I am sure one of the two resident gurus will correct me if I am wrong, but here's my 3 cents:
- If you want to develop plugins, you must have Acrobat on the same machine since Adobe does not provide an actual library, only a set of include (aka header) files, for that purpose. The first time I leaned this it blew me away but now it makes sense. This type of development is done with the free Acrobat SDK and the only possible language is C/C++ (all provided examples are written in pure C, for better performance).
- For heavy duty, server development (non-interactive, sans Acrobat running) you can use any operating system known to [wo]man, or close thereof. Again, the language is C. If you feel ambitious, you may add C++ stuff. You will need the Adobe Library. This type of development will cost you between 10 and 25 grand (depending on *your* type of shop, since the library is one and only).
- For remote control/automation type of operation, you may use pretty much any language that has the capability (COM?)
