Automated testing of PDF output in C#?

Question

I've inherited a .Net 1.1 app where the primary output is a PDF app. It is poorly written, and almost as complex as it is convoluted. I'd like to do some major refactoring, but my direction from management is to change as little as possible. If I can set up some solid testing of the output PDF, I may have more room to make code changes. The app uses C1PrintDocument from ComponentOne to generate PDFs. What options are available to read PDFs programmatically in .Net 1.1 or 2.0? I may be able to leverage .net 3.5/Visual Studio 2008 for this project... I'd want to verify not only text on the document, but placement of text and tables.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I think Reliable way to (programmatically) compare PDFs? question is similar to yours and maybe you will find answers for that questions useful.

Also, read answer from Vitaliy Shibaev about how he and I compare PDFs in our project.