TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
March Phoenix Acrobat STC SIG Report-- 4.0 demo and comments
Subject:March Phoenix Acrobat STC SIG Report-- 4.0 demo and comments From:"Carl L. Young" <carl -at- DIGIPUBCORP -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 29 Mar 1999 10:11:24 -0700
We had a tremendous turnout for the March Adobe Acrobat SIG. About 40 PDF?
ers saw the Arizona preview of Acrobat 4.0, the new version of Acrobat. Bob
Gomez and Sandy Burns of Adobe showed off the new features of the product,
which include:
· Automatic creation of bookmarks from Word files (a feature found in
FrameMaker for some time)
· Drag and drop and cut and paste of text and graphics from PDF files into
Word, Excel and PhotoShop
· Digital signatures for sign-offs of Acrobat forms
· A tool to highlight text
· Easier integration of audio and video files
· Capture in PDF of entire web sites
· More security options
· Sets of customized Distiller options so users can produce specialized
output for print or online viewing
Warren Martin of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station talked about his
company?s experience as a beta tester of Acrobat 4.0. Warren said Acrobat
4.0 does a much better job of creating PDF files from Microsoft Project, a
key point for his organization. In addition, the Web Capture portion of
Acrobat is a great help in reviewing web sites, and for bringing external
web sites into APS behind the company?s firewall.
Lastly, John Deubert, president of Acquired Knowledge of San Diego, showed
us EZ-PDF. EZ-PDF allows commercial printers and large corporations to
create customized print drivers based on Distiller. For example, a
corporation could create a print driver that is specifically for high
quality print production. All fonts would be embedded, and graphics would
not be compressed.
Users would select this print driver from Word, FrameMaker or another
application, and the file would automatically be distilled using those
pre-defined settings. They would not have to manually set up their Distiller
options.
For more information, see www.acquiredknowledge.com.
Our thanks to Adobe for providing food and drinks, and for the free EZ-PDFs
that Acquired Knowledge gave away.
The next Acrobat SIG meeting will be 4-6 p.m. Thursday, May 13, at Access
Laserpress, 5436 W. Latham Street, Phoenix. David Seid, president of Access,
is a Windows PostScript expert and longtime Phoenix Chapter supporter. We
will get to see their new printing facility at 51st Ave. and I-10, and hear
tips on preparing Acrobat files for printing. Those of you with in-house
DocuTechs may find this meeting particularly helpful because Access has a
tremendous amount of experience with DocuTech printing, and is one of the
few shops in the Southwest that can handle FrameMaker files.
If you've ever wanted to learn more about preparing PDF files for
high-quality print reproduction, you won't want to miss this meeting.
Carl L. Young
DigiPub Solutions Corp.
(602) 788-6512
Adobe FrameMaker, Acrobat, and FrameMaker+SGML sales, training, and
consulting
----------------------------------------
Sales, training, and consulting for the Canterbury document management
system for FrameMaker
----------------------------------------
www.digipubcorp.com
