Adobe Acrobat Threaded Messages

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Hi Anders,

One advantage of PDF e-Books is that readers will get better formatting when they print the book. You can also set the Document properties so that readers cannot select text and copy part or all of the book. This is why publishers are moving toward PDF books. They allow readers to print pages without being able to copy pages.

To create PDF files, you must purchase Adobe Acrobat Version 5 http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html  
But I would not pay the price at Adobe's website. Discount houses in the U.S. save us about 50% on Adobe prices. You can probably find a discount dealer in Sweden that will give you a better price.

After you install Acrobat Version 5, you do not actually prepare your PDF files in an Acrobat (Exchange) program. Instead, Acrobat Exchange attaches to your word processor (virtually any word processor). After you install Acrobat Exchange, a new option will appear in your word processor. For example, you use Microsoft Word, a new option to "Save as PDF" will appear in the Save item on Word's menu bar.

Note that you cannot edit PDF files (although you can add links and media files). Instead, you edit the original word processor file and then save a new version of the PDF file.  Adobe says you can now partially edit pages, but doing so is a painful process.

You can read more about PDF files at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acrobat.htm  

Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Anders Grönlund [mailto:ag@fek.su.se]  
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 10:07 AM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: SV: Greetings from Sweden!

Thanks Bob for your suggestions! We will do that. How about eBooks? Do you think it is appropriate for her files to be used with eBooks? I have just downloaded Acrobat eBook Reader, but how do you convert a text to this format? 

Anders

"Making PDFs with PHP, PDQ," by Paul Adams, Webmonkey, May 16, 2002 --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/02/20/index3a.html 

PDF is the Portable Document Format developed by Adobe. It's an open standard (watch out, that's a 9MB link to the spec), implemented by Adobe in their Acrobat series of software, but implementable and extensible by anybody who's got the time, inclination, and knack. One trick that's got a lot of potential is using PHP to dynamically generate PDF files and serve them via the Web.

PHP can do a lot for your Web operation. You can generate nice-looking printable receipts, invoices, and brochures. Disc-Cover has a test site that looks up info about a CD automatically and then generates a PDF label for the CD box that you can print, cut out, and use. And there are literally one billion other possible uses for dynamically generated PDFs.

So what are you waiting for?

You have a variety of PDF-generation options. The standard, classic way of doing it is with PDFlib. Because it's so widely used and well-integrated into PHP, that's the library I'll go over today. But it's by no means the only way of doing things. PDFlib is source-available, but not free. The license specifies that PDFlib can be used and redistributed without charge for non-commercial projects, but commercial use starts at $500.

Continued at http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/02/20/index3a.html 

The eBook store at Barnes & Noble--- http://ebooks.barnesandnoble.com/index.asp?userid=2OCW3SU9XZ 

BARNESANDNOBLE.COM, ADOBE TEAM UP ON E-BOOKS Barnesandnoble.com has forged a partnership with Adobe to promote Adobe's new e-book software, the Acrobat eBook Reader 2.0. The software is an updated version of the company's Glassbook software that features improvements such as a two-page display and clearer text. It's designed to enable people to download e-books to their PCs and read them, rather than to a hand-held e-book device. Acrobat eBook Reader 2.0 will be available only from the Barnesandnoble.com and Adobe Web sites, and users downloading from the Adobe site will see a link urging them to buy an e-book at the Barnes & Noble site.
(The Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2001)
 http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB980115042367976875.htm

EveryBook is the high end (Mercedes) of the specialty device electronic book readers (two screens in color).  Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books is available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm 

I received the following message from Kirby McKinney on January 17, 2001.

Everybook is pleased to announce that we have released a remarkable and robust PDF document management application tool called DocAble(tm) 1.0. Fifteen (15) day evaluation copies of DocAble(tm) are available on our website ( www.everybook.net  ). Orders can be placed by contacting me directly. For orders over ten (10) in quantity, please contact me for information on Everybook's aggressive volume discount schedule, as well as government and educational pricing.

DocAble(tm) can help organize, search, read from and write with PDF documents. It is the first PDF document manager to visually organize, auto-index and excerpt PDF documents. DocAble's cross document search tool, multi-screen reader, integrated notebook and PDF workflow capabilities greatly add to the utility and distribution of your documents. Please feel free to contact me via phone or e-mail for more information. Thank you for your consideration.

Regards,
Kirby

Kirby L. McKinney 
Director New Business Development 
Everybook, Inc. 
2300 Vartan Way 
Harrisburg, PA 17110 717.703.1010 ext. 129

Interesting new things from Adobe Systems at http://www.adobe.com/ 

Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files are commonly used for financial statements, tax returns, resumes and other documents that authors want to make available over the web in such a manner that printing appears exactly as it would if the user printed offline from the original word processing file.  PDF files also are very difficult for users to modify since they cannot be read by word processing or HTML editor software.  Bad news features are that PDF documents cannot be picked up by popular search engines such as Yahoo and AltaVista.  Another bad news feature is that authoring a PDF documents requires the purchase of Adobe 4.0 even though the PDF reader is free from Adobe.  

