Acrobat 6.0 Question

[Jeff_DUG]

I'm nearing completion of my first .PDF product and I have a question regarding Acrobat 6.0

In Acrobat there is a tool called PDF optimizer. I have used this tool in the past when at work were we have created PDF media kits and clients reported that thier older (4 & 5) versions of reader gave a complaint upon opening them (something along the lines of "this pdf file may have been created by a newer version of acrobat blah blah blah" basically telling them they should upgrade thier reader)

PDF optimizer allowed me to select compatability with Acrobat 4.0 or higher and it resolved the issue HOWEVER there are a large amount of compression and other options in that tool and I am wondering if I should use it for my product...

I definately want my product to be as compatible as I can make it, but I don't want to cause any loss (through compression) of image quality.

Can anyone make any recommendations about what settings to use for this tool and / or is there anything else anyone would recommend in general when using Acrobat 6.0 to create files?

(obviously bookmarks are a must and setting the file to view single page rather than facing pages)

Thanks for any pointers or advice!

 

[Prest0]

Hey Jeff,

I posed a similar question a few months ago and many publishers recommended maintaining compatibility back as far as version 4. However, nobody had (or would share) empirical data on the percentage of their users still using version 4, so in the end I decided to only support Acrobat 5 and above. Version 5 has been out since 2001 or perhaps earlier, so I don't think it's asking too much of people to have a Reader that's less than four years old. We clearly state which version of Acrobat is needed on the RPGNow product page, and I even included a download link. So far, we haven't had a single complaint.

 

[Jeff_DUG]

Preston to the rescue again

Thanks for the reply amigo!

I guess that version 5.0 would be a pretty safe bet and I really like the idea of posting that information on the product page with a link to the free Acrobat reader.

Anyone have any other tips for setting up PDF files?

Thanks!

 

[maransreth]

Just from a reviewer's and user's point of view:
If you can have two versions of the file - one for online viewing with bookmarking and that. This is best to have in landscape view so readers dont have to continually scroll up and down to read the information. Then a print version with limited background graphics and portrait-oriented.

Lastly if you do include any hyperlinks to websites or email addresses, please use the Link Tool in Acrobat to make it possible for people to click on the link within Acrobat. Otherwise you need to either copy/paste (if available) or move between the pdf file and the browser to get the information into the Address Bar. This isnt very difficult if you use Acrobat and makes it so much easier for readers to access websites listed in pdfs.

 

[TheLe]

Just from a reviewer's and user's point of view:
If you can have two versions of the file - one for online viewing with bookmarking and that. This is best to have in landscape view so readers dont have to continually scroll up and down to read the information. Then a print version with limited background graphics and portrait-oriented.

Lastly if you do include any hyperlinks to websites or email addresses, please use the Link Tool in Acrobat to make it possible for people to click on the link within Acrobat. Otherwise you need to either copy/paste (if available) or move between the pdf file and the browser to get the information into the Address Bar. This isnt very difficult if you use Acrobat and makes it so much easier for readers to access websites listed in pdfs.

Yeah. All the people on my reviewer's list uses the landscape to review my products. And they always mention it in the reviews, which in my opinion gives the reader and extra incentive to buy my books.

In fairness to publishers though, it's been in my experience that creating 2 version of the same product in Indesign or Quark is a pain in the ass.

Thanks to my inability to care about industry standards and what other people think of me, I do all of my books in MS Word (where switching between landscape and portrait is a snap) (and I am too lazy to leark Quark and Indesign).

~Le

 

[Prest0]

You've probably already figured this out, but you can't afford to maintain your images at 300 dpi. You'll need to downsample to 150 dpi at the highest. Very few people would bother to set their inkjet printers on the ink-guzzling setting that would showcase the difference between 150 and 300 dpi. Futhermore, even 72 dpi is good enough for many applications. Many customers are still on dial-up and the file size savings can be significant.

 

[Ampolitor]

for thele

theles you use word?
So if i was to use MS word I can do the pdf? I dont have the money to drop on Acrobat and Indesign but I do have MS word 2000. Let me know how you do your layouts or any other useful tips you found out with it if you dont mind.

 

[maransreth]

You can use MS Word to create your document in the layout of your choice, but then you need to convert it into a pdf. This can be done with Adobe Acrobat or some other type of pdf converter (there are free ones available, or for a lot less price).

 

[JBowtie]

Under Linux, there is a PDF printer driver. You pick PDF as your printer and away you go. Choose your poison in this case (TeX and variants a quite popular among the academic press with very sophisticated typography available).

OpenOffice.org has a "Export as PDF" button. Works at least as well as using Word for layout but costs a lot less.

Scribus is the free software choice for producing print-ready PDFs. Also quite handy for "normal" PDFs.

For the programmers among you, DocBook with the XSL-FO stylesheets is a really popular choice; many computer publishers build their tool chain around this (lots of other publishers are still using SGML and DSSSL).