New PDF creating software.

[jgbrowning]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/972253.asp?0dm=T18MT

News report about new PDF creating software.

joe b.

 

[HellHound]

Thanks Joe.

Although I already own Acrobat Professional 6.0 I'm curious about alternates, primarily if one ever comes to market with proper bookmarking features. I'm almost tempted to download the trial version to see if it handles bookmarking since the newsclip doesn't mention it.

 

[jmucchiello]

Although I already own Acrobat Professional 6.0 I'm curious about alternates, primarily if one ever comes to market with proper bookmarking features. I'm almost tempted to download the trial version to see if it handles bookmarking since the newsclip doesn't mention it.

It handles bookmarking (based on TOC entries) and it creates internal links for Word cross-references. It also crashes occasionally and dropped some letter in weird places on my documents. I ran the release version of Character Customization through it and it took 20 minutes to generate a file. And the file had an extra page in front of page 1 for some reason. Of course, my layout strain the ability of Word often. I'm thinking part of the problem may be the trial. I'm going send them an email and ask about it.

 

[Nellisir]

I just ran my house campaign handbook through it (Word; 92 pages; TOC, images, multiple fonts, & headers). Once I got the page printing order right (if you have print backwards option on, switch it off!), it worked great. Generated all the bookmarks I wanted, in trees, and links worked. I haven't checked -everything-, but what I've seen seems to be totally correct and accurate. I'll buy it tonight.

Original file was a 6.26 MB file; output in web format was 1.97 MB.

Pdf generation time was about 2 minutes, give or take. No crashes.

Cheers
Nell.

Who can FINALLY get the show on the road!

 

[Dimwhit]

Hellhound, I have a question out of idle curiousity. You use Acrobat, but you obviously aren't pleased with the bookmarking features. I'm curious what you're looking for that Acrobat doesn't have.

 

[jmucchiello]

Hellhound, I have a question out of idle curiousity. You use Acrobat, but you obviously aren't pleased with the bookmarking features. I'm curious what you're looking for that Acrobat doesn't have.

If he's like me, I haven't bought Acrobat because you have to click on the text (I assume) to tell it to make a bookmark. Go to the next item, select and make it a bookmark, etc. Yet, in Word (or whatever markup/wp you are using), all of the bookmark text is already indicated (as part of a heading tag or similar markup). Likewise, generating indexes and stuff can be automated in the wp. But in Acrobat you have to set up each cross-ref manually. ROBOPdf does obey TOC and xref tags to create bookmarks and internal links. It just runs a bit flaky on my machine. I probably push Word too hard. Who knows?

 

[Dimwhit]

I guess it must depend on when you're doing your bookmarking. I don't know what Hellhound uses for page layout. I use InDesign, so all the bookmarks, etc. are identified in the ID document. When it's exported to PDF, that's it. But in Quark, for example, unless you have an expensive plugin, it's a little more difficult.

Anyway, just wondering.

 

[HellHound]

No, I love the bookmarking in Acrobat.

However, I'm no fool. If another software exists with similar or identical features as Acrobat for a lower cost...

 

[Dimwhit]

No, I love the bookmarking in Acrobat.

However, I'm no fool. If another software exists with similar or identical features as Acrobat for a lower cost...

Ahh! Gotcha. Makes sense. I'm not on Acrobat 6 yet, but I like 5. I especially like the integration with InDesign. It really makes things nice. Of course, InDesign isn't exactly cheap either.

 

[HellHound]

While I liked working with InDesign, I went through HELL with the output. File sizes were stupendously huge, printing was rife with errors and bizarre incompatabilities at the printer, etc.

I have gone back to Quark XPress 5 and will probably be switching to 6 soon.