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volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print

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volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home |

Contents Developer:

Learning Center: Introduction to Acrobat Development 47 Adobe Acrobat 7.0: Getting Started - Developing for PDF 47 Developing with Acrobat Javascript 49 Acrobat 7.0 - Planet PDF’s Take 1 Developing with PDF Forms 51 Acrobat 7.0 - Our First Look 2 Developing with Inter-Application Communication (IAC) 53 Acrobat 7 Product Family Feature Matrix 10 Learning Center: Introduction to Acrobat JavaScript 55 Pam Deziel back at Adobe for Acrobat 7 launch 13 What is Acrobat JavaScript? 55 What’s New with Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7.0 19 Where Should I use Acrobat JavaScript? 56 Claudia McCue:First Impressions of Acrobat 7.0 21 Working with Events in Acrobat JavaScript 59 Max Wyss: First Impressions of Acrobat 7.0 23 Debugging Acrobat JavaScript 60 Duff Johnson: First Impressions of Acrobat 7.0 25 Example Acrobat JavaScripts 62 Chris Dahl: First Impressions of Acrobat 7.0 28 Leonard Rosenthol: First Impressions of Acrobat 7.0 30 Creative and Print:

General Interest: PDF Master: Stephan Jaeggi talks with Planet PDF 64 PDF Master: The world according to Zipper 66 Q/A: Adobe’s John Landwehr on LiveCycle Policy Server 33 Learning Center: PDF Preflight 68 What is PDF Preflight? 68 Government and Enterprise: What’s the Problem With This PDF? 68 Knowing What to Look For 69 Why PDF in legal? #1 -- Because the Judge Said So 37 Preflighting PDF...Who, Where and How 71 Why PDF in legal? #2 -- Because You Are a Publisher 37 I Have Problems 72 Why PDF in legal? #3 -- The Unified Document Theory 37 Learning Center: PDF Color 72 An Introduction to Accessible PDF 38 PDF and Color Spaces 72 Accessible PDF: A Strategic Review 39 Color Spaces in Practice 74 PDF files can comply with Section 508. Now it’s your move 42 RGB versus CMYK 75 What is Tagged PDF? 45 About ICC 76 PDF Creation Tips 76 Life as a PDF 79

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Acrobat 7.0 - Planet PDF’s Take text, suggest changes, apply stamps, markup with ‘structured’ way by using the server’s security tools. By Karl De Abrew Planet PDF CEO drawing tools, and so on. Will PDF become a de facto This will give them greater control over when a docu- standard for document review as well as exchange? ment can be reviewed, how often or by whom, and Adobe is taking the Acrobat family mainstream with the can even revoke access after a document has been version 7.0 release. While feature-for-feature Acrobat Acrobat 7.0 Professional is being positioned at the distributed. 6.0 launched with many more (and really surprised center of business workflows, enabling ‘power users’ Planet PDF with its improvements), Acrobat 7.0 has to control how internal and external groups of users The Acrobat family names remain the same this time launched with what is arguably the most important can interact with documents. round (Acrobat 7.0 Professional, Acrobat 7.0 Stan- change to the Acrobat family since Reader was made dard, Acrobat 7.0 Elements and Adobe Reader 7.0), free back in version 2.0: Acrobat 7.0 Professional us- “Acrobat 7.0 has launched with what is arguably the as does the pricing for Professional (US $449) and ers can now give any Adobe Reader (6.0 or 7.0) user most important change to the Acrobat family since Standard (US $299). The one noticeable change is permission to review and markup PDF documents. Reader was made free back in version 2.0. “ that Adobe has lowered the entry level for Elements Karl De Abrew, CEO, Planet PDF users to a 100-seat license starting at US$39, which Editor’s Note: For more info on Acrobat 7.0 visit our spe- should result in it capturing smaller volume licensing cial Adobe Acrobat 7.0 feature. Power users can use the LiveCycle Form Designer deals. (included with Professional) to allow users to submit Adobe has taken the commenting tools to the masses form data in a number of news ways: They can con- The upgrade pricing (from Acrobat 4.0, Acrobat 5.0, - from millions of Acrobat users, to hundreds of mil- trol access to documents in an ‘ad hoc’ fashion using Acrobat 6.0 Standard to Acrobat 7.0 Standard) is lions of Adobe Reader users. When sent these files Acrobat’s own tools, or if LiveCycle Policy Server is in US$99, and the upgrade pricing (from Acrobat 4.0, from a Professional user, a Reader user can highlight use by their organization they can control access in a Acrobat 5.0, Acrobat 6.0 Standard & Acrobat 6.0 Pro- Advertisement the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 2/81 fessional) to Acrobat 7.0 Professional is US$159. If Document Reviewing & Markup During the process of exchanging a PDF for review you are planning to upgrade from any old version of Reader Enabled Commenting via email, you are given the choice to allow Adobe Acrobat (including Standard), we believe you should Reader users to participate. It’s as simple as that. seriously consider paying the extra $60 to get Acrobat This is probably the boldest change for Adobe Acro- You email the PDF to them, and when they open it Professional. bat 7.0 and Adobe Reader 7.0, and appears likely to in Adobe Reader 7.0, additional toolbars appear with Adobe has set the scene for a different landscape en- make a major long-term impact on both how PDF is an extensive range of markup and commenting tools, tirely with the targeting of its massive Adobe Reader used, and the number of people involved in the docu- including: user base and its targeting of smaller businesses with ment review process. its aggressive Acrobat Elements licensing. While Ado- Note tool be Reader users start to enjoy the reviewing capabili- Acrobat 7.0 (Professional only) now enables you to ties available, Adobe will be hoping they start thinking give Adobe Reader users permission to use all the • Highlight, underline, cross out text tools about what else they might be able to do with a full commenting and review tools that were previously • Indicate text edit tools (insert, delete o replace text) version of Acrobat. only available to Acrobat Professional and Standard • Stamp tools (including custom stamps) users - basically it was restricted to users who paid for • Attach file as a comment tool Where will we find ourselves by the time Acrobat 8.0 the functionality. This should mean a far more wide- • Record audio comment tool comes around? spread use of PDF-based document review and, over • Callout tool time, Adobe will no doubt hope that it moves more • Cloud tool Acrobat 7.0 - Our First Look Reader users towards buying a version of Acrobat • Drawing tools (arrow, rectangle, oval, line, pencil, that allows them to also send PDFs to colleagues and etc.) By Richard Crocker Planet PDF Director of Content clients for review.

Welcome to our Acrobat 7.0 product tour. Over the Advertisement next few pages we’ll guide you through some of the key new features to come out of Adobe latest Acrobat family.

Editor’s Note: For more info on Acrobat 7.0 visit our special Adobe Acrobat 7.0 feature.

This is not meant to be a definitive list but more a broad ‘first look’ at some of the most interesting new things. Once you get your hands on a copy, be sure to do your own exploring -- you’re bound to find many cool new things not mentioned in these pages.

Note: Unless otherwise noted, this article refers to Acrobat Adobe Reader with a PDF that has come from an Ac- 7.0 Professional (i.e. not Standard). While I can make edu- robat 7.0 user. Shown here are the Commenting and cated guesses at which features will be included in both, Drawing Markups toolbars and stamps. I’m yet to see a complete breakdown of the differences. the best of

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New markup tools Paper to PDF Two new markup tools tend to target technical profes- Acrobat 7.0 simplifies the process of converting paper sionals, but the Callout tool looks useful when add- into searchable PDFs, making it a one-step process. ing comments related to images and other non-text As part of this process, you can add tags for improved objects. accessibility for impaired users.

There’s also a new range of compressing, cleaning and filtering tools that can be used during the process to improve the quality of the output. You can deskew (rotate the scan so it’s totally vertical) and filter the scan using tools like background, edge shadow re- The Callout Tool lets you create a text box which has moval, despeckle, descreen and halo removal. an arrow attached that can point to a specific part of a drawing or document.

As you step through the Send for Review process tick the check box to enable the functionality for Ado- be Reader users in your review group.

Select Tool The Select Tool now has its own popup menu with related options. Using the Select Tool to select text will display a list of related options, and likewise when The Dimensioning Tool lets you draw a line between selecting an image. points on a drawing.

Tracker & Newsreader The ‘Track News’ functionality in Acrobat 6.0 has been separated out into the Tracker tool. The main addition to it is that you can also use the Tracker to subscribe to news feeds.

If you’re not familiar with these, numerous sites these days offer syndicated ‘feeds’ that let you download Object-level info a summary of each item into your ‘reader’ software; Acrobat 7.0 and Reader 7.0 now support the ability it’s just a matter of copying the link to the RSS, XML to view object-level custom properties. This extends or RDF format service from a site and copying it into what is possible so that individual objects in Visio your news reader. The one in Tracker allows you to drawings or diagrams can retain their particular prop- build summaries of all the items in PDF and lets you erties. By contrast, past versions limited this to docu- convert any of the items (usually Web pages) to PDF ment level properties such as, title, author, custom -- handy if you want to archive them or print a copy for info fields, etc. offline viewing. the best of

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For example, an engineer or architect might like to visible - but not what’s inside (the attachments). While After your problem, the next time you open Acrobat assign an object (such as a chair, router, pipe, etc.) a a normal user can open the PDF and see that it con- you’re prompted to either recover or discard the re- name, part number and other custom properties. Pre- tains attachments, only authorized persons can ac- covered document. viously, their complex diagrams or drawings retained cess your files. Using the security policy tools makes their layers but lost this object-level info once convert- the process simple as you can encrypt all the attach- Organizer ed to PDF. The only way to view these properties was ments at once. The name explains it pretty well. It helps you orga- by using Visio or the free Visio Viewer. nize, keep track of and quickly access your PDF doc- Acrobat Speed Launcher uments. A welcome addition to Acrobat. The advantage now is that an Acrobat Professional There are going to be millions of people happy to hear user can exchange lightweight PDF versions of the that Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and Adobe Reader 7 open The History feature works much like the history fea- documents, but still ensure that all users have full much more quickly now. One point before we go on: ture in Web browsers - you can quickly find documents access to all layer and PDF object information con- this funcionality is only available for Windows users. based on when you last viewed them. tained in the source document. In addition, he can en- able the PDF for commenting functionality in the free One of the greatest laments of long-term users and The Favorite Places feature allows you to flag your Reader so that anyone viewing the PDF can review fans of Acrobat is that it is too slow to open from favorite folders so you always have quick access to and markup the document. scratch. Add to this the comments of some anti-PDF them in Organizer. When you highlight a folder in the people who have said that Acrobat/PDFs on the Web (left) Categories pane, all PDFs contained in there are Attachments & Acrobat as a Secure Container perform very poorly when compared to alternatives displayed in the (centre) Files panes. Acrobat 7.0 extends the PDF as a container con- like Macromedia’s flash viewer (which loads virtually cept with more features for dealing with attachments. instantly). They claim that because the load time is so The Collections area allows you to group PDFs to- You can add attachments at the page level using the slow, it upsets the natural flow of navigating content. gether based on how you work - you could create comment tool, or you can add them at the document Probably a fair point for previous versions of Acrobat collections based on a project, a type of content, a level. The page level attachments are displayed on and Reader. client, etc. Unlike grouping by folders, each PDF in a the page on which they’re added and in the Attach- collection can be located anywhere. For example, if ment palette, whereas document-level attachments The speed launcher loads when you start up your you were working on a project with PDFs located in are only displayed in the Attachments palette. It’s now computer and it runs in the background, allowing Ac- various places locally and on a network, you can build possible to see at a glance when a document contains robat or Reader to launch at the sort of speed you a collection from them without the need to move files any attachments, as a paperclip is displayed in the would experience when opening applications like In- around. status bar in bottom-left corner of Acrobat. ternet Explorer and Word. Once you’ve selected a folder, history folder, favorite The new Attachment palette quickly enables users to PDFs being viewed locally or in your Web browser place or collection, all PDFs contained in it will be dis- make sense of what files are attached, where they are should both perform much better in Acrobat or Reader played in the Files pane. From there you can preview located in the PDF and can let the user search through 7.0. After the first time opening and then closing Ac- each file in the (right) Pages pane. the attachments as well as the PDF being viewed. You robat in a single session, Acrobat loads even faster can also work from within the Attachments palette to again. You can sort your files based on various properties add, edit, open and delete attachments. and can perform a number of actions from within Or- Using the new security policy tools, you can encrypt Autosave ganizer, such as, print, email, combine files and send only the file attachments, allowing you to send what Acrobat includes an autosave feature that can stop for review. Adobe calls an eEnvelope. you from losing your work due to a computer crash, power failure etc. You can specify in Preferences Much like a normal envelope, people can see the out- how frequently you want your documents to be au- side - the PDF containing the attachments would be tosaved. the best of

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Find and Search plain that they can fill out a form and submit it. Advertisement A welcome return from Acrobat 5.0 is Find - for search- ing the current document. You enter the phrase and then use the previous and next buttons to move be- tween the results. Find is now a toolbar you can dock in with your other toolbars, or you can leave it floating. The advanced search (in the right pane) is still avail- able.

Task pane (right) A small but welcome addition is the ability to resize the Task Pane that’s used for advanced searching as well as providing context related step-by-step tips. Usability/Interface There are lots of new improvements to the interface New Window and general usability. Below, I’ll outline a few of the The New Window option lets you open a document interface changes I’ve come across. What’s also no- more than once, allowing you to view different parts of ticeable is that Adobe has expanded the number of the same document simultaneously. task-oriented processes that guide the user through each step until completion. The wizard interface for Tiling acrobat two screens tasks like sending a PDF off for review and creating a For dual monitor users (I know you’re out there), you new security policy will definitely help new and regular can now use the ‘Acrobat Monitors’ option to tile one Acrobat users alike. or more documents across the full width of your desk- top. It’s handy when you want to view documents side Read More button by side. Acrobat 7.0 extends the old ‘hide toolbars’ option (F8) into the idea of a reading mode. Like in older ver- Show Documents in Taskbar sions of Acrobat the toolbars up the top are hidden, On Windows systems, Acrobat 7.0 adds the ability but in the new release, the key tools for viewing and (it’s optional) to show in the taskbar each PDF docu- navigating a document are all accessible from the bot- ment currently open (and also when you use Alt+Tab) tom-left of Acrobat. so you have more direct access to individual docu- ments rather than having to open Acrobat and then Document Message Bar select the document. Is particularly useful when you Increased level of explanation via the new document regularly view multiple PDFs simultaneously. message bar (just below the toolbars), with the ability to include extra instructions should help new users. It can be used for things like indicating that a user is able to add comments to a PDF or with forms to ex- the best of

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Spreadsheet Split View scratch, or by modifying what’s already there. You can The spreadsheet split view makes it easier to view also remove stray regions by making them part of the large tables by giving you the ability to display differ- background, label any images or figures with alternate ent columns and rows of a spreadsheet or table in the text, reassign regions as text, forms, headings, tables, four different panes of the screen. cells, and so on. Convert Colors You can go beyond viewing the reading order at a The Convert Colors tool displays the device color page level by opening the Order Tab. This provides spaces CMYK, RGB and Gray, plus any spot colors you with a list of all the pages and displays the read- that are in the PDF. You can choose to convert or pre- ing order for each. You can do the same sort of touch- serve any or all of these. In the case of spot colors, ing up from here. These tools are meant to cover most you also have the choice to map them to one of the 4 typical tagging issues, but experts can go further into process colors or another spot color. Adobe explains the structure of the document via the Tags Tab. further:

Accessibility Setup Assistant The other major new accessibility feature is the handy Accessibility Setup Assistant.

