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I've scanned the archives on this one, but was unable to find evidence of
anything that matches our current situation.
The documentation for one of our company's products is an HTML-based user
guide comprised of about 120 files. We also offer the documentation in PDF
format. We've been using Acrobat's Web Capture tool to generate the PDF from
HTML. Although this method produces decent results, it is somewhat labor
intensive.
Actually, creating the PDF is very easy. You simply specify the directory
containing the files to capture, and Acrobat builds a single PDF, complete
with bookmarks. It's the formatting that takes time. The bookmarks must be
renamed and reorganized to create a hierarchical table of contents similar
to the one in the HTML-based user guide.
All of this wouldn't be bad if we only had to do it a few times a year. The
reality is that we make frequent minor updates. The Web Capture tool does
have a "refresh" command for updating files. However, this rebuilds he PDF
with updated versions of the HTML files without preserving the
painstakingly created bookmark structure.
To get around this, we have been deleting bookmarked pages, appending
updated versions, and moving the bookmarks and associated pages back to the
appropriate positions in the PDF. The only real drawback with this method is
that the PDF slowly grows to an unacceptable size. It would seem that, even
when bookmarks and pages are deleted from the PDF, information about these
items is preserved in the PDF.
We have also investigated a number of third party solutions, including
HTMLDOC, to no avail. Beyond some sort of custom solution, does anybody know
of a way to make this process a little less painful? Thanks,
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