I found the above search engine for PDF files to be quite feeble.  It is better to go to Google.

A helpful bit of information from Dan Gode

Google is adding PDF search ability to its engine.

Dan Gode

Note from Bob Jensen:  Google is (in my viewpoint) the leading search engine at http://www.google.com/ 

Note from Bob Jensen:  Adobe needs to improve this search engine.  It misses a lot of online PDF documents. I tried the above search service by entering "FAS 133"  with the quote marks into the Search box at http://searchpdf.adobe.com/.  I only got nine hits, and the search engine failed to detect many PDF documents that I know are available on the web, particularly PDF documents from the FASB.  I then entered "FAS 133" without the quote marks and generated 5,536 hits.  However, Adobe was giving me hits on either FAS or 133, so many of those hits had nothing to do with FAS 133.  I then tried FAS + 133 and got 5,599 hits, most of which had nothing to do with FAS 133.  The link to "Help With Searching" was of no help since it only links to AltaVista Help.

You can read about other search engines at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 

Hi Robert,

The reversal you are seeking (PDF to text/HTML) would seem to defeat one of the goals of Adobe Acrobat. In the electronic publication era, PDF provides some (certainly not perfect) copyright protection. It is not easy to change a PDF document without returning to the original word processing document from whence it was initially generated (although Acrobat Version 4.0 does have some crude text editing options). It is possible to copy and paste a PDF document page into a word processor, but I have only been able to do this one page at a time (i.e., it becomes a real pain to copy multiple pages).

If it were possible to easily copy entire PDF books, I suspect that top publishing firms would quickly abandon PDF online versions that they now make available from such sources as WizeUp. See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm#051500 

Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu  
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Robert C. Holmes [mailto:rcholmes@GLENDALE.CC.CA.US]  
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 10:03 AM 
To: AECM@VAX.LOYOLA.EDU 
Subject: Re: The Frustrating New Adobe PDF File Search Engine

Thanks for info on search. Now, is there a way to convert PDF to HTML or text? I want to read documents on my e-book, but it does not know PDF.

Hi Steve,

Yes, but can you make it work on a PDF version like Richard Campbell has at www.VirtualPublishing.Net/public/99pt_rev.pdf        (the password is Jensen)?

I tried to convert the above file, and it is a no go using the conversion program at http://access.adobe.com/simple_form.html 

If you can convert the above file into HTML, authors like Richard Campbell will be very, very unhappy (to say nothing of the publishers who do not want HTML versions of their books on the web).

I do thank you Steve for reference to this HTML conversion link that will work for many PDF files.

Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu  
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Steve Hornik [mailto:hornik@XAVIER.XU.EDU]  
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 1:16 PM 
o: AECM@VAX.LOYOLA.EDU 
Subject: Re: The Frustrating New Adobe PDF File Search Engine

Adobe has tools for converting .pdf to .html. I use it all the time to convert things for my Rocket-ebool. The site is: http://access.adobe.com/tools.html 

Bob: 
The file I put up is one of my "throwaway" projects that I did for our tax prof. There are Java script errors that I didn't deal with.

Once you have the full version of Acrobat 4.0 (academic price about $100), when you do a "save as pdf", you have the option to select the security level. Most pdf files on the web have no security set at all, so most people presume it is not a secure format, when actually it is. Additionally, if a web site has the Adobe Webuy Merchant software installed (about $5,000) the pdf files are locked when downloaded to a particular computer. The author can dictate the extent of a preview. The file can be moved to another computer and previewed, but it must be paid for again to see the whole document.

Presumably Wizeup is a strategic partner of Adobe in using the Webuy technology, as is www.softlock.com, the company I'm working with.

I'll be doing a demo of this technology at the AAA CPE workshop #19, "Techie Teaching Tips: Beyond PowerPoint". I asked the AAA to avoid programming me in your time slot, so maybe someone will show up.

Richard J. Campbell www.VirtualPublishing.Net 
  mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net 

Bob and Steve: 
A significant advantage with the pdf format is its pixel-perfect placement of text and graphics, and that the what-you-see-on-the-web is what-you-see-when-you-print-to-paper. By converting to html, you may get overlapping objects, and different looks in different browsers.

Richard J. Campbell www.VirtualPublishing.Net 
 mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net 

Bob: Although Paintshop Pro does perform screen captures the best screen capture program on the market (IMHO) is Snagit! at www.techsmith.com  This program will capture entire web pages, even below the fold in a variety of file formats. This is another program I'll be demoing at the AAA. See http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe19.htm 

Lotus Screencam produces a proprietary scm file format and you must provide the free ScreenCam player to allow viewers to see the movie. There have been some reported recording / playing problems with Screencam in the Windows NT environment, causing multimedia developers to shy away from Screencam. Screencam does allow to saving to the Windows avi format, but file compression is weak and file sizes tend to be large.

Camtasia can save to avi, asf (MS streaming format) and RealMedia format. Camtasia has a proprietary free codec that permits comparatively smaller file sizes. You also can add audio tracks after the movie is created, which you can't do in Screencam. Camtasia just came out with a new version 2.0 that allows the inclusion of a watermark, just like all the tv networks do to provide a copyright notice.

