Adobe

What Users Can Learn About EULAs From Adobe

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In a controversial move last month, Adobe announced a warning that any Creative Cloud subscribers using older versions of the apps is liable to get sued by third parties.

According to news stories, the reason seems to be due to legal issues between Adobe and Dolby Labs. In short, there are claims that Adobe included Dolby technology in software and subscription packages without paying the appropriate royalties. As a result, Adobe’s users are no longer licensed to use the infringing software.

This incident underscores some major points about users, software apps, and End User License Agreements (EULAs) that connect them, which deserve some attention.

As a software user, it’s important to think about what it means to your usage and ownership of the tools you use.

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Converting Scanned AutoCAD PDFs With OCR

As the new 2008 year rolls on, so does the work and no doubt, the PDF conversions as well. Don’t worry, we’re at it too. And every now and again, amidst troubleshooting and developing, we get an email from clients having difficulties with AutoCAD PDFs:

“I downloaded and installed your Pro version as a trial.  When I tried to convert a PDF file which was an AutoCAD drawing scanned and saved as such, it seems as if it was working but it opens Excel and nothing is converted in?”

If you’re experiencing or have experienced the same problem without any luck, don’t give up yet. Here’s a conversion tip: try resizing the image-based/scanned PDF.

This is because AutoCAD files are usually created with huge page dimensions that measure up to 30″ by 40″. In addition, it is difficult for the OCR engine to determine the size (in points) of any letter on an OCR page.  So the OCR engine is oftentimes unable to extract legible text from AutoCAD documents due to the small text size (hence the empty Excel output).

The only way it can determine the size of the text is by comparing it relative to the size of a stated PDF page which the OCR engine can read and support. The OCR engine in Able2Extract Professional can only support AutoCAD file dimensions of up to 22″ by 22″.

To resize the PDF:

1) Open the PDF in either Adobe Reader or Acrobat

2) Select File > Print

3) Change the Printer Name to ‘Adobe PDF’ in the drop box

4) Under the Page Scaling section ensure that ‘Choose Paper Source by PDF page size’ is deselected

AutoCad Print

5) Click OK to print a new PDF

You can also resize the PDF with our trial version of Sonic PDF Creator 2.0.  After installing Sonic, select ‘Sonic PDF’ as a printer (as opposed to Adobe PDF in step 3).

After you’ve resized the PDF, try the conversion again.

Hope this tip helps!

PDF, A De-Facto Standard No More

While you’re all excited about the upcoming holidays and can’t think of anything else but that gift list to get through, you can add one more thing to get excited about.

The de facto standard of information interchange, aka the PDF, just got one step closer to being adopted as a standardized format. Last week, the PDF 1.7 specification gained the approval votes it needed from ISO committee voting members as it reached the Enquiry “Close of voting” stage in the standardization process.

Before this certification happens though, the comments included with the votes need to be addressed before the format gets its official ISO standard tag—ISO 32000 (lovely name, no?). Even with those last few hurdles, the PDF’s standardization process is looking good.

Jim King, PDF architect and Senior Principle Scientist at Adobe Systems Inc. will serve as technical editor for the international working group meeting in January where the submitted 205 comments will be resolved.

On his blog he states, “If the group can address all the comments to the satisfaction of all countries, especially the ones voting negatively, it is possible to finish at that meeting and publish the revised document.”

So Is It Still An Adobe-Microsoft Showdown?

In the face of impending success, you can’t help but wonder about OOXML and where its standardization is headed.

OOXML was also submitted and fast tracked for an official ISO standard, but rejected in September. Alongside that rejection was the controversy over Microsoft’s active influence over committee members and their votes. The OOXML proposal then went back to the drawing board for revisions to take the negative votes and comments into account.

Boxing AnimalsNow, three months later, as its Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) draws near in February, OOXML’s standardization is still up in the air as its interoperability, the OOXML hot topic of the day, will be a major factor in the decision to approve it as such.

Making it even harder is that OOXML is constantly held up against ODF, the poster child of open source solutions. It’ll be interesting to see how “open” and how much “interoperability” a Microsoft format can possess in general.

While that issue unfolds, the PDF will more than likely get the ISO standardization without much drama. Has Adobe won this round already without even trying?

These are exciting times for the PDF format indeed.

The ABCs of the PDF: M to O

A lot has happened with the PDF format in the last year—submission for standardization, release of a new specification, software upgrades, and improvements with graphic and dynamic PDFs. In this series posting, you get a look at the PDF’s recent format competition and past legal issues as well as the other uses of PDF related technology. Here it is.

Macromedia

Adobe Systems, Inc. acquired Macromedia Inc. in 2006 and has, since then, injected Macromedia technology into their software. However, Adobe and Macromedia had come into close, legal contact even before the acquisition—over patent disputes.

The patent dispute according to past articles in early 2000-2002, was over a tabbed palette interface element that was awarded to Adobe. The issue dated back to 1996, right up until 2000, during which time Adobe had confronted Macromedia about the palette’s inclusion in several of the company’s products.

Yet Macromedia’s argument against the suit, filed in August of 2000, was that the patent was invalid. This escalated to a point where Macromedia countersued against Adobe in September 2000 for infringing on three of Macromedia’s own patents. After two years of back and forth legal battles, Adobe won the lawsuit and was awarded 2.8 million.

And five years later, Macromedia is now one of Adobe’s acquisitions. . . .

Native PDFs

As you know, native PDFs are ones that are generated from electronically created documents. Yet, while these native PDFs are beneficial when it comes to conversion, they can also produce just as much legal hubbub as patent disputes can. Moving the ability to create PDF files, or PDF-like formats, directly into the authoring application was definitely a complex issue that became a major headliner in PDF news this year.

