Here is the question:

 

Please read the very brief and simplified description below to help you to
get crystal clear about the nature of the solution needed from i-text.

The specific issues are detailed at the end.

 

The proposed project is a single .PDF file educational E-book containing about 5,500 pages.

 

There is no data collected from the reader.

 

In order to simplify the structure imagine that the .PDF document contains 2 grids of pages and a completely hidden  internal navigation spreadsheet.

 

GRID-A, the smaller main grid contains about 500 pages, and for the sake of simplicity, imagine it is 50 pages wide and 10 pages deep.

 

But for the sake of this example let's pretend it's only 9 pages arranged like this:

 

PAGE-1       PAGE-2       PAGE-3
PAGE-4       PAGE-5       PAGE-6
PAGE-7       PAGE-8       PAGE-9

 

EVERY PAGE has more or less the SAME structure, and the SAME number of buttons.

 

Lets say the reader always starts on PAGE-5.

 

Here is a simple schematic of PAGE-5.

 

This sample page has some contents, of course,  and for this example 8 (yes 8 !)
buttons (marked << GO TO PAGE>>) .

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                                                                                                                             &nbs p;               |
|           C O N T E N T S  O F  P A G E  5                                                                                       |
|                                                                                                                                                             |
|                                                                                                                                                             |
|                                                                                                                                                             |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|   <<GO TO PAGE-1>>  <<GO TO PAGE-2>> <<GO TO PAGE-3>>  <<GO TO PAGE-4>> |
|   <<GO TO PAGE-6>> <<GO TO PAGE-7>>  <<GO TO PAGE-8>>  <<GO TO PAGE-9>> |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

 

THERE IS NO SEQUENTIAL ACCESS in this system.

 

The reader MUST NEVER BE ABLE TO SCROLL to any other page OR access any other part of the document EXCEPT

 

1) via the navigation buttons shown above, or

2) thru drop-down lists and menus.
 
So the page above is all the reader is able to see. They cannot scroll or go anywhere
without clicking on the buttons shown. The page is "locked down".

 

When a page navigation button is pressed, the button:

 

1) Accesses the completely hidden internal spread sheet (5,500 records) to calculate which page to go to.
2) Displays that page and reformats the same "floating"  buttons over that page, with different button text, so GO TO PAGE-55 becomes GO TO PAGE-234.

 

Otherwise, in this example GRID-A  would have to contain 500  X  8 = 4,000 hard coded buttons.

 

Actually each main page will contain up to about 20 buttons, making the total 10,000 buttons.

 

This is because each GRID-A page can navigate to any one of about 12 pages in the larger
5,000 page grid,  (which we shall call GRID-B).

 

The detail grid, GRID-B, which contains about 5,000 pages, works EXACTLY like the main grid.

Each page in GRID-B can either return to the GRID-A page from which it was accessed, or
to one of  10 other GRID-A pages, and to any one of 3 or 4 other GRID-B pages.

 

As in GRID-A the ONLY navigational access is thru buttons.

 

With hard-coded buttons this GRID-B total would be 5,000 X 14 = 70,000 buttons, making the grand total for the document about 80,000 buttons.

 

As you can see from this example the project needs to be able to implement several important features.

 

>>  Complete page freeze and lock down - no scrolling whatsoever
>>  Intelligent buttons that can "float" over any page
>>  Intelligent buttons that can quickly search a covert internal database to get navigation instructions
>>  A "One file" solution that can be encrypted - no external database
>>  The ability to compress the file for easy transport
>>  The smallest possible footprint

 

Obviously getting bogged down in the wrong technology would be expensive. However it appears that i-text MIGHT be perfect for the project.

 

Is it ? Please help...

 

I am new to PDF/ java and could not find any clear references to the features I am looking for in the documentation, so intelligent, experienced and highly knowledgeable advice, hints where to look, guidance as to feasibility and general approach, and code examples (!) would be greatly appreciated !