This solves the issue of delving into Acrobat’s pref- erences to improve the experience -- along with the Accessibility panel, there are settings in the General, Reading and others. CLICK HERE to step through the Assistant.

Print Production Acrobat 7.0 Professional has introduced the Print Pro- duction toolbar, a welcome replacement for the myr- iad menu items in Acrobat 6. Note that this toolbar, Accessibility like a number of others, does not appear by default. TouchUp Reading Order To enable it you must go to View > Toolbars > Print Acrobat 7.0 comes with a range of new tools for iden- Production. tifying reading order problems and redefining them -- by doing this, you improve the accessibility of the The tools that are new to Acrobat 7.0 are Trap Pre- document, as the reading order is used by assistive sets, Convert Colors, Ink Manager, Add Printer Marks, technologies like screen reading software for visually and Fix Hairlines. The Crop Pages function has been Acrobat uses the source color spaces of objects in impaired users. expanded to allow the user to increase the media size PDF document to determine what (if any) color con- in addition to the ability to adjust crop, trim, art and version is required. If a PDF file contains objects with When you select the TouchUp Reading Order tool, bleed boxes that were in Acrobat 6. Also, transpar- embedded color profiles, Acrobat manages the colors you gain access to a set of reading order tools, and ency flattening has been improved to allow the user to using the embedded profiles rather than the default the page highlights the present reading order of all apply flattening instead of just being able to preview color spaces which are chosen in Acrobat’s prefer- the page content. From here, you can correct issues it. ences. either by clearing the page structure and redoing from the best of

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Using ICC profiles to do color space conversions is It is important to note that while colors can be mapped Fix Hairlines reliable, but does require that the user have an under- with Ink Manager, it is necessary to go to the Convert The Fix Hairlines tool is another good addition to Ac- standing of color management and the effect that vari- Colors tool if you want to map colors and have the robat 7. All too often, document designers choose line ous profiles will have when applied. The reason that changes stored in the PDF. weights which display fine but disappear completely this is important is that there is no preview of the color from high-resolution output. This tool gives users the space conversions before they are applied, and you ability to specify a minimum line width and replace it cannot undo changes. This means that if the conver- with a user-defined size. There are also options to sion results are undesirable, the user can only close apply the settings to Type3 fonts and PostScript pat- the document without saving the color conversions - terns. - or any other changes they may have made to the document.

There are also four conversion options for what to do with profiles. Adobe describes them as follows:

•Embed Profile As Source Color Space -- tags all im- ages with the destination profile selected in the Pro- file menu.

•Embed Profile As OutputIntent -- uses the destina- tion profile as the output intent. Advertisement If your PDF is... •Don’t Embed Profile -- does not tag objects with the profile. •Preserve Black Objects -- preserves the color values a Beauty to behold of objects drawn in CMYK, RGB, or Gray during con- version. This prevents text in RGB black from being converted to rich black when converted to CMYK.

Ink Manager ...then tame the beast. Trap Presets The Ink Manager introduces a feature that has been The Trap Presets panel enables you to create and ap- available in other Adobe graphic applications for ply trap settings that can be executed by an Adobe some time but was sadly missing in Acrobat 6. The Postscript 3 RIP that licenses Adobe In-RIP Trap- Ink Manager allows you to modify the way inks are ping. treated while your PDFs are open. Changes will only affect how inks are viewed using Output Preview, and Trap presets that are created here only apply to the how inks print when separations are generated from i document while it is open. They are not saved with Acrobat. N i ffiix the PDF, which means that you must print separa- ™ PDF text editing - made simple tions from Acrobat in order to have the trap settings www.iceni.com applied. the best of

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Output Preview Add Printer Marks The Separations Preview in Acrobat 7.0 Professional The Add Printer Marks feature lets you add printer has been improved. Adobe explains more: marks to a page for positioning and other things a prepress service provider requires. In Acrobat 7.0, the Output Preview dialog box provides a convenient way marks are applied as content. to use the open Adobe PDF document to preview sep- arations, proof colors, view colors by source in addi- tion to ink plates, and highlight warning areas for out- of-gamut areas, ink coverage limits, and overprinting. The top part of the dialog box has several controls.

The Preview pop-up menu allows you to switch be- tween previewing separations and previewing color warnings. When you select Separations, the bottom half of the dialog box lists all the inks in the file, as well as ink warning controls and total area coverage con- trols. When you select Color Warnings, a warnings section replaces the separations section. The preview settings you specify in the Output Preview dialog box are reflected directly in the open document.

Users should exercise caution in selecting the Sim- ulation Profile to preview separations. If the profile chosen here is different than that used when printing separations from Acrobat the output results could be dramatically different.

Crop Pages New to Acrobat 7.0 is the ability to change the PDF page size, which can be essential when adding printer marks. You can use the crop tools to add trim, bleed and other boundaries. Adobe explains further:

The Crop Pages dialog box lets you adjust the visible page area for specified pages of your document. You can adjust page margins by setting specific param- eters. The resulting cropped area shows the content that appears when the page is displayed or printed. the best of

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To undo a crop operation, reset the margins in the Transparency Flattening JDF Job Definitions Crop Pages dialog box. As with previous versions of Another addition to Acrobat 7.0 Professional is the Another new feature in Acrobat 7.0, this tool allows Acrobat, cropping does not reduce file size because ability to apply the flattening to the current PDF rather you to define and apply JDF info to a PDF. information is not discarded, but hidden from view. than simply previewing it. The Flattener Preview lets users see and control how transparent objects will ap- pear in print. Adobe explains further:

You use the preview options in the Flattener Preview window to detect objects in a PDF document that are transparent, as well as objects that will be affected by transparency flattening. Transparent content is high- lighted in red, while the rest of the artwork appears in grayscale. You can use this information to adjust the flattening options before you apply the settings to the document. The flattener preview is available only for PostScript printers.

Security Policies The full versions of Acrobat now feature the ability to create, manage and apply security policies. These are essentially pre-set, reusable profiles that define the security settings to be applied to a document or set thereof. The simple, wizard interface means that it no longer takes a rocket scientist to apply appropriate security to PDF document archives, and the concept of policies means that security settings can be config- ured on the organization or workgroup level. The poli- cies can then be rolled out to group members in order to ensure standardized document security protocols. the best of

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Advertisement The new security policies even allow users to define Acrobat 7 Product Family Feature Matrix the type of authentication, be it via simple passwords, By Dan Shea Planet PDF Editor digital certificates, or even direct integration with Ado- be Policy Server for users of Adobe Acrobat Profes- Editor’s Note: The feature matrix is as complete and cur- sional. It’s even possible to apply multiple security rent as possible, but some items may change as new infor- policies to a single document, if needed. mation is released. Envelope For more info on Acrobat 7.0 visit our special Adobe Ac- A security measure new to Acrobat 7.0 is that of the robat 7.0 feature. eEnvelope. That is, the security measures on the PDF document and its attachments are handled separate- ly. Hence, it is possible to send an unsecured PDF With the announcement of the newest installment in eEnvelope that may detail download instructions or Adobe’s Acrobat franchise - version 7.0, to be precise address information with encrypted file attachments. - we here at Planet PDF thought we’d supply a little in- A great example of this would be an eEnvelope that formation on the members of the new product family. acted as a brochure, with the retail product (software The three distinct applications follow the same basic or content such as an eBook) included as an encrypt- concepts used for version 6, and are called (surprise, ed attachment. surprise) Adobe Reader 7.0, Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Stan- dard, and Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional. Like their predecessors, the products are designed primarily for free, read-only access (Reader), viewing, creation, editing and basic manipulation (Acrobat Standard), and the whole shebang (Acrobat Professional).

Although all enjoy new and updated features, the dis- tinctions between them have increased markedly. As one might expect, the Professional edition has come out the biggest winner in terms of functionality: not only has it gained much in the areas of forms, design and engineering, it is now capable of flagging docu- ments to enable the full suite of commenting tools to be accessed from the free Reader.

This, along with the new security policy administra- tion, streamlined user interface and loading time are some of the key advances of the release. In order to help clarify issues of comparative functionality, there is a detailed feature matrix included below.

Nitro PDF is an initiative of ARTS PDF, Inc. the best of

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Features Rdr Std Pro Features Rdr Std Pro PDF Creation Preflighting tools X Electronic form processing (Saving/exporting form data) X X Support for PDF/X creation, preflighting and output support X Electronic form design (Creation of Form Fields) X Color Separations Preview and Printing X Adobe LiveCycle Designer X Rulers and Guides X Easily merge multiple document types into a single PDF file X X Support for auto-tray sensors for high-end printers X Convert Web Pages to PDF directly from Internet Explorer (Windows-Only) X X Advanced printing controls for color management and job tickets X One-button convert from Outlook for outgoing email attachments X X Output Preview X One-button convert from MS Outlook of messages with attachments X X Preview and flatten transparency X One-button convert from MS Access X X Overview print X One-button convert from MS Publisher X X Trap presets X Support for PowerPoint Animations X X Color conversion in viewer X One-button PDF creation from Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint X X Hairline fixup X Scan paper documents into searchable PDF file X X Change media box size X Right-click creation of Adobe PDF from Windows Explorer X X Add printer’s marks X One-step screen captures into PDF X Ink manager X Add headers/Footers/Backgrounds and Watermarks X X Convert Color to CMYK in Distiller X

Reduce File Size X X Review and Commenting PDF Optimizer X Initiate email-based and Web-based reviews X X Link Tool X X Review tracker to manage incoming/outgoing status for email/web commenting review X X Add bookmarks to make a PDF easier to navigate X Import PDF comments back into source Word file (Word for Windows XP only) X X

Engineering Features Insert/delete text markup tool + X X

One-button convert (and email) from AutoCAD (with layers) (Windows-only) X Measuring toolbar X One-button convert (and email) from MS Visio (with layers) (Windows-only) X Comment summary pane X X X One-button convert (and email) from MS Project (Windows-only) X Rich Text Formatting in Notes + X X the best of

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Support for Custom Stamps + X X Accessibility Set Up Assistant X X X Japanese Standard Business Stamps (J version only) + X X Search Polygon and Polyline tool + X X PDF index searching X X X Clouding Tool + X PDF index generation (Catalog) X Arrow Tool + X One-step searching across multiple PDF files X X X Enable Adobe Reader 7.0 users to add comments X Search more of the PDF document, including annotations, bookmarks, structure and X X X Export comments into source AutoCAD file X Search for PDFs on web X X X

Viewing and Navigating Documents Support for searching Chinese, Japanese and Korean text X X Loupe Tool X Search for Object data X X X Split-Window View X X X Organizer X X

Dynamic Zoom X X IT and Administration Tools Pan and Zoom X Update manager X X Viewing Layers X X Self-healing - Automatically detect problems within Acrobat (such as missing files) and X X X Managing Layers X Installer - lock down preferences X X New Window X X Enhancements for customizing the Acrobat application prior to deployment (for IT X X

Accessibility Customizable installer X X X Keyboard Accessibility X Support SMS and Tivoli X X X International language support, including Japanese X X Support Citrix and WTS X X X

Enhanced Accessibility Checker X Security and Digital Signatures Enhanced Make Accessible X X X Enhanced usability for applying and validating digital signatures X X

Accessibility Quick Check X LDAP Integration (Windows-only) X X Accessibility Full Check X X X MSCAPI Support (Windows-only) X X Read Aloud X X Protect a PDF using a password to restrict access/printing/editing X X Add tags to document X Digitally sign PDFs X X Touch Up Reading Order X X X Save as certified document X X the best of

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Create, manage, and apply security policies from within Acrobat X X Acrobat 1.0 vet Pam Deziel Encrypt a PDF using public key certificates X X back at Adobe for Acrobat 7 launch By Kurt Foss eBook Support

EBX support X X Editor’s Note: For more info on Acrobat 7.0 visit our special eBook library X X Adobe Acrobat 7.0 feature.

Giving and lending eBooks X X KURT FOSS : Thanks for making time to talk with Planet PDF on the verge of Adobe’s announcement of Acrobat Bookstore URL manager X X 7, slated to begin shipping by late this year. We realize Search web dictionary (English only) X X this is a hectic time, so let’s dive right in by first shar- ing with our global audience a bit about your PDF-re- Multimedia lated background and expertise. I recall you were part Real Media Support(Windows Only) X X of the Acrobat team in the very early days, then left the company for a while -- several iterations of the product Windows Media Support X X and technology -- before returning to your current role in time to work on the just-announced Acrobat 7 family MP3 Support X X of products. Tell us a little about your involvement in Flash Support X X those pioneering days of Acrobat and PDF, and about your eventual departure from and return to Adobe. Advertisement PAM DEZIEL, Director of Marketing for Acrobat/desktop, Adobe Systems, Inc.: I started at Adobe in 1993, shortly after the Mac and Windows versions of Acrobat 1.0 had shipped, and took on the responsibility of Senior Product Marketing Manager initially for the UNIX versions and the Reader product. I worked on Acrobat versions 1, 2 and 3. I moved from the Acrobat to a similar position with our Con- sumer Products Division for about a year and then about another year and a half as the senior manager for the Ado- be Solutions Network (ASN). I left Adobe in late 1998 when I got an opportunity to go to work for Palm. Inc. I was com- pletely in love with that product and spent four-plus years there, riding en entire industry up and back down -- through the spinout, the split of Palm and Palm Source. From there I went briefly to a small wireless software company before Adobe lured me back here late last summer with the prom- ise there was a lot more going on here with Acrobat than when I left. the best of

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FOSS: When you returned to Adobe after several pretty solid footing, both within the company and years away, what surprised you about what was among its ever-growing user base. going on, or what did you discover had changed regarding the evolution and current state of But those of us who were early advocates for and PDF? fans of the technology remember that during the 1.0 and 2.0 eras, the future of Acrobat/PDF was DEZIEL: I wasn’t really surprised - the original team not a sure thing - there were a number of obsta- knew that the promise of Acrobat would eventually be cles to overcome, such as the initial plan to sell delivered. I think Adobe has made tremendous prog- the Reader software rather than give it away. And ress in the last several years in driving the Acrobat the portable document concept wasn’t at first an business, in driving PDF as a standard and now begin- easy sell technologically either - the usefulness of ning to drive our server business into the enterprise. a product like Acrobat was not as easy to explain It’s been exciting to watch things play out in much the as Photoshop. Any flashbacks from your person- way we had envisioned that they might. al experience and insights that you’d like to share that underscore how Acrobat/PDF became a suc- FOSS: Before we talk a little about the next incarna- cess story at and for Adobe? tion - Acrobat 7.0 - that Adobe has just announced and which is slated to ship by year’s end, let’s pause for a personal reflection. By the time you left Adobe after version 3, Acrobat was by then on Advertisement the best of

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DEZIEL: There were some very significant milestones en some of the in-depth work that we’re doing, and In v.6.0 you saw the advent of some very specific that were great predictors of the ultimate success of the level of cross-functional coordination that was re- functionality targeted at the engineering job func- the product right from the beginning. You probably quired, especially considering it now involves a fam- tion, which gave us the ability to adopt a go-to-market remember that the IRS posted its tax forms in PDF ily of products, multiple platforms, the range of lan- strategy targeted at the architecture, engineering and beginning with Acrobat 1.0. That level of validation, guages in which the products are delivered, it’s been construction (AEC) segment. AEC shares many char- combined with the emergence of real, readily avail- a pretty formidable effort. For example, it has required acteristics with our very traditional creative profes- able electronic communication for the masses were close coordination with the Policy Server team, with sionals, graphic professionals and design customers. tremendous predictors of what was to come with Ac- the team working with LiveCycle Designer, with our Starting at the architect, they have requirements for robat. I know you probably ought to take some sig- Creative Suite team, as well as integration with the very strong fidelity, for very detailed technical docu- nificant credit on the topic of making the Reader free Intel-supplied 3-D technology - all while shortening ments, they’re users of specialized applications, the because I know you were right there in the fray when the development cycle by 25 percent is something for workflows tend to be pretty project-centric and very ad we struggled between v. 1.0 and 2.0 with making that which we ought to pat the folks on Bob Wulff’s team hoc - each building is unique, and the project team put business decision and eventually adopting that busi- on the back. together for that project is probably unique. From the ness model. I think that the validation we got with the structure of the industry and the way that the work- tax forms, the decision to freely distribute the Reader, FOSS: Acrobat users will be eager to see what’s flows work, AEC shares a lot with our Graphics Pro the continued commitment to multi-platform, cross- changed with the next major upgrade, as Adobe customers. It was a fairly easy move for us to begin to platform development were key factors in the success always tweaks if not overhauls the user interface integrate engineering and technical features in order and assets that we have with Acrobat, Reader and from one major version to another. I’m sure you to begin to serve the AEC market. PDF today. noticed that yourself - when you were maybe not as familiar with a previous version or two as you In Acrobat 7 we’ve added a couple things that help us FOSS: And it didn’t hurt either that co-founder had once been as a member of the team, and now go further in that direction. One is the enablement of and then-CEO John Warnock was, to put it lightly, again being intimately familiar with Acrobat 7. Review and Comment in the Adobe Reader that can pretty fond of Acrobat and PDF in those days. be initiated by Acrobat 7 Professional - that really al- DEZIEL: I recognized the product. They’d moved lows us to pursue the strategy of focusing on broader DEZIEL: John Warnock was staunch in his vision and some things around. Even today there are times when workgroup and workflow solutions. In the same way belief in the value proposition of Acrobat and PDF -- I say ‘I know it does this, but where is it.’ We’ve made as with Acrobat 2 when we realized that in order to absolutely. some tune-ups to the interface that I think are really allow people to really effectively participate in the dis- beneficial for the new users of the product, but some tribution of high-fidelity, cross-platform documents we Acrobat 7 Pro can enable Review and times throw me for a loop as an old-timer. We’re get- needed to make that consumption function in Reader Comment with free Reader 7 ting a lot more help than we used to with mapping and free, going forward with Acrobat 7 we realized that in using the features of the product, so I think that’s a order to let people fully participate in the kind of work- terrific thing. flow that we’re envisioning, we need to allow people FOSS: At the point you returned to Adobe in Au- who are outside of the firewall to participate fully in gust 2003 - a time when the technology was mark- It’s testimony to the fact that there’s a very, very broad Review and Comment as well. You can’t necessar- ing its first decade and shortly after Acrobat 6 had base of customers who are engaged in the use of the ily impose the purchase of software and you certainly begun shipping - what was happening with the product. With the last couple of releases, we have can’t dictate the training on software to people who planning and development for Acrobat 7? changed our strategy a little bit. are not directly under your control; the enabling of Re- view and Comment in the next version of Reader is DEZIEL: When I got back here, it was pretty ‘heads down’ with the final definition stages of the detailed Rather than trying to be so horizontal with each re- extending the workflow to the full suite of participants. planning. This is really for us the fastest turn of the lease, we’ve adopted a strategy of being a little more We think that’s going to drive a lot of incremental busi- product cycle that we’ve ever done with Acrobat. Giv- focused at functional areas or market segments. ness for our Acrobat Professional product. the best of

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DEZIEL: I have business responsibility for the desktop 3-D content provides ‘Wow’ factor in Acrobat 7 Pro product family. I’m principally involved with the busi- ness planning and product strategy - I have a team FOSS: What about Acrobat 7 do you think is going that works for me that is responsible for managing the to really excite people? day-to-day business aspects of the product with re- spect to pricing, how we package, and which market DEZIEL: I think there are two or three different things segments we’re pursuing with the product - for exam- that are going to be real drivers for Acrobat 7. As we ple, I have some folks on my team who are dedicated talked about already, one is the enablement of Review to driving the business into the AEC segment, I’ve got and Comment workflows for Reader users, initiated an individual who is responsible for the manufactur- by Acrobat Professional. Already just with the press ing segment and I have people with more horizontal and analyst outreach, and the beta testing we’ve done responsibilities, looking after the licensing business with that, we know we’ve got a winner on our hands - organizational purchases - as well as shrinkwrap, with that. individual-unit purchases. For our Creative Pro customers and the AEC commu- FOSS: One of the best indicators of widespread nity, the ability to engage their customers in a stream- acceptance and usage of PDF has been the range lined review-and-markup workflows - we’ve got one of international standards-oriented initiatives - customer who is using Acrobat in a big construction first came PDF/X for the prepress industry, then project who is likely to move on the order of a million an industry push to create a similar PDF/A sub- documents among 4,000 sub-contractors who is look- set aimed at long-term archiving needs and most ing at that functionality as a driver to adopting elec- recently, an effort to develop a PDF/E standard tronic workflows. for Engineering. Anything newsworthy to report on any of these efforts - especially the two newer The combination of Acrobat on the desktop as a hub ones - and/or related developments with Acrobat between ad hoc workflows and structured workflows, 7? and the kind of control that Acrobat and the LiveCycle Policy Server offer has gotten raves from the people DEZIEL: The PDF/A standard is being supported with with whom we’ve discussed it. The notion that in this the Acrobat 7 release, and we expect ISO ratification day and age, more and more of what we do reaches some time early next year. We supported it in its cur- outside our walls and engages participants who are rent draft form with Acrobat 7, and any final modifica- peripheral to our organizations, the idea that you can tion to the standard either will not require any changes control your intellectual property and streamline the FOSS: As Director of Product Marketing for Acro- or will be included as a minor patch or plug-in update. quality of workflows with Policy Server is really ex- bat, what’s been your primary responsibility and The PDF/E working group formed last year is working citing. The notion that you can dynamically manage focus with version 7? on establishing engineering specifications for devel- that content - that if I distribute something to you and oping an ISO standard based around PDF. They’re you’re out of town, and your laptop gets stolen, or I working on a draft specification now and I think they’re distribute something to you and you choose to leave on track to have that initial draft completed by end of the company and go to a competitor, that I can revoke this calendar year. your access to the confidential information that you physically had on your person is something that we’ve dreamed about for many years. It’s now a reality, in the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 17/81 a form that is light-weight, easy and affordable for documentation that it’s mostly used for today. The organizations. The rights travel with the documents idea is that a 3-D element can be included in a re- - you can make as many copies as you want, it’s still pair and maintenance manual or a training course or dynamically under control. You can extend the rights technical documentation that’s distributed to users of to those documents. You can add somebody else to these kinds of items is very attractive. For us it offers the list to whom you want to give access after the fact. a lot of leverage into things like our FrameMaker user The integration with Acrobat 7 and making the appli- base as well. cation of a policy as easy to use as selecting an item from a menu has just got people really agog. The theme around the business strategy for Acrobat 7 is to further Adobe’s enterprise strategy by extending For the ‘Wow’ factor, you can’t leave the ability to place the Acrobat franchise and the Reader franchise from and view 3-D content in PDFs off the list. If you want concentrating on individual productivity to workgroups to get people with their tongues hanging out, the 3-D and workgroup solutions. To make sure that the Acro- content that will be enabled by having viewing content bat/desktop is part of the conversation that our enter- natively integrated into the half billion Readers that prise team has at the CIO level, by making sure that we’ve distributed is, we think, going to deliver a lot of we’re tightly integrated with our server products and acceleration to the adoption of 3-D content beyond our value proposition there along the lines with what just the specific technical we’re doing with the LiveCycle Policy Server. Further along in that direction, we’re bundling the LiveCycle Designer with Acrobat Pro v.7 in order to accelerate

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volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 18/81 the development of that portion of the market. If you’re the development of that portion of the market. If you’re FOSS: Another outstanding Mac issue that’s re- coming to the forms development path from a classic coming to the forms development path from a classic solved with Acrobat 7 is the return of the capabil- graphics or interface designer perspective, the tools graphics or interface designer perspective, the tools ity to view PDFs inside a Web browser (without a you’ll see in Designer are familiar and comfortable. you’ll see in Designer are familiar and comfortable. third-party plug-in), which disappeared in Acrobat But if you happen to be coming at it from the direction But if you happen to be coming at it from the direction 6. Which Mac-based browsers will be supported? of the individual in IT who has to be responsible for of the individual in IT who has to be responsible for plugging the content back in and processing the con- plugging the content back in and processing the con- tent of the form, you’re just as comfortable. You can tent of the form, you’re just as comfortable. You can get the XML view, you can import an XML schema, get the XML view, you can import an XML schema, you can start from the data or you can start from the you can start from the data or you can start from the design, either way. It’s a terrific way for us to provide design, either way. It’s a terrific way for us to provide increased penetration of the kinds of really, truly intel- increased penetration of the kinds of really, truly intel- ligent documents that are going to be the foundation ligent documents that are going to be the foundation of our penetration into the enterprise. of our penetration into the enterprise.

FOSS: This will be the full-featured version of De- signer bundled with the Windows version of Acro- bat 7 Professional - so will Designer continue to exist as a separate commercial product?

DEZIEL: We’ll also continue to offer it as a stand- DEZIEL: It will support Apple’s Safari browser on the alone product because there are some specialized, Macintosh. single-purpose users in the market. FOSS: Earlier you mentioned the ‘500 million cop- FOSS: Designer is one of a number of extra-value, ies of Reader’ that Adobe has distributed during Windows-only features in Acrobat 7 Pro, which the lifetime of the product. Is that still the official sort of begs the question, what will enthuse Ma- figure? It seems Adobe has been using that figure cintosh users about the new release? What will for a while now, and it’s likely the actual count has make them happy? gone even higher given the growing visibility of PDFs, especially with Adobe’s push into the enter- The theme around the business strategy for Acrobat 7 DEZIEL: There are a really rich suite of new tools for prise market. And with regard to the new Reader, is to further Adobe’s enterprise strategy by extending the Creative Professional that I am certain will bring can you tell us about the perceived value of Ado- the Acrobat franchise and the Reader franchise from smiles to the faces of our Macintosh users. Again, the be’s new relationship with Yahoo, which includes concentrating on individual productivity to workgroups Review and Comment is very attractive; and there are the option of searching PDFs on the Internet us- and workgroup solutions. To make sure that the Acro- a number of prepress, preflight, fix-up tools designed ing Yahoo as well as Google, the latter which was bat/desktop is part of the conversation that our enter- to streamline and improve the process of print produc- available with version 6? prise team has at the CIO level, by making sure that tion so service bureaus will be happy. And surprisingly we’re tightly integrated with our server products and enough, PDFMaker for Microsoft Publisher is an at- DEZIEL: We know the actual number is way north of our value proposition there along the lines with what tractive feature for our Creative Pro and service pro- that, but we just don’t have the site instrumented to we’re doing with the LiveCycle Policy Server. Further vider customers who tend to be Mac users but are not worry about being really, really precise about having along in that direction, we’re bundling the LiveCycle happy with receiving and trying/print Publisher files. a counter that’s turning over so we can update the of- Designer with Acrobat Pro v.7 in order to accelerate ficial number regularly. the best of

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As for Yahoo, it’s a long-term strategic partnership as some of the specialized, application-specific PDF- and the level of fragmentation in that market in terms aimed at bridging online and offline content from the Maker support for AutoCAD. of form factors and resolution is tremendous, and yet user’s perspective. Initially we will be distributing a one file format and the fact that we’ve published the custom Yahoo toolbar with Reader that will give users FOSS: The third member of the commercial prod- specification means that not only Adobe but other or- access to both Adobe and Yahoo services like Cre- uct family is Acrobat Elements, sold in its previ- ganizations can develop viewers for specific platforms atePDF online, as well as integrating Yahoo search ous version as a low-end, volume-licensing solu- that might be of interest to them. into Reader. Longer term we are looking at develop- tion to large enterprise customers. Anything new ing products and services together like a hosted ser- there with the coming release, and how success- FOSS: Can you talk a little about Adobe’s interest vice to capture web pages as PDF documents. ful has this product been to date? in and future plans for UNIX and Linux?

DEZIEL: We’ll be offering it in a minimum of 100 DEZIEL: As you know, we’ve had support for UNIX units beginning in December, rather than the previ- from 1.0 version of Acrobat. We’ve had a Linux Reader ous 1,000-unit minimum. It still won’t be available as a available since version 5.0, so as the platform matures FOSS: What’s the timeline for the release/ship- retail product or in single units, but we’re lowering the and increases its penetration and adoption among ping of the Acrobat 7 products, and is the pricing unit minimum for licensing. We’ve been very pleased organizations we’ll continue to evaluate business op- set - including upgrades? with Elements adoption; we see it being adopted portunities that Linux offers us. Right now where we when companies want reliable PDF creation capabili- really see the business opportunity to be resting is on DEZIEL: We’re looking at English-language version ty across the board. We wanted to capture more small the server side of the business. We are investing in by the end of the 2004 calendar year, with the French, businesses as well as drive departmental adoption. the Reader for Linux on an ongoing basis. German and Japanese versions by early 2005 and the remaining languages and platforms to follow on in FOSS: Has your recent work history at Palm and FOSS: Thanks again, Pam, for sharing your in- fairly short order. We have made no really substantial with a wireless startup given you an enhanced in- sights with Planet PDF’s Acrobat-savvy readers changes to the v. 6.x pricing - single-unit estimated terest and insight into some of the new places, and visitors. We look forward to talking with you street prices are the same. There are some minor devices, platforms and operating systems where again after Acrobat 7 ships. adjustments in the upgrade pricing and licensing, but PDF and the free Reader are now available, and the base, single-unit pricing is the same for Acrobat 7, into future developments? What’s New with Adobe Standard and Professional versions. LiveCycle Designer 7.0 DEZIEL: It has actually. I’ve got a pretty varied back- By Chris Dahl CTO ARTS PDF Global Services FOSS: With Acrobat 6, Adobe returned to the con- ground in terms of software development, from Mac cept of a family of products, and for at least a while, to UNIX to Palm OS to Java-based operating systems Earlier this year, Adobe released Adobe Designer 6.0 some people were having trouble differentiating to some mobile devices, so it gives me a good ability to the general public, which finally gave people an in- between Standard and Pro and wondering which to help assess market opportunity and plan for which tuitive and effective way of designing PDF forms. De- they really needed. Have you done anything with platforms we’re going to move to going forward. You signer was the first real solution for solving the prob- v.7 to help further differentiate those products? may have noticed that we announced a while back the lem of controlling layout and adding interactivity to a adoption of the Adobe Reader by Sony for one of their form from the single application*. This release also DEZIEL: I think you’ll find that people see Profes- in-car navigational devices. It’s testimony to the power incorporated Adobe’s XDP file format, and a number sional as being increasingly differentiated with the 7.0 of PDF and the real benefits of platform independence of key features such as the ability to closely integrate release. The two most obvious are the inclusion in that we can take the viewer to so many different plat- and bind your forms with databases, web services Professional of the LiveCycle Designer and the ability forms and the content can move as seamlessly as it and XML schemas. to enable Reader Comments. The ability to place 3-D can. It’s a huge value to users. The platform complex- content is also only available in Professional, as well ity that we see is not in any way, shape or form dimin- In this article I’ve highlighted what I think are the im- ishing. There are 500 million mobile devices out there the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 20/81 portant new features to be added with the version 7.0 In the past many people have been caused a lot of release. grief (just do a search on the forums) due to discover- ing that the mailDoc() method in Acrobat JavaScript Note: Information on the release of v6.0 of Adobe Design- only works with the full version of Adobe Acrobat and er can be found at Planet PDF here. not Adobe Reader. Now when the PDF form has been created in Designer 7.0 and the Email Submit Button Dynamic PDF Forms (without Form Server!) is used, when the user clicks this button they’re able Dynamic forms prove their worth when you have a to email or extract the form data to disk. Further to section of a form where there are varying amounts that, they are coached through the whole process with of data. For example, a customer’s invoice may have a nice step by step assistant (see Figure 1). three or just the one item listed as being purchased. So you want to be able to grow/shrink a particular part of your form dynamically. Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7.0 allows you to do this, with all the processing done on the client-side using Acrobat/Reader 7.0 (thus, it requires you open the PDF in v7.0 Acrobat or Read- Figure 2. Ability to save data file to disk. er). If either ‘Internet Email’ or ‘Other’ is selected, then a To utilize dynamic PDF forms with version 6.0 of Ado- dialog will appear allowing them to export the data file be Designer, it required you to use Adobe Form Serv- to their local drive. Again, this too (using the expor- er to pre-populate the form with the data on the server tAsFDF and exportAsXFDF methods) could not be before it’s delivered to the user. Now, with Designer done with the free Reader when the form was created 7.0 this dynamic population of data can be completed in Acrobat. on the client-side. Whilst Form Server is a great prod- uct and has its uses for particular tasks, this is good Paper Forms Barcodes news for those who may not want to invest (or cannot Another new form control that you’ll find in Designer invest) the time and resources for deploying a more 7.0 is the Paper Forms Barcode. Built into this control complex server-based solution - but would still like to Figure 1. Selecting the type of email client to use is logic that automatically updates the barcode to rep- take advantage of using dynamic PDF forms. Relating to the screenshot shown in Figure 1 above, resent the current form data the user has keyed into the form so far. Note: Check back once Acrobat 7.0 is shipping for an ex- if the user selects ‘Desktop Email Application’ then ample of a dynamic PDF form in action. when they click ‘OK’ an email message will appear with the data file attached and default text in the to, What this means is that when filled out and printed, this barcode can be scanned using a 2D barcode Email Form Submissions subject and body fields. scanner and the data will be decoded and extracted Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7 introduced a new type and processed (e.g. insert information into company of form control called the Email Submit Button. This If either ‘Internet Email’ or ‘Other’ is selected, then a database system). new control type allows a form designer to explicitly dialog will appear allowing them to export the data file set the button to email the form data to a particular to their local drive. Again, this too (using the expor- email address. The big plus however is the fact that tAsFDF and exportAsXFDF methods) could not be it works with both the full version of Acrobat and the done with the free Reader when the form was created free Reader. in Acrobat. the best of

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Additionally, you can specify (when designing the form interview follows. 7.0, thus exposing them to extensive subliminal mes- in Designer) whether you want the extracted data to sages on the Adobe site. be in formatted XML or a tab-delimited format. DAN SHEA, Planet PDF Editor: In your opinion, what is the best thing about the new Acrobat 7.0 SHEA: Do you think the activation of commenting This would be a great timesaver for instances where product family? functionality is something that Adobe will make users currently fill out a form online, print and return it available to 3rd-parties - in other words, do you via mail: rather than having to manually key in the in- CLAUDIA MCCUE, Principal, Practicalia: That’s a think that developers will be permitted to enable formation it can instead be scanned with the informa- tough one: there are improvements across the board the enhanced functionality with plug-ins or stand- tion being processed automatically. Additionally, with - improved speed, refined interface, enhanced appeal alone applications? the decoded data being in XML format this makes for to a wide audience, from architectural users to the a smooth integration with other 3rd party systems. graphic arts. If I have to pick just one aspect, it would MCCUE: Hard to say; since Reader 7.0 allows the be the greatly improved speed of launch and overall main functions of commenting (making comments, Note: There are particular restrictions regarding adding responsiveness. as well as importing and exporting them), most gen- usage rights (using LiveCycle Reader Extensions) to your eral needs would be met by the built-in capabilities. I barcoded PDF forms that you should be aware of. Details SHEA: What are 2-3 cool features of the new re- can’t see any benefit to Adobe in protecting this ter- can be found at the Adobe website. leases (big or small)? ritory: if there are markets for proprietary or complex implementations of commenting, especially if imple- Claudia McCue: MCCUE: mentation is only possible via full-blown Acrobat, it’s First Impressions of Acrobat 7.0 • Print Production Toolbar (especially the Ink Man- to Adobe’s benefit to expose the hooks to plug-in de- ager) velopers, spurring more sales of Acrobat. By Dan Shea Planet PDF Editor • Enabling PDFs for Reader users to comment Advertisement A seasoned professional speaker, the Principal of in- • Enabling Reader users to export and email form dependent training provider Practicalia has been an data active participant on expert panels around the US for years, but hasn’t always walked this path. After previ- SHEA: With Acrobat 7.0 Professional, it will be ous stints in applied science, production art and film possible to activate full commenting functionality stripping, Claudia McCue “segued into being a trainer” for users of the free Reader on a per-document after attending an inspiringly bad software class and basis. This represents a major shift in Adobe’s resolving that there must be a better way. previous policy of not allowing changes to be saved in Reader. What impact do you think this These days, she describes herself as a graphic arts will have on document review processes around trainer and consultant whose role is “teaching design- the world? ers and printers to understand each others’ needs, so that they’ll stop making each other miserable.” Facili- MCCUE: I suppose it’s a mixed blessing to provide tating the graphic arts equivalent of world peace is a more opportunities for more people to gripe :-) (In the daunting task, but this erstwhile “chemistry major with olden days, we used to trim off excess white areas artistic leanings” takes it all in stride. of contract proofs to discourage mark-up. Then some twit invented PostIt Notes...) I suspect that, initially, it When I approached Claudia about her first impres- will stall some sales of full Acrobat. But it may have sions of Adobe’s major PDF software release, she the long-term effect of spurring interest in the full ver- was more than happy to oblige. The full text of the sion, by forcing laggard users to download Reader the best of

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SHEA: OK, let’s look at the other side: is there Wow-it’s the Microwave Acrobat! One downside: This features? How do they compare with what has anything that you would like to have seen that’s will make us impatient with other applications... Hurry historically been possible with specialized plug- not in v7.0? up, Photoshop! ins?

MCCUE: It’s still difficult to dig down and select ele- SHEA: Any general observations on feature parity MCCUE: The Print Production tools do add some very ments with the TouchUp Object tool. I confess that I between the Windows and Macintosh versions? useful capabilities. The Ink Manager, borrowed from keep a copy of Acrobat 5.0 for just that purpose. InDesign, allows remapping of spot colors - for ex- MCCUE: It’s a relief to be able to view PDFs in a ample, combining “PMS 123 CVC” and “Pantone 123 And I’m disappointed that, while Reader allows ex- browser on the Mac again (although, apparently, only C” and “Spot Yellow” for output on the correct single porting of data as XML from forms (if they were cre- in Safari). At least, this facilitates forms submission on plate. The ability to convert RGB content to CMYK ated in Forms Designer), it still refuses to allow saving the Macintosh. within Acrobat is great: previously, you were at the a filled-out form. mercy of your RIP’s conversion LUTs [look-up tables], I’m disappointed that PDFMaker is still so anemic on and generally disappointed by the conversion. These SHEA: In forums and at conferences, one issue the Mac: it’s slow, and can’t even translate hyperlinks two additions are very valuable for prepress. that just keeps coming up -- particularly since (although it does tag for accessibility and reflow). It the release of v6.0 -- is the slow loading times of asks each time where the Printer Setup Utility is, and The forensic tools have been enhanced-Output Pre- Acrobat. With the Acrobat 7.0 family, Adobe has there are no options for controlling PDF output. I have view provides more granular control while playing tackled this head-on with the creation of a “speed both PCs and Macs, and when I need full functionality, “what’s wrong with this picture.” While it’s thoughtful launcher” for Windows users in addition to oth- I just use a PC. But not all Mac users have a computer that Reader is now capable of Overprint Preview, it er tweaks for both Mac and Windows platforms. for each hand. would have been more thoughtful to make the on/off What do you think of the changes, and have you control available in a toolbar, rather than buried in noticed any significant improvements in perfor- As many others do [by which I mean Max], I lament Preferences. mance with v7.0? that Forms Designer is Windows-only. Since I’m plat- form-bilingual, I’m not terribly hampered by that limita- But third-party plug-ins like PitStop, ARTS PDF Aeri- MCCUE: Here are my results: tion, but it is as if Adobe thinks nobody builds forms alist and Quite A Box of Tricks don’t have anything to MacOS X 10.3.5; G4 1.5GHz PowerBook; 1G RAM on the Mac. Perhaps there are operating system is- fear from this release: to do extensive editing, those sues that hinder porting Designer to the Mac (I can’t add-ons are still necessary. • Acrobat 6.0 Pro: 12 seconds say: I’m not a programmer), but surely there’s a way • Distiller 6.0: 5 seconds to provide some of the functionality of Designer for SHEA: How you think this will affect the PDF pre- • Acrobat 7.0 Pro [beta 5]: 2.5 seconds Macintosh users. Whether there’s sufficient market press 3rd-party plug-in development “ecosystem” • Distiller 7 [beta 5]: 6 seconds (slower than v.6) incentive, given that Windows Acrobat users no doubt going forward? outnumber Macintosh users, I can’t say. Maybe this is WinXP Pro, SP1; IBM ThinkPad 1.7GHz; 1G RAM an attractive opportunity for some Mac developers... MCCUE: While Acrobat 7.0 Professional ventures more deeply into preflighting and editing PDFs, it’s • Acrobat 6.0 Pro: 4 seconds SHEA: As with Acrobat 6.0, Adobe has added a still necessary for 3rd-party suppliers to provide all • Distiller 6.0: 2 seconds significant amount of functionality for creative the tailored solutions required by particular workflows. • Acrobat 7.0 Pro [beta 5]: <1 second (first launch was professionals and designers. In particular, key While some small “one-trick pony” developers may be 14 seconds, but following launches were almost in- features that were previously the domain of such rendered redundant, plug-in vendors like ARTS PDF, stantaneous) 3rd-party plug-ins as Enfocus PitStop Profes- Enfocus and Quite, as well as server-side providers • Distiller 7 [beta 5]: <1 second (first launch was 21 sional have now been added to the Pro version of like Appligent and ActivePDF, all sell solutions that I seconds, but subsequent launches instantaneous) Acrobat. What do you think of the new prepress think Adobe is unlikely to incorporate anytime soon. the best of

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SHEA: How likely do you think it is that Adobe will Drawing on his fluency in English, German, French, for users of the free Reader on a per-document expand Acrobat’s prepress functionality in future “restaurant-Italian” and “sushi-Japanese,” Wyss’s ex- basis. This represents a major shift in Adobe’s editions? If it is to be upgraded, do you think that perience in technical writing and translation combine previous policy of not allowing changes to be the additional functionality is more likely to be with a solid engineering background to round out a saved in Reader. What impact do you think this bought or built? Why? formidable CV. Planet PDF caught up with the PRO- will have on document review processes around DOK Engineering principal to chat about the recent the world? MCCUE: I think the likelihood of including enhanced release of Adobe’s Acrobat 7.0 product family, which prepress tools depends on Adobe’s perception of ships with an updated and renamed forms application WYSS: Probably not much at the beginning. This which market is more promising: enterprise or the in Adobe LiveCycle Designer. feature first has to be discovered. However, for the graphic arts. If prepress support is further enhanced, ones who have discovered and mastered it, it will be I’d expect Adobe to buy rather than build. The full interview text follows. of great benefit. And it will bring more safety into any commenting process, because the basis for the com- SHEA: The entry-level license for Acrobat Ele- DAN SHEA, Planet PDF Editor: In your opinion, menting is fixed and known (as opposed to sending ments has been reduced from 1,000 seats to 100 what is the best thing about the new Acrobat 7.0 around Word or other files which can easily be modi- seats for version 7.0. What impact do you think product family? fied). this will have on the competitive landscape in the lower-end of PDF creation tools? MAX WYSS, Principal, PRODOK Engineering: That Saving changes in Reader has been around since it is here. Reader 5.1, if the document has the according Ex- MCCUE: I have no idea how well Elements sold at tended Rights. The new thing with Acrobat 7 is that the the 1,000-seat minimum; I suspect that the high entry This might need some little explanation. With some right to assign this right has been brought to Acrobat, threshold contributed to the increase in inexpensive exceptions, Acrobat 6 has not been at the standard and does not require a Reader Extensions Server. (or free) third-party PDF-creation tools. If those solu- that one expects from Adobe, and I think I have made tions have gained a foothold in the interim, lowering that opinion quite clear in my messages on the forum. SHEA: Do you think the activation of commenting the entry fee for what is essentially a beheaded Dis- As a result, something that can replace Acrobat 6 is functionality is something that Adobe will make tiller may not substantially increase its appeal. more than welcome. available to 3rd-parties - in other words, do you think that developers will be permitted to enable Max Wyss: First Impressions of Acrobat It is a solid evolutionary step. the enhanced functionality with plug-ins or stand- 7.0 alone applications? SHEA: What are 2-3 cool features of the new re- Dan Shea By Planet PDF Editor leases (big or small)? WYSS: I doubt it, considering Adobe’s recent track re- cord in proprietarizing (hey, that’s a new word!) parts Styled “The guru of PDF scripting,” this genial Swiss’s WYSS: of the PDF format and Acrobat. Still, you never know. expertise with PDF-based forms has seen him in great demand as a speaker and consultant on four • The ability to add the Extended Rights required for SHEA: OK, let’s look at the other side: is there continents. Wyss’s legendary JavaScript-based inter- e-mail based commenting anything that you would like to have seen that’s active forms have been known to draw gasps even - Browser support for Safari (well, I don’t know wheth- not in v7.0? from Adobe programmers! In addition to running in- er it is cool or not, but the promise has finally been tensive workshops on PDF technology in Germany, fulfilled.) WYSS: Full platform parity. The Acrobat 7.0 package the US and his native Switzerland, he is also an active is crippleware for OSX, because one big component participant in online forums (including the Planet PDF SHEA: With Acrobat 7.0 Professional, it will be is missing (the form designer), and some parts are Forum.) possible to activate full commenting functionality incomplete (the MS Office integration). Integration is the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 24/81 a sore spot anyway, as there are very few applications The reason for including the forms designer is howev- So, my advice to forms experts about whether to make that are supported. For instance, Outlook is support- er pretty obvious. Adobe wants to get their user base the move to start using the forms designer is: “Think ed, but no other mail clients - not even some that are upgraded to 7.0 at all costs. twice; there will be serious consequences.” very important in the enterprise environment. SHEA: Adobe is obviously encouraging form de- However, I fear that, because the forms designer is Also, there is still no official word about support of signers to use LiveCycle Designer for forms de- available “for free,” many pointy-haireds will force their Unix (except OS X), particularly Linux. sign, but making this move will obviously also in- secretaries to use the forms designer ... without train- volve additional software and training costs. What ing, of course. It reminds me of when the first range of SHEA: The entry-level license for Acrobat Ele- are some of the benefits that can be realized by Desktop Publishing applications were released, when ments has been reduced from 1,000 seats to 100 using Designer over AcroForms? anybody and everybody thought that they could make seats for version 7.0. What impact do you think things themselves, without professional support ... the this will have on the competitive landscape in WYSS: A very good question. Actually, I don’t see that results were, accordingly terrible. the lower-end of PDF creation tools? What ef- many immediate advantages of the XDP format over fect, if any, do you think it will have on the use of AcroForms in the general environment. In a closed SHEA: Designer is a part of the Adobe’s LiveCycle forms? enterprise environment, the aforementioned database product range, aimed at the higher-end of busi- connectivity is an advantage, and the closeness to ness where require more sophisticated PDF solu- WYSS: Well, there are good third-party products that XML has its merits. On the other hand, there is much tions are required. However does this mean that were available at lower minimum number of seats. If better control over things with AcroForms. users need any of the other LiveCycle products Adobe didn’t want to lose against these products, it (e.g. LiveCycle Forms, LiveCycle Form Manager) had to adjust the licensing requirements. Now, the SHEA: Are there any “hidden issues” of which to be able to use Designer for their form design? competition is a little bit better. current AcroForm designers should be aware be- Please explain... fore making the jump across to Designer? SHEA: Adobe LiveCycle Designer now ships with WYSS: I would phrase it like this: for whatever is not Acrobat 7.0 Professional (version 6 of Designer WYSS: Well, the main issue is called “burning the explicitly stated to be possible without them, you will was purchased separately), giving users unprece- bridges after you.” Switching to XDP (which is what need one of the server products. That may be over- dented control over form design “out-of-the-box.” happens by using the forms designer) means that all simplified, but one should test it out before making What difference do you think this will make to the the users must be upgraded to Acrobat (Reader) 7 the “big jump.” The first of the server products needed uptake of Designer over Acrobat as a form-author- in order to make full use of the designer’s features. is probably the Reader Extensions Server, depending ing tool? Acrobat (Reader) 6.02 may work for some features, on the size of the enterprise. The Forms Manager can but anything older will likely have more serious prob- be a very interesting development support tool, and WYSS: Acrobat was never a forms-authoring tool; lems. may well pay off if configured and licensed to support it was a component in the forms authoring process the correct number of forms. (with some exceptions, where the forms creator actu- Whether it is possible to upgrade the users will de- ally started with a blank PDF and did everything with pend a lot on the circumstances. For an open envi- SHEA: What’s the chance that future versions of fields). ronment, as we have in the Government and General Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader won’t support Public field, one can forget about that for another 3 the AcroForms style of PDF forms, forcing people Designer has its great advantages, and does make years or so, and the willingness to upgrade in big cor- to move across to Designer to create compatible life a lot easier in a closed enterprise environment, porations is questionable too, considering the cost of PDF forms? because database connectivity is a lot easier to ac- testing and approving a new application for full de- complish. ployment. In my experience, that can very easily get WYSS: That chance is very high. It could be that us- in to 6 figures. ing AcroForms forms will be available for a bit longer, the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 25/81 but creating and managing AcroForms might be aban- Advertisement Duff Johnson: First Impressions doned pretty soon. That is speculation at the moment, of Acrobat 7.0 and I don’t think that Adobe can afford not to listen to By Dan Shea Planet PDF Editor their customers about these issues. Keep in mind that many of the Reference Customers are not operating in a closed enterprise environment, and therefore have One of the pioneers introducing PDF to the enterprise, to adapt to what the end users have. That means that Duff Johnson founded Document Solutions, Inc. in AcroForms will have to remain the primary choice for 1996 to leverage the power of the then-emerging PDF another couple of years. format in publishing and business communications. From MultiResolution processing to innovative con- SHEA: How easy or difficult is it to migrate forms tent interfaces, Document Solutions, Inc. has devel- across from Acrobat to LiveCycle Designer? What oped scores of PDF technology solutions for publish- do you think are the key considerations here? ing, manufacturing, service and government clients worldwide. A visionary promoter of the PDF format at WYSS: It is easy to burn the bridges after you, but you seminars and trade-shows, Johnson now lends his may get stuck... expertise to Planet PDF as a Contributing Editor to advance understanding of the place, power and po- SHEA: Since Acrobat 5.0, JavaScript has offered a tential of electronic documents and the increasingly simple yet flexible way to automate time-consum- important role for PDF in the modern enterprise. ing or laborious tasks. What’s new for JavaScript coders in v7.0? Going hand-in-hand with his role as an evangelist of PDF in the enterprise, Johnson is also inevitably be- WYSS: The documentation grew by almost 50% from come familiar with the intricacies of Accessibility and the Acrobat 6 JavaScript documentation, but it now in- Section 508 compliance. So much so, in fact, that he cludes the Multimedia part, which was previously con- has written a Learning Center on the topic, and helps tained in its own document. There is a series of new clients achieve compliance and usability through his objects, and some previously undocumented features work with Document Solutions. have now been documented. I recently caught up with him to ask about his first im- The biggest change concerning JavaScript is as far pressions of the Acrobat 7.0 product family, and his as I could see is that the Menu event is no longer responses were interesting to say the least... The full privileged. This introduces compatibility issues, and interview text follows. will break quite a few applications. DAN SHEA, Planet PDF Editor: In your opinion, SHEA: Thanks for your time, Max. what is the best thing about the new Acrobat 7.0 product family?

DUFF JOHNSON, Principal, Document Solutions, Inc.: The single best thing about the new Acrobat is the emergence of explicit links between server and desktop. By making users aware of the possibilities the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 26/81 in Reader Extensions and of tools such as the Policy saved in Reader. What impact do you think this fully architected, scripted and reality-tested workflows, Server, Adobe may finally begin to access the enor- will have on document review processes around developed by expensive and erratic IS consultants. mous leveraging power implied by the ubiquity of the world? Sound familiar? On the other hand, as with Microsoft’s Reader. server-ware, there may be a real opportunity here for JOHNSON: Successful near-term adoption of Ac- Application Service Providers to pick up Adobe’s new It’s pretty obvious that Adobe has dramatically boost- robat’s new commenting features will tend to be re- power tools. ed the Acrobat/PDF development budget. I suspect stricted to large corporate environments; organiza- that development resources are now commensurate tions investing substantial internal or paid-for setup SHEA: Do you think the activation of commenting with Acrobat’s significance in terms of projected rev- time and significant end-user training to establish an functionality is something that Adobe will make enue growth for Adobe. Acrobat is now a truly vast effective and realistic infrastructure for trusted docu- available to 3rd-parties - in other words, do you program, less a toolbox and more of a colossal work- ment collaboration. One elephant in the living room think that developers will be permitted to enable shop. is end-user facility with MS Word - not really Adobe’s the enhanced functionality with plug-ins or stand- problem, perhaps, but a key consideration in making alone applications? SHEA: What are 2-3 cool features of the new re- a really tight comment and review system actually leases (big or small)? work. Everyone on the reviewing circuit needs to be JOHNSON: In strategic terms, the flip side of the coin deeply (and equally) comfortable with Word, and as that Adobe played when they allowed 3rd party de- JOHNSON: knowledgeable and trusting of the Commenting envi- velopers to create PDF files was the knowledge that ronment as everyone else. Users will have to conform Adobe would retain ownership of Adobe Reader. • Allowing Reader users to add comments is just the to new and precise conventions intricately woven into Doubtless they’ll thank you for asking, but unless the bomb. And it’s just the beginning. a well-considered workflow. This is not easy, nor, fol- business terms are very favorable, I would expect to lowing a long tradition, has Adobe made it obvious. see Adobe restricting Reader Extensions activation to • The new Organizer is crude, but represents an inter- Adobe products for the time being, if not longer! esting move. If this tool turns out to have any real- In short, the system may seem to have a gentle learn- world appeal, watch for Adobe to further smooth PDF ing curve, but will be intolerant of poor training or slop- SHEA: OK, let’s look at the other side: is there creation functions to really integrate the end-prod- py usage - common qualities in the real world. anything that you would like to have seen that’s ucts of scanning, conversion from Word and PDFs not in v7.0? created elsewhere. If Adobe could craft a simple yet It’s often forgotten that many senior document au- effective electronic document creation-and-archive thors tend to regard this stuff as voodoo - something JOHNSON: I’d like to see 10% of the software de- system in the next generation of Organizer, Acrobat that might sound neat in theory, but seems sufficiently velopment costs dedicated instead to developing full- would have a shot at the desktop document man- technical that surely the IS department should deal featured by-the-numbers guides, assessment tools, agement (PaperPort et al.) market as well! with it... right? To the IS folks, sure, they can under- recommendations, training scenarios, workflow task stand and implement the basics, and maybe even sets and other “demonstration” and teach-by-example • Image-enhancement features alongside OCR, built support it, but do they know what the document au- assets. Another 10% of the budget should go to mak- right into the scanning interface. Hmm... ScanSoft, thors, reviewers and managers want to do with it? ing sure these dialogs and messages are as intuitive, look out! well-written and horizontally comprehensible as pos- Acrobat 7.0, while adding power features galore, is sible. not a lens for thinking about document management. SHEA: With Acrobat 7.0 Professional, it will be The documentation offers no real perspective on user My advice to Adobe would be simple; focus at all possible to activate full commenting functionality needs, and predictably shies away from meaningful times on helping the CFOs and CIOs understand ex- for users of the free Reader on a per-document workflow recommendations. Any really substantive actly how high-level use of Acrobat and PDF will save basis. This represents a major shift in Adobe’s business use of these new features will require care- them money - and that includes being honest about previous policy of not allowing changes to be the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 27/81 what it will take to make this stuff really work. noticed any significant improvements in perfor- this will have on the competitive landscape in the mance with v7.0? lower-end of PDF creation tools? SHEA: As with Acrobat 6.0, Adobe has added a significant amount of functionality for creative JOHNSON: Yes, the launch time has been dramati- JOHNSON: I suspect that dropping the minimum Ele- professionals and designers. For instance, key cally improved under Windows XP. Adding additional ments license from 1,000 to 100 seats is primarily a features that were previously the domain of such plugins slows down the startup, but the vast majority defensive move by Adobe, who have sensed that the 3rd-party plug-ins as Enfocus PitStop Profes- of Acrobat users won’t need extra plugins now, will prevailing laissez-faire attitude was going a bit too far sional have now been added to the Pro version they? in the lower end of the PDF creation arena. Aware of Acrobat. How you think this and other changes that most people buy Acrobat simply to make PDFs, will affect the PDF 3rd-party development “eco- At the same time as the launch and initial interface and watching 3rd parties step into PDF creation in a system” going forward? have been streamlined, the Acrobat 7.0 Pro interface big way, Adobe concluded that adding pressure to this is sliding stealthily towards the vertical-professional market-space would help push their competition to- JOHNSON: It’s not clear that Adobe feels they really world exemplified by Photoshop. Crack open the de- wards the lower end of the business that Adobe would need the 3rd party plugin developer world; they pay ceptively simple menus and buttons, and you’ll goggle prefer not to service anyway. it lip service at best. Success with PDF breeds 3rd at vast new landscapes of menus, buttons, tabs and party interest anyhow, so Adobe can take what they dialogs. You can choose from 13 navigation tabs, 7 Adobe wants IT purchasers to clearly understand that want and leave the rest. It should be abundantly clear subject-oriented collections of menu items optimisti- they can be “real” PDF people, just like the larger by this point that Adobe has no fear of loading Ac- cally called Task Buttons and 17 possible Toolbars. companies, or they can tinker with 3rd party desktop robat Professional with the feature list equivalent of Acrobat’s Preferences dialog alone now includes 29 PDF creation meant for the hoi polloi. There’s more several kitchen sinks. The 3rd party world certainly categories of Preferences, several with their own ex- than snobbery going on here. Adobe’s real ace in the has its uses for Adobe - as low-cost arms-length R&D, tensive submenus. hole is Reader Extensions. if nothing else. Among the legion of new menu items you’ll find Ac- SHEA: Can you please give us a rundown of what’s What does A7 mean for developers? I’d guess that robat 6’s Review Tracker now renamed just Tracker, new, cool and perhaps not-so-cool about accessi- there’s a future in tailored middleware that builds on and is located on both the old View and the new Com- bility in Acrobat 7.0? Adobe’s core server offerings for implementation on ments menus. Since their fancy new creations depend corporate content systems and within ASP business on adherence to strict workflows on a click-by-click JOHNSON: There’s lots of accessibility news in Ac- models. PDF is now so powerful that it’s a veritable basis, giving users two ways to identify with the Track- robat 7.0 “platform” in it’s own right. Otherwise, the only part of er seems almost... quaint. Perhaps (more likely) they the market Adobe doesn’t seem to want for itself is the simply lost touch with the old position of the Tracker The uniquely difficult task that Adobe confronts with low-volume desktop PDF creation market - those unit (if you’ll pardon the metaphor) in the blizzard of new PDF accessibility revolves around reliably interpreting prices have been deemed undesirable in San Jose. menus, tools and dialogs. We’ll likely never know. wildly unstructured content in such a way as to make it comprehensible and satisfactorily usable when “ren- SHEA: In forums and at conferences, one issue dered” as XML or even simply as a stream of text. With that just keeps coming up - particularly since this heavy burden in mind, Adobe has made some the release of v6.0 - is the slow loading times of real progress in providing desktop tools to speed and Acrobat. With the Acrobat 7.0 family, Adobe has smooth the process of making simpler PDF files truly tackled this head-on with the creation of a “speed accessible, and complex files within reach. launcher” for Windows users in addition to oth- SHEA: The entry-level license for Acrobat Ele- er tweaks for both Mac and Windows platforms. ments has been reduced from 1,000 seats to 100 PDF Maker has been substantially upgraded, with What do you think of the changes, and have you seats for version 7.0. What impact do you think better automatic structural tagging of simple and a the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 28/81 credible attempt with even some complex documents, laugh to think that Adobe might be trying, however DAN SHEA, Planet PDF Editor: In your opinion, including far more reliable handling of links. Sadly, hesitantly, to lead the way on accessibility. Notwith- what is the best thing about the new Acrobat 7.0 links made with PDF Maker still may target only the standing the company’s admittedly episodic interest product family? top of the target page. There’s still no decent solution in the subject, progress has clearly been made. It in PDF to get a JAWS user to land on some content in remains increasingly up to accessibility software de- CHRIS DAHL, CTO, ARTS PDF Global Services: This the middle of the page. velopers to take the relatively small steps needed to release of Acrobat and its related products is the first properly integrate awareness of properly tagged PDF time Adobe’s really given a big bag of goodies out for There are a lot of improvements to the MakeAcces- into their products. each different type of user. For users of the full ver- sible plugin, the “black-box” part of Adobe’s acces- sion of Acrobat you’ve got a much more responsive sibility effort, but the human touch is still most defi- Chris Dahl: First Impressions application, bundled form authoring tool (Pro) and nitely required to assure meaningful accessibility with of Acrobat 7.0 better security policy management. even slightly complex documents, sophisticated lay- By Dan Shea Planet PDF Editor outs, and anything containing graphics. What is more Users of the free Reader are surely left with a smile there’s still no clear disclaimer from Adobe that the due to the possibility of now participating in collabora- Accessibility Checker is NOT a Section 508 compli- Chris Dahl is the Chief Technology Officer of ARTS tion reviews (where the PDF has been ‘enabled for ance checker, a still-common and still-woeful misun- PDF Global Services (APGS), which is the custom de- commenting in Adobe Reader’ in Acrobat 7 Profes- derstanding. velopment and consulting division of renowned PDF sional). Additionally, now the free Reader can send software company ARTS PDF. APGS is a leading form data via the client’s default e-mail application Although clunky, the new Touch-Up Reading Order global provider of PDF professional services, includ- which does assist those people who may not have Tool (TUROT) and associated Order panel are cru- ing packaged solutions Nitro and Cryo for server-side the resources to develop a server based solution as cial additions to Acrobat from the Accessibility point PDF document creation and control, respectively. was required previously (see here). Another nice ad- of view. Without these types of tools, one could claim dition making Reader more intuitive is the message with some accuracy that accessible PDF would re- Dahl began his association with PDF in 2001 when he bar, where it informs the user of what they can and main effectively oxymoronic, a parlor trick relegated joined BinaryThing, the group that brings you Planet can’t do with the PDF document currently open (e.g. to the wizards in the backroom and the most sophis- PDF, PDF Store and ARTS PDF, and can now boast telling the user that they cannot save the completed ticated publishers. There are real concerns with the a CV that firmly places him in an exclusive group of form, and to print a copy if they want to keep a copy). TUROT; one has to use it carefully, and realize that CTOs leading the largest and most innovative PDF careful workflow is the only way forward, especially projects in the world. And of course those angry Mac users can smile again with complex documents. Then there’s the lack of an with browser-based viewing being returned in version undo command... Sadly, Adobe’s documentation on Combined with his in-depth and extensive knowledge 7 (in Safari). this tool is scant at best, and addresses few of the of Acrobat and all things PDF, this has more than qualified him to speak on PDF developer issues and issues one routinely encounters on exactly the type SHEA: Tell me about your favorite obscure or un- sit on expert panels at numerous conferences around of documents most likely to feel the TUROT’s touch... derrated new feature. newsletters, annual reports, and the like. the world. In addition, his day-to-day work as an en- terprise-level solutions consultant means that he has DAHL: Ahh, a little favorite of mine is no more chang- While it’s got nothing to do with Acrobat 7.0 per se, the plenty of hands-on experience to inform his opinions ing between hand tool to text select. You can now se- fact that JAWS, the de facto reference screen-reader about Acrobat 7.0’s impact on PDF development and lect text with the hand tool by hovering over text for a software, still doesn’t read Adobe’s tags for tables in forms workflows. Dahl has also been a frequent con- few seconds, the hand tool turns into text select. You PDF remains a serious sour note. It is surely up to tributor to Planet PDF, and actively participates in on- can turn this on under the General panel in Prefer- Freedom Scientific to address this deficit soon, and line forums such as the Planet PDF Forum. The full ences. not risk becoming part of the problem. Some might interview text follows. the best of