Back in February, I wrote three postings on factors that made creating digital documents and native PDFs a more significant matter than ever before. There were the legal issues between Adobe and Microsoft; the PDF specification submission to ISO; and then, there was OpenOffice.org, Microsoft’s word processing app rival whose applications sport ODF creation, a format that became a statewide standard in Massachusetts.

Creating native PDFs and PDF-like formats now involves more politics at the authoring application level. Microsoft has the convenience of a widely used platform, Adobe has the ubiquity as de facto standard, and OpenOffice has the state of Massachusetts. Creating a native PDF, or PDF-like format is now, in one sense, a matter of “moral??? choice: are you an Acrobat advocate, a loyal MS Office user, or an open source supporter?

OCR

You know it by its three letter acronym, you know what it does when it comes to converting scanned PDF files. Yet, as a software that literally recognizes and translates digitally imaged characters into character codes (ASCII or Unicode), OCR isn’t just for converting scanned PDFs.

OCR has been used for a wide range of data processing systems. It’s been used by the Standard Oil Company of California for credit card imprints for billing purposes. At the Ohio Bell Telephone Company, OCR was used for reading bill stubs. Even the United States Air Force used OCR for reading and transmitting typewritten messages.

Another big use for OCR technology is postal office work. The first use of OCR in Europe was by the British General Post Office for automating the mail sorting process. OCR scanners read the routing barcodes marked upon the envelopes that are based on corresponding postal codes, resulting in faster organization and shipment times. In 1965, the United States Postal Services adopted the method, followed by Canada Post in 1971.

Today, OCR is being further enhanced as a data input method ranging from simple text to digital scanning processes to sophisticated ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition), a more advanced version of OCR that recognizes hand printed documents.

Whether the PDF world is buzzing with long standing issues from the past or just slowly unfolding with new developments, the PDF world, can be an interesting place, indeed.

The ABCs Of The PDF: J-L

First off, my apologies. It has been awhile since the last posting in this series, and there is still yet more to uncover and discover. So for this posting, its about the figures behind the PDF world and information behind PDF links and some tips. If you’re stalking up on some backgrounder bits and PDF facts in preparation for the 2007 Conference, then by all means, read on.

John E. Warnock

The name, the man, the father behind the PDF, Dr. John E. Warnock. Along with Charles Geschke, he co-founded Adobe Systems, Inc. in 1982. Before that, he worked as a computer scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1978, where he first developed the Post Script language (aka “Interpress” in its early Camelot development), the page description language which would be the building blocks of the PDF.

For the first two years of the company, Warnock served as president of Adobe Systems Inc. and then was CEO until his retirement from that position in 2000. Warnock has led an active career of achievements in computer technology, being highly distinguished in numerous associations and winner of countless awards for his innovation and influence. He is now co-chairman of Adobe with Charles Geshcke.

Also interesting to note is that he has an Adobe typeface named after him—Warnock Pro. Here is a quoted description: “Warnock Pro’s structure is both rational and dynamic, striking a balance between innovation and restraint.” I wonder if the look of the typeface design reflects his personality. . . .

Kurt Foss

As regular day-to-day PDF user, you hardly notice how quickly names can stick in your head—Kurt Foss being one of them. I first came upon Kurt Foss in the beginning of my PDF research, when I read many blogs and searched many articles (I still do). And his were among the top of the research piles.

And doing a bit of research on Foss himself, you’ll find that he has a major presence in the PDF world too. As a long time veteran of the PDF industry, his attraction to the PDF world was a passion for the format, a curiosity about the potential uses and users of the format: “I became increasingly aware of looming technological changes that seemed poised to change the way my profession worked. So I immersed myself in learning about it.” One of his most “notable notables,” in fact, was being one of the first to globally publish newspaper pages in the PDF format, experimenting with how the digital format could work for the printed word.

Foss started out as an Adobe evangelist with the company from 1993-2003 when Acrobat was still in its first version. Since then, he has been web editor of both PDFZone and Planet PDF, and has written articles on issues surrounding the uses of the PDF format. Currently, Foss is the online editor of the Acrobat User Community, a site you may have heard of or been to at one point or another for resources and tips. He has written numerous posts, commenting, reviewing and reporting anything and everything having to do with PDF.

Links

Linking within a PDF file itself is a great way in which to include more background content within your file. Yet, the hypertext link, itself, has a background history of its own, one associated with Vannevar Bush’s influential work ,“As We May Think.”

The paper contained the first rough concept of the computer, called the Memex, an idea which inspired the creation of the actual hypertext as we know it today. The term “hypertext” was first coined by Ted Nelson in 1965, and its invention is usually accredited to him and American scientist, Douglas Engelbart. In 1968, with Engelbart’s historic “Mother of All Demos,” the first hypertext interface was demoed. And by 1980, Tim Berners-Lee, also another famous name, created a hypertext database system, a system created out of a motivation that became the same driving force behind the World Wide Web and the Internet—to meet the demand of automatic information sharing. The implementation of such hypertext link databases in the late 80’s eventually led to the first stages of the World Wide Web.

Of course, needless to say, when you add links within your PDF, you create the same mini-network of information resources and sites. However, behind the convenience of endless information resources, is the frustration of usability. Web usability guru, Jakob Nielsen , has a few words on the use of links and the PDF, which might come in handy in making that PDF user-friendly and informative.

Hope this helps out with that small talk. ‘Till next time!