Re: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?

Subject: Re: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?
From: Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>
To: "Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- polycom -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:33:17 -0800

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 8:08 AM, Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> wrote {
A BLANK MESSAGE!!! With quoted conversation
}


Sorry all. Itchy iPhone Send finger. I took some time to collect my
thoughts, partake in a couple of meetings, and get a coffee.

I was just going to add that PDF creators are not created equal, and may be
completely separate from the authoring and design applications. For
instance, all Adobe products export to PDF. Microsoft added PDF export.
DITA and DocBook publish to PDF. However, the way products export from
their systems to PDF vary distinctly in features, even the same vendor
application across multiple platforms.

My personal pet peeve: When I worked entirely in Windows, Office 20XX
exported to PDF and gave options to create bookmarks from headings. Also,
it maintained any hyperlinks to external sites, and internal references.
This all changed when I moved to a Mac-based company, where even the latest
Office 2011 does not create bookmarks from headings. Apparently it's
because of a backroom licensing snag between Microsoft and Adobe, or more
rather, Adobe and Apple. After all, Apple has its own proprietary PDF
generator and reader, which does not provide this feature either.

The other pet peeve is that when exporting to PDF, I can't set the initial
view (even through VBA code), and the properties don't often transfer, at
least not on my work machine.

At another company we exported through Nitro PDF, which solved most of
these problems (properties, headings mapped to different levels), but the
initial view problem still remained.

So... while you can dissect a PDF file to extract the creator information,
there are chances that conscientious creators may have scrubbed or edited
the properties to better suit their needs. Maybe the best approach is XML
documentation output through a processing script.

-Tony
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help.
Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need. Try
Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days.
http://www.doctohelp.com

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and info.

Looking for articles on Technical Communications? Head over to our online magazine at http://techwhirl.com

Looking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions? Search our public email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives


Follow-Ups:

References:
Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?: From: Nancy Allison
RE: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?: From: Combs, Richard
Re: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?: From: Tony Chung

Previous by Author: Re: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?
Next by Author: Re: easy way to do *some* straight quotes in Word 2007 ?
Previous by Thread: Re: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?
Next by Thread: Pdfs with hyperlinks (was 'Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF?)


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads