PDF widget and XPDFviewer

[David Epstein]

What is the relation between the widget “PDF” and the external “XPDFViewer” (both in Pro Features)?  The latter offers more direct access to a few properties (e.g., totalCharacterCount), while the widget syntax is a little simpler.  It does not appear that a PDF widget is a PDF Viewer, at least the widget’s name is not recognized as the name of a viewer when I try to call a function like XPDFViewer_Get(viewerName,property).

So do I need either to create a widget or create a viewer?  And are there non-obvious reasons to do one or the other?

David Epstein