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SHEA: Adobe Acrobat 7.0 includes a greatly en- and efficiencies of using it as their form authoring tool SHEA: Are there any “hidden issues” of which hanced set of security features, including integra- rather than the old way of creating form controls in current AcroForm designers should be aware be- tion with Adobe Policy Server. What is possible Acrobat. fore making the jump across to Designer? with Adobe Policy Server and Acrobat 7.0 that was not available or possible with previous ver- However, at this point in time there is a lack in docu- DAHL: There’s a sea of people and businesses out sions of Acrobat? How much of the new security mentation on how to utilize the scripting capabilities in there that would be using 3rd party components to functionality is available WITHOUT Adobe Policy Designer. Until such documentation/user guides are provide PDF form field filling/retrieving. Such tools as Server? made available by Adobe I see a lot of users hitting activePDF Toolkit, iSedQuickPDF and many others a brick wall with trying to convert their forms over to provide this functionality. However at this point in time DAHL: How Adobe as handled the application of se- Designer (and this has been seen by such posts on I haven’t yet seen any of the companies that make curity in Acrobat 7 is a big step forward. In previous user forums). these tools indicate that they support PDF forms cre- versions, each time you were to apply security to a ated in Designer (XFA forms). Thus those using such document you had to define each particular setting Note: At the time of publishing, Chris notified us that Lori tools in a workflow will need to wait for such a tool to for each document you applied security to. Now, with DeFurio from Adobe pointed out on the Planet PDF Fo- be released or existing ones updated before migrating version 7 you can create a self existing security profile rum that some documentation for scripting with Designer their forms over to Designer. (that is, security profiles you create and maintain in is available from the Adobe site. The post can be found Acrobat) that you can apply time and time again. here. Note that forms created in Designer can be pre-popu- luated by using Adobe’s LiveCycle Forms product. Further to this improved way of handling document SHEA: Adobe is obviously encouraging form de- security from within Acrobat, there’s the new concept signers to use LiveCycle Designer for forms de- SHEA: Designer is a part of the Adobe’s LiveCycle of eEnvelopes. When you create an eEnvelope in sign, but making this move will obviously also in- product range, aimed at the higher-end of busi- Acrobat, you enclose attachments within an unen- volve additional software and training costs. What ness where require more sophisticated PDF solu- crypted PDF document. Whilst this ‘PDF envelope’ is are some of the benefits that can be realized by tions are required. However does this mean that left unencrypted for all to see (allowing you to give using Designer over AcroForms? users need any of the other LiveCycle products some general information about what is enclosed), (e.g. LiveCycle Forms, LiveCycle Form Manager) the attachments are encrypted using a security policy DAHL: to be able to use Designer for their form design? chosen by the user when creating the eEnvelope in Please explain... Acrobat. • Time savings! Designer not only allows you to add your form controls (text boxes/buttons) but it also DAHL: Forms created with Adobe Designer certainly SHEA: Adobe LiveCycle Designer now ships with handles your layout. No more going back to Word to do integrate well with the rest of the LiveCycle product Acrobat 7.0 Professional (version 6 of Designer make layout changes to your form. Just open it up in range (there’s a good diagram illustrating this here), was purchased separately), giving users unprece- Designer, make the necessary changes and save. however it’s by no means necessary to use any of dented control over form design “out-of-the-box”. these products if you want to use Designer for your What difference do you think this will make to the • Advanced concepts such a dynamic forms are made form authoring. The Designer help file has some quite uptake of Designer over Acrobat as a form-author- a reality (e.g. adding/removing rows to a table based detailed sections on what you can achieve when de- ing tool? on a user selected.) signing forms for LiveCycle Forms and LiveCycle Workflow if you’re interested in knowing more. DAHL: I think this will definitely increase the number • Working with databases and web services is much of people who are aware of what Designer is, and its more intuitive than with Acrobat. And can be achieved SHEA: What’s the chance that future versions of capabilities. Once users do give Designer a go I’m via the user interface, not only through JavaScript Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader won’t support sure that they’ll soon realize the major advantages like in Acrobat. the AcroForms style of PDF forms, forcing people the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 30/81 to move across to Designer to create compatible controls) from each of these formats are converted • Supported ActiveX control for Reader PDF forms? into the appropriate objects in Designer. Advertisement Plug-Ins SHEA: Tell me about the things that will really get • I haven’t investigated fully yet, however it looks as developers excited by Acrobat 7.0. though you’ll be able to control the new 3D func- tionality in Acrobat programmatically which should DAHL: My top three: provide for some interesting custom applications.

• Support for .NET (VB.NET/C#) in IAC SHEA: Are there any other notable changes that developers should know about if they want to • Supported ActiveX control embedding Reader view- work with v7.0? er in external apps DAHL: The Acrobat SDK documentation is much im- • Various JavaScript additions/enhancements proved! Two thumbs up to Adobe from me for this...

SHEA: There are obviously different levels of de- In particular the user guides (rather than the reference velopers when it comes to working with Acrobat. documents) have loads of really useful information for From writing simple document JavaScripts or people looking to get started in any of the developer calling Acrobat from VB applications via IAC to areas (JavaScript, IAC and plug-ins). But in particu- writing complex plug-ins to extend Acrobat itself. lar there is a new document called the ‘Acrobat SDK Can you fill us in on what’s new and interesting Plug-in Guide’ that gives a really good overall refer- for each of these types of developers? ence for plug-in developers to use. I can see many developers using this as a reference and then refer- DAHL: ring to the PDF Reference document to drill down into DAHL: It’s possible, but I doubt they’d even consider more detail if required. doing this until maybe release version 9. And still then JavaScript I have no doubt there would be some angry, angry SHEA: Thanks for your time, Chris. customers. • addWatermarkFromFile, addWatermarkFromText methods in the Doc object for adding watermarks Leonard Rosenthol: First Impressions of SHEA: How easy/difficult is it to migrate forms (added as an OCG/layer) via JavaScript. Acrobat 7.0 across from Acrobat to LiveCycle Designer? What Dan Shea do you think are the key considerations here? • Support for SOAP Headers (useful for when using By Planet PDF Editor authentication in web services) DAHL: I think that Adobe highlighted that this would When Leonard Rosenthol co-founded PDF Sages, be very important in getting people to move across to • launchURL method in the App object for launching a he was already one of the most well known and re- Designer. If users would have had to start from scratch URL explicitly in the browser window spected software developers for the Apple Macintosh. again with all their form authoring then I would imag- This reputation grew during his time as the Director of ine a pretty sluggish uptake. However, Adobe have IAC Advanced Technology for Aladdin Systems while de- done a great job (I think) in making it possible for peo- veloping their StuffIt line of products. In addition, Ros- ple to import their PDF, Word or InfoPath forms into • Support for .NET enthol is intimately familiar with Windows and Unix Designer and go from there. Most objects (i.e. form systems, having led seminars and spoken at industry conferences and local user groups around the world. the best of

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While serving as the “Designated Free Electron” for ROSENTHOL: I think the new Preflight Droplets will for 6, still didn’t make it for 7 :(. Also, a lot of the new Adobe Systems in its “Internet and Layout Technolo- be an “underground hit”. I think it will really enable stuff isn’t available to developers either (including ex- gies Division”, Rosenthol continued his involvement in people (once they find it ;) to better ensure that their tending the Organizer). Oh well -- there’s always 8... PDF and electronic publishing. Upon leaving Adobe, documents are correct. he joined Appligent - a leader in the server-based PDF SHEA: In forums and at conferences, one issue market. As their Director of Software Development SHEA: With Acrobat 7.0 Professional, it will be that just keeps coming up -- particularly since he helped to enhance and improve their technology. possible to activate full commenting functionality the release of v6.0 -- is the slow loading times of When he’s not working on PDF, Leonard continues to for users of the free Reader on a per-document Acrobat. With the Acrobat 7.0 family, Adobe has pursue some of his other areas of specialty by helping basis. This represents a major shift in Adobe’s tackled this head-on with the creation of a “speed to maintain a number of open source projects includ- previous policy of not allowing changes to be launcher” for Windows users in addition to oth- ing ImageMagick, FreeType and AbiWord. saved in Reader. What impact do you think this er tweaks for both Mac and Windows platforms. will have on document review processes around What do you think of the changes, and have you If that weren’t enough, Rosenthol enhances his status the world? noticed any significant improvements in perfor- as a PDF Sage by answering online forum questions mance with v7.0? from the 4 corners of the globe, actively participating ROSENTHOL: I hope it will push more reviews to be in the Planet PDF Forum, among many others. The Acrobat/PDF based instead of staying with native ROSENTHOL: Acrobat 7 on Windows loads almost full interview text follows. Word (or other) documents. I do wish that Adobe has instantaneously -- it’s great! Mac OS X is also better offered more functionality for “Reader Extensions” to (with 10.3.6 or later), though nowhere near Windows. DAN SHEA, Planet PDF Editor: In your opinion, owners of Pro. In general use, it’s much snappier, renders faster, etc. what is the best thing about the new Acrobat 7.0 SHEA: As I said before - polish!! product family? Do you think the activation of commenting functionality is something that Adobe will make available to 3rd-parties? SHEA: Adobe Acrobat 7.0 includes a greatly en- LEONARD ROSENTHOL, CTO, PDF Sages: My fa- hanced set of security features, including integra- vorite thing in Acrobat 7 is the Organizer. For some- ROSENTHOL: No, I don’t believe they will -- at least tion with Adobe Policy Server and the concept of one like myself who spends a LOT of time in Acrobat, not w/o that 3rd party licensing Adobe technology, eEnvelopes, which allows for the separate encryp- and opens up the same PDFs frequently (such as the such as one of the LiveCycle servers. The reason isn’t tion of file attachments. What effect do you think PDF Reference or SDK Docs) - having a nice way to even for marketing reasons -- it’s technical. Reader this will have on the use of PDF as a “container” collect them together and get access is a big help. Extensions technology is based on Adobe’s Private or delivery medium for sensitive content? Being able to organize and search recently accessed Key -- and they obviously can’t give that away. files is quite useful as well. ROSENTHOL: I think that moving attachments and SHEA: OK, let’s look at the other side: is there “eEnvelopes” to a prominent place in the UI and prod- But I also have to say that Acrobat 7 is, IMO, more anything that you would like to have seen that’s uct marketing is definitely going to help push this tech- about what Acrobat 6 would have been if they had not in v7.0? nology forward. We’ve already seen a few 3rd party more time to “polish it up”. It’s fast, easier to use, UI is developers consider moving their “private data” to this better organized and less cluttered, etc. And yes, the ROSENTHOL: Not from an end user standpoint, no. area in order to facilitate users having access to it. new features are great too - but I’m happy just having They really put in everything that I was hoping for -- a better Acrobat. and inside of a nice, fast, pretty package. The best part of this is for forms or interactive stuff, where the data can be either XML or another PDF SHEA: Tell me about your favorite obscure or un- From a developer standpoint, however - there is a and you can use JavaScript to communicate between derrated new feature. LOT of stuff missing! Many APIs that were promised them! the best of

