Short News Update

Earlier this month, in an interview with the New York Times, Adobe CEO, Bruce Chizen, mentioned a couple of future plans Adobe has for its product line.

In the cards, is the next update of Adobe’s Creative Suite which is scheduled for next spring, notable as it’ll be integrating technology from it’s recent Macromedia acquisition. (--Hold onto your mouse for that one!)

And for the chronic PDF makers and/or users out there, mark your calendars, the upcoming release of Acrobat 8 is scheduled for the end of 2006. No details as of yet.

Short Side Musings

In the interview, the Adobe CEO was questioned about how consumers were reacting to Adobe Flash-enabled handsets.

And in response, Chizen noted that communicating digital content is what keeps Adobe going. With the growing trend of creating content for e-community pages and for sites with downloadable media, helping users to communicate that content gives Adobe its permanent foothold in the industry.

Nothing surprising here, nothing new there.

However, it was interesting to read along as he pointed out that everyday things-- magazine layouts, newspaper fonts, graphic images on packaging, have all, more than likely, been in contact with an Adobe software application or tool at one point or another. . . .Take the time to take and look around yourselves. Do you see Adobe?

It gives you a slightly different perspective on things—an Adobe PDF perspective, that is.

Short Summary

Chizen made a valid point in the interview: “Adobe is everywhere you look”. And in our PDF world, it is.

The way the future of the PDFs is going, you can expect to see big things. PDFs are being used for engineering, publishing and archiving. There are a number of PDF tools for creating, distributing, managing, developing, indexing, securing, viewing, editing, storing, (take a breath) and one we’re all familiar with—converting.

However, over-the-top innovation isn’t necessary for a format’s improvement. Its development can come in the most common packages. Hence, one more development to include (or rather, underline) in the list-- Authoring applications.

Microsoft and Metro

First authoring applications that comes to mind: MS Office applications. First PDF development that comes to mind: Metro-- sound like something that interests you and your working habits?

Microsoft’s Metro, aka XPS (XML Paper Specification) is basically an alternative to the PDF format. XPS can do a lot of the same things a PDF does. It can contain regular PDF elements, such as editable metadata, annotations, digital signatures, text selection, hyperlinks, and bookmarks. The functionality works by simply saving your documents as an XPS document.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher—the well-known 2007 Office application canon will support the functionality. More notably, the future release of the Vista OS is going to provide native XPS functionality support such as viewers, writers and even print drivers to facilitate working with the format. Viewers are also being made available in beta versions on the Microsoft site.

For “Metro Makers” in the Making

A differentiating fact: XPS is an XML-based document container file generated at the document creation level.

A user fact: With millions of MS Office users, the functionality will be easily accessible for individuals and groups working exclusively with the PDF format.

A buzz fact: A year in the news headlines, XPS is being tested out and talked about. The PDF community is waiting to see how the XPS format, as a native format, will catch on when it comes time to ship.

So if you’re curious about the PDF support in MS applications and all the buzz surrounding it, here are a few links that’ll get you in the loop about the PDF development:

Microsoft XPS Information
Microsoft Watch
MSDN Blogs
Slashdot

It’s August. It’s summer. And it’s sunny outside. Not too hot, not too chilly A really nice day and way too easy to get distracted by just looking out the window.

And amidst the lazy summer days of popsicles and vacations, the (work) beat goes on. Stretch out the sluggishness and take a deep breath. . . .We’re at it too, fielding questions and troubleshooting tech queries—armed with a coke slushee in one hand and a mouse in the other. So bring it on. . . .

We received a tech question recently (from a client who “brought it”) that’ll serve as a good tip to keep in mind when converting your PDFs.

A client was trying to convert a PDF into another format and claimed that the PDF didn’t convert properly at all. The PDF, when opened in our software, displayed gibberish/garbage text, “even though it opened and looked fine on Acrobat”.

The issue here was that the native PDF contained some damaged fonts, in which case Acrobat Reader just draws the letters, but doesn’t recognize them.

If you’ve encountered this problem-- or ever do in the future, you can check to see if the fonts are damaged or not by selecting a part of the PDF in question and copying it by using the Copy command under the Edit menu of the Adobe Reader (first, ensure that you are in Select mode: Tools> Basic> Select Text).

Then open MS Word or Notepad and paste the pattern. If the fonts are undamaged, the should turn out readable. Our software will recognize this and therefore doesn’t show damaged fonts properly in the viewer even though Adobe can.

If, however, our software viewer does display the fonts correctly in the software viewer (even when the fonts are clearly damaged in the original PDF), then the user can use the Professional versions of our software to enable the OCR engine to generate the conversion, treating the native/original PDF document as an image file.

So you can still get your conversion done with such PDFs, although you’ll get it through a different approach. For future cases, if a conversion doesn’t come out right, first check that the PDFs you’re converting are properly made as successful conversions rely on the original PDF itself (its security, fonts, scan quality, etc.).

It’ll go a long way to save you the extra frustration in trying out different methods to get the conversion done. More importantly, it’ll help you get your work done quicker so you can enjoy the rest of the day.

(*slurp, sluurp*, *click*. . . )

Have fun!