late-breaking information about the PageMaker SDK.
This SDK is still under development, but has been released at this time to coincide with the release of the PageMaker Application. As a work still underway, you will find documentation that is incomplete or possibly incorrect. Future releases of the SDK will be made available on the Adobe Systems Incorporated home page (www.adobe.com) as they are completed.
1. Changes since PageMaker 6.0 The PageMaker 6.5 API has changed substantially from the API that was made available in PageMaker 6.0, and the SDK has changed to reflect those changes. Some of the new API features that have been included in PageMaker 6.5 include notification of PageMaker events, support for custom windows and palettes within the application, printsteam access allowing Plug-ins to add to PageMaker PostScript output, and improved perfomance through function style interfaces.
2. What's New?
The volume of changes to the API and this SDK have been significant, if you are familiar with the previous version of the PageMaker Plug-in SDK, this one may look quiet foreign to you at first. The commands and queries that have always been used in the past for communicating with PageMaker have been made available through the CICommandQuery Interface, which is just one of many of the interfaces in this SDK. You will find that these are still a necessary part of your plug-in, but have been supplemented greatly with the new nterfaces. In many cases there are old-style commands and queries that are duplicated by the new interfaces - we recommend that you use the new interfaces in these circumstances as you will see a real perfomance gain.
The documentation for this SDK is provided in a combination of Acrobat files, and HTML files. Acrobat files have been used for longer pieces and pieces that are tutorial in nature, and HTML files are used for reference materials and extremely short pieces. If you don't currently have Adobe Acrobat installed on your system, you can find it on the PageMaker CD-ROM, or on Adobe's Web site (www.adobe.com).
New Names
If you are updating an existing plug-in, note that a number of structure names and fields have been changed. For example, LPPARAMBLOCK is now sPMParamBlock, and the fields of the parameter block have been renamed using more standard field naming conventions.
3. Supported Development Environments
MacOS
Under the MacOS, you should use Metrowerks CodeWarrior CW8 or later with this SDK. The "SourceCode" folders now contain CW8 project files for use with CodeWarrior.
Windows95/WindowsNT
The SDK is designed for developing plug-ins in Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 or later. The Project files in this SDK were created in MSVC 4.0.