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SHEA: Adobe LiveCycle Designer now ships with SHEA: Are there any “hidden issues” of which SHEA: Tell me about the things that will really get Acrobat 7.0 Professional (version 6 of Designer current AcroForm designers should be aware be- developers excited by Acrobat 7.0. was purchased separately), giving users unprece- fore making the jump across to Designer? dented control over form design “out-of-the-box”. ROSENTHOL: Unlike Acrobat 6, I don’t see Acrobat 7 Adobe is obviously encouraging form design- ROSENTHOL: Sure, some of their scripts will prob- as an exciting platform for developers - at least within ers to use LiveCycle Designer for forms design, ably have to be rewritten to switch from the old object Acrobat itself. To me, the excitement is going to be the but making this move will obviously also involve model to the newer one. building of tools/systems around Acrobat and PDF to additional software and training costs. What are help users deal with the growing number of PDFs that some of the benefits that can be realized by using SHEA: What’s the chance that future versions of will be produced and need to be managed. Designer over AcroForms? Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader won’t support the AcroForms style of PDF forms, forcing people SHEA: Are there any other notable changes that ROSENTHOL: It really is an “apples and oranges” to move across to Designer to create compatible developers should know about if they want to comparison. Designer-based forms are the types of PDF forms? work with v7.0? things that users have been expecting out of PDF forms for years - dynamic tables, resizing fields, re- ROSENTHOL: I think it’s very probable that will be the ROSENTHOL: Think BIG! flow across pages, headers/footers, etc It really is a case - at least in terms of forms. whole new world! PDF documents can now be > 2Gigs in size. PDF However, many PDFs are built using “form elements” pages can now be > 200in in size. It’s unfortunate, however, that Mac users don’t get to (especially buttons) but are NOT forms. And so Adobe participate in this :( would need to find/provide an alternative if they were SHEA: Thanks for your time, Leonard. to get rid of AcroForms. Advertisement the best of

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Q/A: Adobe’s John Landwehr on LANDWEHR: I’ll start with some of the top features and All of those capabilities are rolled up in what we call a LiveCycle Policy Server then describe how that can be applied in various work- policy, where the author sets all these capabilities. The flows. Policy Server provides basic access controls to a most common policy that a customer might deploy is By Kurt Foss document tied to an organization’s authentication direc- something like ‘Company Confidential,’ which would be to tory, either LDAP or active-directory-based systems. make sure that only employees of the organizations could Editor’s Note: In tandem with Adobe’s release this This way users do not have to have another password to open that document. It would be literally two clicks within week of Acrobat 7.0 product family and the Live- protect their documents -- they can leverage the exist- Acrobat to set that -- hit the ‘Secure’ button, then choose Cycle Policy Server, Planet PDF spoke with John ing corporate network password or the existing extranet the ‘Company Confidential’ policy, and be done. Landwehr, Director, Security Solutions and Strat- portal passwords for home-banking portals or business- egy in the Intelligent Documents Business Unit at partner portals. That provides the basic access controls You can create these policies in Acrobat 7 on the desktop Adobe Systems about the capabilities and implica- for opening the document. as well as through the Policy Server with a Web-based tions of the enhanced PDF security. interface. The administrator can create group policies that Then of course there are permissions for ‘Can you print, everybody can see, and that’s a good idea with something KURT FOSS: Adobe has announced this modify, copy and paste; and there are further controls like a ‘Company Confidential’ where you want everyone in week that its LiveCycle Policy Server is now on setting an expiration date on a document so that I the company to be able to use the policy and not have to shipping. What new capabilities does this can have a document either expire on either an absolute create it on their own. Or you can create end-user policies technology offer to and/or what needs will it date -- after which it never opens -- or a relative date, for for particular workgroups. meet for the global PDF user community? example in a records-retention environment: five years after every document is created, it automatically self-de- JOHN LANDWEHR, Director of Security structs. We can also do immediate expiration, such that Solutions and Strategy, Intelligent Documents a document that’s already been sent out and distributed Business Unit, Adobe Systems Inc.: The Adobe to a very large audience can be immediately revoked, no LiveCycle Policy Server is designed to make matter how many copies have been generated -- even if it easy to supply security in the form of docu- those copies have been written to read-only media such ment control and rights management to PDF as a CD-ROM. documents. Applying security really needs to be easy because when security isn’t easy, people One of the nice capabilities that the real-time dynamic have a tendency not to use it. In the process of nature of the security is that when doing revocation, that applying security to PDF documents, it’s also provides version control. So if a new version of a docu- important that it can be done for documents ment is published, you can revoke the old version and spanning both inside and outside the firewall. when a user opens up that document, they’ll be told Sensitive documents are being exchanged with there’s a new version of the document available, and business partners, or electronic statements and advised to ‘click here to automatically go get it.’ So when transactions are being exchanged with cus- the author revokes a document, he can not only turn it tomers -- we wanted to provide a solution that off, but tell the user where to go to get the new version. would essentially handle security needs inside and outside the department.” The last major capability is providing auditing: you can see who opened, who printed, who modified, who ex- FOSS: Please describe how the Policy tracted content -- or who tried to do any of those things Server workflow will work to accomplish but did not have access. these tasks. the best of

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FOSS: Does this work online and offline? JBoss, and it runs on Windows server, Solaris as well instead of just statically burning the rights into a docu- as Linux. We will be porting it to other operating sys- ment and which then couldn’t be changed. LANDWEHR: Yes, this works both online and offline. tems in the future. In fact, the creator of a policy can specify if it is a very secure workflow that all recipients be online, or they FOSS: There are a number of rights-management can create a lease period for the policy - documents products out there on the market. What makes created with that policy can be viewed offline for that Policy Server different? Advertisement amount of time, for example, for a day, a week or a month, or essentially you can dial it in for however long you want and the user can continue to view that document offline until the lease expires. After that, they will not be able to view that document until they go online to renew the lease.

FOSS: How does this work outside the firewall?

LANDWEHR: The Policy Server communicates with Acrobat 7.0 and with the free Adobe Reader 7.0 using standard Web services calls that can be fully proxiable through firewalls. You can set up the Policy Server in a DMZ environment, and you can also connect to mul- tiple authentication databases so that it can interact with the corporate directory as well as the extranet di- rectory. That way you can have your bank employees as well as your home-banking customers - using dif- LANDWEHR: Policy Server is built into the latest ver- FOSS: How would it work if someone was using ferent authentication domains - all share off the same sions of Acrobat and Reader such that no additional another PDF-viewing application, such as the Pre- Policy Server to protect documents both inside and plug-ins are required, which makes it great for sharing view built in to Apple’s Mac OS X, to view policy- outside the firewall. documents outside the firewall where you do not have protected PDFs? control of the recipient’s desktop but where there’s FOSS: Which platforms does it run on? a good chance they’ll be running Acrobat or at least LANDWEHR: The Macintosh Preview application Reader. We’re also cross-platform for sharing docu- does not incorporate these security capabilities, so for LANDWEHR: With Acrobat 7, we are on Macintosh ments on the desktop, cross-platform for authoring those customers, we would encourage them to use and Windows, and with Reader 7 we support Policy and viewing on the desktop, as well as cross-platform the free Adobe Reader. Otherwise, they would not be Server-protected documents with Windows, Mac and with our Policy Server. One of the very significant dif- able to open the documents. The security capabili- we’re also adding security to our Linux Reader on the ferentiators for us - all of the policies are fully dynam- ties that we provide are essentially a ‘fail secure’ - if a desktop as well. ic, so that after a policy is published, you can change previous version of the Reader that does not support the policy on a document, such as ‘add users, remove security, the document will remain secure and will not FOSS: Which platforms does the server run on? users, change permissions, change the expiration, or open. immediately revoke the document’ - without having LANDWEHR: The server is a J2EE-based application to republish it. That’s because there is this dynamic that runs on application servers like WebSphere and connection between the viewer and the Policy Server, the best of

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order to view that document. Where it gets a little into robat 2.0 in 1994. A lot of the technology has some a cross-environment is that if an organization were, very solid roots in providing protection. Over the years for example, working on a new Super Bowl com- we have focused on making it more secure by adding mercial, and they wanted to distribute a preview of new encryption algorithms as well as making it signifi- that before it goes on the air, they could embed that cantly easier to use by adding more capabilities, more video into a PDF and protect it with Policy Server so recently by adding these policies so that with just two that only the named executives could open it. It’s not clicks you can add security to a document without about charging for that content, it’s about making sure having to flip each particular checkbox on and off and only the authorized people can view it. In addition, also make it easy with Policy Server by typing in with there are a number of areas with things like analyst an organization’s existing authentication server. reports that are often paid-for documents. However, the recipient of those documents need to authenticate FOSS: Adobe has made digital signatures anoth- and be customers typically of the portal. It’s more of a er component of PDF security. Where or how do business-to-business type of document. Policy Server digital signatures tie in to Policy Server’s capabili- FOSS: In which industries does Adobe expect this is not intended for business-to-consumer commerce ties? technology to be most quickly and widely adopt- on documents like ebooks. There’s other technology, ed? of course, that can be used, for protecting consumer- LANDWEHR: Policy Server (Datasheet [PDF: 406kb]) oriented content. is focused on really confidentiality, privacy and audit- LANDWEHR: The workflows and industries that have ing of documents. That can work either stand-alone or shown the most interest so far are certainly those that FOSS: Some people who have built up collections in conjunction with a digital signature, which could be are concerned with confidentiality and privacy of elec- of PDF documents over time may wonder if sud- used to provide the authenticity, integrity and non-re- tronic information, whether it’s proposals, plans, re- denly they may lose access to the content with pudiation of the content. All of our security capabilities ports or personally identifying information of custom- the advent of Policy Server’s revocation capabil- work individually as well as collectively. ers. That would include the government, which deals ity. Can it retroactively secure already distributed with a lot of sensitive documents and has to deal with PDFs? FOSS: What kinds of sites and companies were citizen privacy; financial services; manufacturing. involved in the beta testing of Policy Server -- and Beyond that, any organization that wants to provide LANDWEHR: You can take existing PDFs, of course, what kind of feedback did you get? confidentiality and privacy to documents inside and and protect them with Policy Server. You’d need to outside of their organization, is a nice fit for Policy have that original copy. Without republishing the doc- LANDWEHR: We had a wide variety of interest in the Server. ument, you can’t add Policy Server protection to any pilot program from many of the industries I mentioned, document that has already been published. But once including government, financial services, manufactur- ing and to some extent, education. The biggest sur- FOSS: Does Policy Server address any of the you do add a policy to it, you can change the policy prise from the customers was the ability to do version copyright issues that are important to publishers after it’s been published. control. That is often not seen as a security feature and authors of commercial content? FOSS: For those new to PDF and PDF security, per se. Version control is offered on many servers and content management systems, but the challenge has LANDWEHR: Policy Server doesn’t restrict you to why in your opinion is the portable document for- been ‘How do you enforce version control on a docu- particular devices nor does it restrict number of cop- mat ideal for securing documents? ment that’s already been distributed?’ Policy Server ies of a document; however, each copy is persistently does provide that as part of the security infrastructure protected so that only the named recipient can open LANDWEHR: The great thing about security and PDF it. So if you burn it to a CD-ROM, it’s still protected is that, for one, we’ve been providing some rights- and makes it ‘forceable,’ which is good not only for and the user will have to authenticate to the server in management security capabilities in PDF since Ac- electronic forms that need to be updated out in the the best of

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Advertisement field, for example, in insurance organizations but also for highly regulated industries where you’re working on standard operating procedures and it’s critical ev- eryone is working from the same playbook, and where there are very large fines if old versions of documents are around. Policy Server works great there because you can enforce version control from the desktop.

