Printing from Flash

Question

(I just changed my first posting in this thread to give it a
new headline. The original one was "SWF embedded in a PDF - can
they communicate?", but it turned into a printing thread - with a
solution.)
I'm trying to build a printable form with multimedia help
(this is a free project, I don't get paid). Since I can't create
PDF from Flash I instead try to get the Flash into the PDF. It
would be very helpful (although probably not essential for this
particular project) if the embedded Flash could communicate with
the PDF on the outside, for example using ExternalINterface. That
interface is for communication with Javascript in a browser - and
since Acrobat forms support Javascript scripting I was wondering if
that would work? The docs only mention browsers.
Another question to achieve the same thing: I thought about
letting the user fill out the form in Flash completely. Then I
export the collected data into XML, and then open a PDF form which
reads the XML. However, I don't think there's a non-manual (for the
user) way of doing this, is there? Ahhhhhhrg, stupid project, why
did I volunteer...

Answer 1

Well flash can do the printout as well...so you don't need
the PDF exclusively for that. I think the difficulty is the local
copy working without complications/complexity. {UNLESS: you're
prepared to use a projector .exe}
When you embed a swf inside a PDF how is it embedded... ? Is
the embedded object able to be referenced, for example, using the
js inside a PDF.
Its been a long time since I used acrobat. ExternalInterface
does allow communication between the flash content and its
container - in a generic sense - like kglad explained earlier. So
ExternalInterface works in visual basic for example. It doesn't
appear to work as simply as its set up to work in the browser (see
http://vbfeeds.com/post.aspx?id=672).
Whether it works or how it works inside a pdf would probably depend
on the way the embedding is done, but I can't see anything online
about how to do it - and I am unable to try it myself.