Richard J. Campbell www.VirtualPublishing.Net 
  mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net 

Just my 2c: Windows performs full-screen-only captures to the clipboard, by pressing "print screen". From there you can paste it into Adobe Photoshop, which can save it as a graphical PDF document. Use this info as you may... 
Eric Henley Ivy Software, Inc.
Ivy Software, Inc. [ivysales@IVYSOFTWARE.COM] 

Bob,
You wrote: 

Another bad news feature is that authoring a PDF > documents requires the purchase of Adobe 4.0 even though the > PDF reader is free from Adobe.

There are some freely available software packages to convert from Postscript to PDF and from plain text to PDF. Some web sites allow users to upload Postscript documents to their computers, convert them to pdf, and then allow the users to download the pdf. As far as I know, the first two converters are primarily available on Unix-like platforms.

Have a look at: 
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/doc550/Ps2pdf.htm  
http://www.sanface.com/  
http://www.babinszki.com/distiller/ 

Mike Everest

Bob, 
I looked at the Adobe PDF search feature briefly. From what I can tell, you can use the plus sign in front of a word to require it to appear; using it in front of two or more words performs like a Boolean "AND." E.g.,

+irs +form is equivalent to the Boolean irs AND form

The use of quotation marks to search for a phrase works fine, as you indicated:

"irs form" requires "irs" to be adjacent and prior to "form"

Just leaving a space between words is equivalent to a Boolean OR.

However, I can't account for the lack of hits on FAS 133 in the database, not knowing Adobe's database scope. It might be interesting to look for PDF documents you know should be in the database by title or author and see if they appeared in your earlier search results. (Also, there may be a few hits found using FAS133 without the space, according to some of the records I sampled.)

Chris Nolan

There were a number of other messages from friends along the same lines as the message above from Chris.  I did not repeat them here.  Adobe's Altavista PDF search engine will accept Boolean codes of they are input properly.  However, the search engine will overlook many (I guess millions) of online PDF documents.  This is new, however, and may get better.

Bob,

As you may know, the American Accounting Association offers several of its full-text journals (I think the current count is 6) in Acrobat pdf searches.

For cross-document searches, Adobe has not offered a satisfactory solution to date. We have been exploring two third-party alternatives (selected from a list of about a dozen) that will search within multiple pdf files (and other formats).

If you want more information about the alternative search software we are considering, please let me know at AAAcraig@packet.net  (much quicker than waiting for me to read AECM messages).

Craig Polhemus, American Accounting Association [AAACraig@AOL.COM]   
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/  

Feel free to include my note in your bookmarks.

I have now convinced myself that Adobe is using the AltaVista engine for their searching (the logo under their searching box should have been a dead giveaway.) You may be interested in the following information at AltaVista's site regarding getting your pages included in their search engine: http://doc.altavista.com/help/search/faq.shtml#my_site . Again, I'm not sure how the PDF stuff differs from the usual html sites. You may have to wait for their "Spider" to find your page on it's own.
Michael Everst

Dear Harold,

One minor point if you purchase the Adobe Acrobat software and use the Adobe Exchange in Acrobat to "save" your MS Word document as a PDF file. Instead of clicking on "Save as" in the File menu option in MS Word, you click on "Create Adobe PDF" in the File menu option. In older versions of MS Word, we used to select PDF as the "printer" in order to create a PDF file. Now the Adobe Exchange software creates its own menu choice in your MS Word program when you install Adobe Exchange. After the PDF file has been created, you can read a PDF file in Adobe Exchange and do such things as add links, add audio, add video, and create bookmarks. Editing the text, however, is something you will prefer to do in the original word processor (e.g., DOC) file rather than the PDF file. It would be neat if Adobe Exchange had full editing capabilities, but it is not a good text editor.

In other words, you do not create PDF files directly in Acrobat, and Adobe Exchange is not a stand-alone authoring software package. Instead, it attaches itself to virtually any word processor on your system when you install Acrobat. Note that the Acrobat Reader can be downloaded free, but this does not contain the Acrobat Exchange software needed to create PDF files and to add links, etc..

If you don't create PDF files often enough to justify purchasing the Adobe Exchange software, you can covert files into PDF online for a small conversion fee from Adobe. 

Bob Jensen

AECMers: A preview of etextbook publishing using Adobe Acrobat / softlock.com (now digitalgoods.com ) / PDF merchant technology - not all links and resources are up and running yet.

www.VirtualPublishing.NET/fa2001.htm 

You will need the current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. www.adobe.com 

But here is how it works: 1. You can download the sample, (1.0 megs) view a few pages, and click the Buy button to unlock the product. 2. On the page listed above I have other resources, that will be locked up after a preview period. 3. The movie 600K is downloadable to your hard drive.

I will be announcing a live web conference on "techie teaching tips" sometime next week. Anyone who wants to participate should email me privately with "Web Conference" as the subject.

Richard J. Campbell www.AccountingEbooks.com www.VitualPublishing.NET  mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.NET 

David Carson at Adobe discusses "The End of Print" at http://www.adobe.com/web/features/carson/main.html