LockWindowUpdate() is our friend + better PDF merging

Question

Hi,
We're building eBooks from hundreds of pdfs. This is a problem for Acrobat because such large numbers of input files are apparently way beyond current design specs.
A problem comes up when combining files via FILE >> Create PDF >> Merge Files into a single PDF...
When you point to a folder with hundred or thousands of PDFs the GUI bogs down simply because the listbox updates itself after every new file.
The first improvement is very easy for the Acrobat developers. They simply need to wait to drive the list box updates until after the file name gathering is done. This is easily accomplished with the Win32 API LockWindowUpdate(). This could easily reduce the time to load big file lists to just 5% or less of
Once the filenames are populated on the COMBINE FILES dialog the processing is horribly slow because the Warning/Errors column need to be updated for each file. I, for one, could easily do without that column. A simple report at the end of the process would much faster.  I'm running a job of 2700 files on a dual core 2.6 ghz box and it will problably take an hour. My guess is upwards of 90% of those CPU cycles go into listbox updates.
Another happily simple minded approach would be to allow the user to point to a text file with all of the paths. Acrobat would read that and provide very lightweight process indicators. The file with the paths could be very simple with just one path per line. Wildcard processing would be nice. Of course, this should run with the lightest possible process indicators. The COMBINE FILES dialog should not be used.
---ebook_merge_source.txt---
c:\pdfsource\ebook_cover.pdf
c:\pdfsource\front_matter_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\front_matter_2.pdf
c:\pdfsource\preface_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\TOC_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\content_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\content_10001.pdf    (yes, that's 10,000 pages)
c:\pdfsource\conclusion.pdf
This would be a low cost addition that many people would readily appreciate.  The idea of using simple files for persisting source file selections is as old as the hills and it would serve the Acrobat audience well.

Answer 1

Hi,
We're building eBooks from hundreds of pdfs. This is a problem for Acrobat because such large numbers of input files are apparently way beyond current design specs.
A problem comes up when combining files via FILE >> Create PDF >> Merge Files into a single PDF...
When you point to a folder with hundred or thousands of PDFs the GUI bogs down simply because the listbox updates itself after every new file.
The first improvement is very easy for the Acrobat developers. They simply need to wait to drive the list box updates until after the file name gathering is done. This is easily accomplished with the Win32 API LockWindowUpdate(). This could easily reduce the time to load big file lists to just 5% or less of
Once the filenames are populated on the COMBINE FILES dialog the processing is horribly slow because the Warning/Errors column need to be updated for each file. I, for one, could easily do without that column. A simple report at the end of the process would much faster.  I'm running a job of 2700 files on a dual core 2.6 ghz box and it will problably take an hour. My guess is upwards of 90% of those CPU cycles go into listbox updates.
Another happily simple minded approach would be to allow the user to point to a text file with all of the paths. Acrobat would read that and provide very lightweight process indicators. The file with the paths could be very simple with just one path per line. Wildcard processing would be nice. Of course, this should run with the lightest possible process indicators. The COMBINE FILES dialog should not be used.
---ebook_merge_source.txt---
c:\pdfsource\ebook_cover.pdf
c:\pdfsource\front_matter_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\front_matter_2.pdf
c:\pdfsource\preface_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\TOC_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\content_1.pdf
c:\pdfsource\content_10001.pdf    (yes, that's 10,000 pages)
c:\pdfsource\conclusion.pdf
This would be a low cost addition that many people would readily appreciate.  The idea of using simple files for persisting source file selections is as old as the hills and it would serve the Acrobat audience well.