Display PDF Images in Landscape View

One further insight, I have also tried playing with these coding items:

columns=1 size=”full” ids=”2266″

mla_link_href='{+site_url+}/?page_id={+parent+}’]

mla_viewer_width=750

item_width=60

Thanks for your interest, the kind words and these questions. You’ve certainly done your homework and experimenting.

Your goal, as I understand it, is to “display” PDF documents, derived from Excel spreadsheets, in landscape format. Here’s how I would approach that:

1. Create the spreadsheet. In Excel (2010), click the “Page Layout” tab, click “Orientation” and select “Landscape”.
2. Save the spreadsheet as a PDF document. If you have Acrobat, you can just do “File”, “Save As”, “Save as type: PDF”. Otherwise you can use some other tool like “Cute PDF” to create the PDF document.
3. Upload the PDF document(s) to your WordPress site
4. Create a page or post containing an [mla_gallery] shortcode to display a list of the document(s).

The [mla_gallery] step builds a list of your PDF documents so the site visitor can choose the document they want to display. When they click on a document in the list, the actual PDF will be downloaded and displayed in their browser. This is where the “Landscape” orientation comes in – during document display – and it’s handled by the Adobe Reader component that displays the PDF in the browser. WordPress and [mla_gallery] do not play any part in the Landscape/Portrait display mechanics.

Here’s a simple [mla_gallery] to start with:

[mla_gallery post_mime_type="application/pdf" link=file mla_target="_blank" mla_viewer=true]

In this example, post_mime_type="application/pdf" selects all the PDFs in your library. You can substitute any item selection parameters you want, e.g., ids=2266. The link=file parameter makes each gallery item a link to the actual PDF document, and the mla_target="_blank" parameter will open the document in a new browser tab/window.

I’ve added mla_viewer=true since your examples included it. All this parameter does is to replace the default text or icon “thumbnail” in the gallery with an image of the first page of the PDF document (generated by the Google Viewer app). This parameter does not affect the display of the document itself. You could also try size=icon to display an icon for each document, or rely on the default display of the title text for each document. The other size= parameters (e.g., size=full) are for images only; they do not affect the gallery display of PDF items. In your first example, size=300x150 would be ignored, and add_image_size(300x150) is not a valid parameter.

You can try adding columns=1 mla_viewer_width=400 to your shortcode to get a single-column list with fairly large thumbnail images. Again, the list isn’t displaying the actual document(s), just an image representation of the first document page. The document isn’t really displayed until you click on one of the items in the list.

I hope that’s enough to get you going. If you have any problems or further questions, let me know and I’ll expand on this first pass.

Hi, Thanks for the quality feedback to my earlier response. Much appreciated!

Wanted to share some feedback with you and your audience in case others try to address the same matters:

1. Prior to your directions, when clicking on my Thumbnail PDF Samples it was opening and displaying a link to the PDF document, then I had to click on the link to open in a browser. Your directions eliminated that and now the link goes directly to the file. Thanks!

2. Prior to your directions, because Excel does not provide an option to print using watermarks, what I had done to get a watermark onto the PDF Document was set the printer to print the watermark during printing, then simple print from Excel. This printout was scanned as a PDF and uploaded to the MLA Gallery. Your directions clarified my understanding of how MLA picks up directly from Excel the desire for displaying in landscape view. Hence, my approach of print & scan negated any program your MLA program would have looked for. This issue was resolved thanks to your directions. Thanks!

Further, since Excel does not provide the option to include watermarks on printouts, in order to use MLA and utilize the landscape function, I am opting to include a unique header on the Excel sheet/printout instead. I can not think of another alternative solution at this time.

3. The challenge I experienced next was subsequently trying to “rotate” the PDF in MLA. Your directions clarified for me that “rotating” can not be done with a PDF Document and the commands I was trying to use were for images specifically. My issue was my own lack of knowledge on which commands were specific to either PDF’s or Images. My understanding is a little clearer thanks to your directions. Thanks!

4. FYI, I have also created categories and put in the shortcode the “attachment_category” parameter since several attachments will be attached. I assume using this is parameter in combination with the “application/pdf” parameter is a better way to utilize MLA as it will filter the attachments and also require me to manage the various galleries. If my understanding is flawed, please advise otherwise.

Again, thanks for all the help and insight. Much appreciated!

One extra question related to this post comes to mind – is there a way to include in the shortcode a parameter that will display the “descriptions” given to each of the PDF Images in the media library?

David explains here:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/pdf-list?replies=11

…That you can use an mla_gallery shortcode like this:

[mla_gallery columns=1 post_mime_type=application/pdf post_parent=all size=thumbnail link=file mla_caption="{+description+}"]

Hope that helps.