FOSS: Thanks for making time to talk with Planet PDF and to explain how the new LiveCycle Policy Server fits into the expanding family of products and services available to users of Acrobat and PDF! the best of

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Why PDF in legal? #1 - Because the Judge Why PDF in legal? #2 -- Because You Are Some of that will involve tools that aren’t “law office Said So a Publisher automation.” So start thinking about how your firm is By David Fishel Editor, PDFforLawyers.com By David Fishel Editor, PDFforLawyers.com like the New York Times (or the Times-Picayune), and the ways those businesses use PDF as a critical busi- ness tool. There are many excellent reasons to get good at us- PDF is both wide and deep. I don’t know if people ing PDF in legal practice. One compelling motivation recall the old ad campaign (when Acrobat Reader still is that it is the standard for electronic filing in the Fed- sold for, like, $50) when Adobe basically promoted Why PDF in legal? #3 -- The Unified eral Courts. The rollout of the eFiling/case manage- Acrobat and PDF as a better alternative to HTML for Document Theory ment program from the Administrative Office for the Web display. Then, in one of the most far-reaching By David Fishel Editor, PDFforLawyers.com US Courts is well underway. business decisions of the era, Adobe decided to give the Reader away for free. And the print publishing When I first started doing discovery using electronic A few years back, the AO implemented a very am- world started to use PDF as a way to de-Babelize the documents -- about 10 years ago -- the industry prac- bitious program for e-filing. The plan was (and still files they used to prepare print materials. This led to tice was to scan paper documents to TIFF images. seems to be) to institute e-filing first in the Bankruptcy the collection of tools we have today as Acrobat and The docs were then sometimes put through the Op- courts, and then in the US District Courts. This plan the universe of non-Adobe PDF tools, almost none of tical Character Recognition (OCR) process to make seems to be rolling right along. I think it will become which are specifically for the “legal market.” them word-searchable. In addition, a bibliographic more common for judges to require e-filing in most database was hand coded so that it was possible to cases where the parties are represented by counsel. Which brings us to Lawyers as Publishers. I don’t search for a document by author, addressee, date, I also think that, given the complexity of the filing pro- mean that as any sort of metaphor. We research, or some other field that had been included in the bib cess, there are real opportunities for getting a cost-ef- write, edit, and publish (under deadlines), just like database. The vagaries of both the OCR and biblio- fectiveness edge on the opposition through the smart journalists, authors, academics, etc. The good news graphic databases can wait for another time... but the use of available tools. is that, because of PDF’s roots in the publishing in- problems were many and the costs were high. dustry, there is a huge body of knowledge about work- The US Courts have decided that PDF is the format flow, automation, and customization of PDFs in that Most frustrating to me, however, was the fact that, for filing. Period. There are lots of good reasons for business. We legal folks would do well to learn from having gone to all this trouble, each document was that choice, including ubiquity, security, and perma- them, and to borrow their tools. split in a least three pieces -- the images (often kept nence. In addition, the idea behind e-filing is to make on optical jukeboxes because hard drive capacities the workflow in the courthouse better. PDF works very I’ve heard attorneys say that they don’t really have a were orders of magnitude smaller) from which you nicely for that. “workflow” like other professions, yadda yadda yadda, could view or print an exact copy of the original; the because every case is unique, blah blah blah. In fact, text (often kept in a litigation support database like We’ll be covering a lot more about e-filing in the fu- we do have such a flow, or no work would ever get Summation or XyIndex); and the metadata (in a bib- ture. Also, if you’ve got info about PDF or other e-filing out the door. Those publishing operations have spent liographic database such as FoxPro, Lotus Notes, or issues in state and local courts, please let us know. huge amounts of money, effort, and time to optimize something similar). Then there was the custom code It’s not just the federal judiciary... workflow. If you take the time to understand the “pub- that tied all these pieces together, so that you could lishing” aspects of your law business, you will be able do word searches, and then view the images on which to create a much more efficient flow yourself. there were hits.

A law firm’s “publishing” output is going to be print/pa- A recurring complaint from many lawyers was that per, electronic filing (PDF), and archival. I hope that I when you did a full text search, you couldn’t see your can shed some light on ways to optimize your inputs hits on the document itself -- because the text was and processes so you can get the output you need. separate from the image. There was a plethora of the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 38/81 proprietary image viewers, few of which were either you wanted. It could be hyperlinked, automated, and still like the fact that a PDF can be a “unified” docu- fast or stable. None were free. password protected. The “big iron” search engines ment. It has the image, text, and metadata all in one we preferred could index it (hell, it included the Verity file. Moreover, in the time since I started on the quest It was frustrating to have documents in pieces so that search engine). The viewer was free. for the “SmartDoc,” corporate enterprises, the courts, you could not take a subset of electronic documents - Advertisement government agencies, and yes, even some lawyers, - say documents relating to a specific witness or issue have adopted PDF as a standard. Adobe says it has -- and share them with someone on the team (like an distributed 500 million copies of the Reader. A PDF expert witness) that didn’t or shouldn’t have access can be a smart, self-contained document. to the entire document system. In order to have any access to the system, a person needed to have all In future posts, I’ll talk about the reasons NOT to ac- of the software, as well as the image files, OCR text cept PDFs from the other side in discovery. database, and bibliographic database (plus the code that glued them all together). Most maddening to me Accessible PDF was the fact that, once having identified such a set of documents, about the only thing I could do was to Until recently, the focus in content accessibility has print them, thus coming full circle to a stack of paper. tended to focus on HTML and XML. As a result, con- Not searchable, no metadata -- just paper. tent managers often turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of PDF files sitting on their servers, All of which led me to team up with some techies downloaded every day... and 99% of them, hideously to try to create a litigation management system that inaccessible, and utterly non-compliant with Section would solve these (and other) problems. I came up 508. with a design for something we coined a “SmartDoc.” It would have the image, text and metadata all in one In this Learning Center, Planet PDF introduces the file. You could view thumbnails, so that you could basic issues of accessible PDF, and what you can do visually identify pages. It would support hyperlink- about it. If you have questions, please post them on ing within the documents, and to other items in the the new PDF Accessibility Conference in the Planet database. It would be smart enough to know when it PDF Forum. had been produced in discovery, which witness files Despite my enthusiasm for the format, some in litiga- it was in, and whether it was privileged. It could be tion support had objections. Some thought PDF files An Introduction to Accessible PDF encrypted and password protected at the document, were too big. (“Compared to what?” I would ask. “The By Duff Johnson, Planet PDF Contributing Editor not the database, level. We worked on this problem TIFF file alone, or the whole shebang?”) Cost was also an issue since Adobe was basically charging by for awhile with very limited success, and then went Accessibility is not an especially familiar concept in on our way to solve a few other problems of the day the page for its Acrobat Capture OCR product. How- ever, my crude ROI calculations led me to conclude the computing world. Most of us encounter the idea (locating docs via GIS, developing a timeline interface of accessibility often enough by way of special ve- for case development, and other sci-fi scenarios). that over the life of a case, using PDF would pay for itself many times over in database costs and attorney hicle parking spaces, ramps, braille signage, beep- ing crosswalks, and so on. Improving accessibility is By the time I got back to the SmartDoc idea, Acrobat time alone. Not to mention copying and storage of all the duplicates you had to print in order to distribute more than a courtesy, it is an accepted and vital goal 4 was out. And there it was - image, data and meta- of any advanced society. data all in one unified package. You could search it documents. and see your hits on the page. It had built-in metadata In the time that has elapsed since then, the case for fields, and you could basically add whatever metadata In the time that has elapsed since then, the case for PDF in litigation has only strengthened. At the core, I PDF in litigation has only strengthened. At the core, I still like the fact PDF can be a “unified” document. the best of

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It has the image, text, and metadata all in one file. in Section 508, many PDF files languish in desperate it. But when it comes to making electronic documents Moreover, in the time since I started on the quest for need of remediation. friendly to assistive technology, the great strengths of the “SmartDoc,” corporate enterprises, the courts, the PDF format are also its weakness. The very flex- In this Learning Center, you’ll find a number of articles ibility of PDF and the tremendous power of Acrobat government agencies, and yes, even some lawyers, addressing various aspects of accessibility as they make real accessibility (also known as “usability”) so have adopted PDF as a standard. Adobe says it has pertain to the PDF format. Happily, PDF files can be very, very hard to accomplish. distributed 500 million copies of the Reader. A PDF made accessible, highly useable, and compliant with can be a smart, self-contained document. Section 508. We’ll help you find out how. And as al- The accessibility issue represents the most serious ways, please let the Editor know if there’s a subject strategic vulnerability for PDF at this time. Right now, In future posts, I’ll talk about the reasons NOT to ac- you’d like to see addressed! HTML, DAISY books, RTF or (shudder) even Word cept PDFs from the other side in discovery. files stand a better chance of becoming definitive as Advertisement “accessible” document formats! Adobe’s current strat- An Introduction to Accessible PDF egy is top-down, and imposes substantial financial and technical burdens on content authors. It’s time to By Duff Johnson Planet PDF Contributing Editor look at a bottom-up approach. Accessibility should be built-in, not added on. Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Accessible PDF Learning Center The Problem Adobe’s current approach to accessibility is to make Accessibility is not an especially familiar concept in tags available within the latest-generation PDF speci- the computing world. Most of us encounter the idea fication. Using these tags, design professionals may of accessibility often enough by way of special ve- provide alt. text layouts and coding that can deliver hicle parking spaces, ramps, braille signage, beep- a viable experience for assistive technology users - ing crosswalks, and so on. Improving accessibility is theoretically. While text documents may, at significant more than a courtesy, it is an accepted and vital goal expense and trouble, work well with tags, the reality of any advanced society. is that only the very simplest forms are really usable with tags alone. While the fact that tags are techni- Both government and business have begun to rec- cally capable of rendering document text to a screen ognize the significance of accessibility with respect reader may formally qualify PDFs for Section 508 to electronic documents. In 1998, the US Congress compliance, that point should not be confused with passed an amendment requiring the US government the question of functional accessibility. and its contractors to abide by a new set of standards. Known as “Section 508”, the regulation requires that Content authors are rarely familiar with the require- the software, publications and documentation pro- Accessible PDF: A Strategic Review ments of successful accessibility publishing, and duced by and for the federal government be accessi- By Duff Johnson Planet PDF Contributing Editor have little reason to learn. Not only are they unlikely ble to those who must use assistive devices to read. to receive any technical or functional training on the Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Accessible PDF subject, but in the vast majority of cases, content au- Section 508 went into force in June, 2001. To this Learning Center thors won’t even get an expensive screen-reader with date, few agencies or contractors are in full compli- which to sample (dare we add, test) their creations. As ance - and almost none of their PDF files come any- Accessibility: Why is it important to Adobe Systems? a result, their PDF files will be, as always, built to print, where close. In Canada and parts of Europe, whose Government demands it. Schools need it. Users want with meaningful accessibility a distant secondary or standards for accessibility exceed the standards set the best of

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Advertisement tertiary consideration. functional non-Adobe software typically maintained in school and college computer labs. In any event, the issue of tags is near-moot because as PDF creation software proliferates, professional As a practical matter, the legal vehicle for educational content authors using Adobe products and educated distribution of accessible copyrighted documents is on accessibility issues will generate only a modest the Chaffee Amendment, (17 USC ? 121). However, fraction of PDF documents. If tags are required to fa- the current suite of native Acrobat security features cilitate accessibility, then PDF has literally no chance makes PDF unattractive to publishers as a “special- of becoming known as accessible. Maybe Reader ized format” per the terms of this Amendment. This could auto-tag on the fly? Please. It would be a major misstep is easily corrected with the addition of a sin- miracle if 20 percent of all documents could be mean- gle security setting - another opportunity to highlight ingfully auto-tagged on opening. Effective tags are Adobe’s commitment to accessibility, and a boon to born of many conscious choices, they are not a de- all publishers that ever wanted to sell a book into the fault event. The inevitable result of a tags-only strat- education marketplace. egy is simply that content authors will ignore the issue entirely, choose a different format, or simply “dumb- California’s AB 422, passed in 1999, increased the down” their documents. In all such cases, PDF loses. pressure on textbook and other publishers by requir- ing them to provide electronic versions of their pub- Government & Accessibility lications for disabled users to California’s state and National, state and local governments, as well as community college systems. Three years after this non-US governments, increasingly require their public law was passed, public education institutions are still document authors not only to work within accessibility scanning books and converting the images to KESI standards such as Section 508 - but be seen to do format for use with the expensive Kurzweil Reader so. As they expand electronic document usage and when they could be simply distributing PDF files pro- web enablement for their line-of- business processes, vided by the publisher and saving everyone a lot of governments will increasingly favour solutions that time, money and trouble. include accessibility as a core competency. Section 508, which has given Adobe the sweats, is actually Accessibility for the Masses a pretty easy standard. The Canadian government By developing text-to-speech (TTS) as a core function specification (WCAG priority 2) is much tougher! within the Acrobat product family, Adobe could actu- ally begin to meet the needs of the vast majority of the Education & Accessibility assistive technology marketplace without the struc- To fulfill their mandate to serve the broad population, tural inadequacies and enforced brain-damage of the and to do so on ever tighter budgets, state educa- tags-only approach. Advanced TTS implementation in tional systems need assistive technology for elec- Acrobat could: tronic documents now. Actually, they needed it yester- day. Learning Disabled (LD) users represent at least • Revolutionize accessibility to any PDF file via a sim- 50 percent of the assistive technology marketplace. ple click-to-speak metaphor There are tens of thousands of LD students in the Cal- ifornia Community College system alone. For these • Integrate seamlessly with annotations, scripts or users, PDF files are usable only via expensive, dys- tagged PDF, and at a low level with Acrobat controls the best of

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to provide full-spectrum accessibility and high-order lation keeps the assistive technology vendors honest, expensive uncertainty (PDF). Adobe cannot afford usability because the blind understand usability in a way that that. one can only imagine by turning off the monitor and • Deliver screen-reader integration and available ad- still trying to work. But that should not mean that re- Accessibility solely via the tags paradigm was a mis- vanced functions (on-board dictionary and special solving the needs of the blind is the only reasonable step in the right direction. That “progress” means little security privileges to support annotations, etc.) goal in promoting document accessibility. in the current or foreseeable accessibility marketplace. The perception will remain that PDF is not particularly Since annotation functions are important to Learn- In attempting to address the needs of the blind, whose accessible because into the foreseeable future, only a ing Disabled users, the addition of viable assistive tireless work produced Section 508 in the first place, small percentage of PDF files will include usable tags. technology to Acrobat enhances the likelihood that Adobe aimed their solution at a strictly legal interpre- To achieve both short-term success and protect long- LD users will access educational resources in order tation of the code, which fundamentally misses the term viability, Adobe should seriously consider the Ac- to become licensees of “full version” Acrobat to gain point for blind and non-blind alike. It is this: Ultimately, cessibility for the Masses strategy for version 6.1. access to annotation capabilities. Adobe can make a usability is the point at which accessibility claims are real difference to 70 percent of assistive technology sorted from accessibility facts. More Info users and simultaneously accomplish a lot more than just protect their government marketplace. PDF isn’t Only the narrowest of interpretations would conclude • Acess.Adobe.com just some random format, you know! It’s got clout! that Section 508 defines accessibility as making all the text on the page available to assistive technology. • Section 508: The Road to Accessibility Conclusion If Adobe persists in the tags-only strategy, organiza- Blind users represent the greatest technical challenge tions needing to improve their accessibility profile will • Chafee Amendment for electronic document accessibility. This user popu- tend to opt for cost- effective usability (HTML) over Advertisement

Chess strategies Insurance documents Railroad equipment registration Class schedules Investment analyst rankings Real estate reports Our customers use FileOpen College applications Investment management prospecti Reprints software to protect all kinds of Commodity statistics Jet engine schematics Risk management analyses PDF documents from piracy Copier manuals Legal briefs Robotic systems specifications and misuse. Adventure travel guides Course packs Legal code Semiconductor schematics Agronomic information Deal rooms Library books Sewing patterns Visit us at Sheet music Animal husbandry research Department store catalogs Management consulting proposals www.fileopen.com Divestiture documents Maps Software manuals Architectural plans to find out how we can help Auto repair manuals Drum playing instruction Market research Technical books safeguard your PDFs. Automobile specifications Embedded control systems Medical device instructions Technical standards Beer recipes E-zines Milk industry statistics Television listings Bibles FDA submissions Newspapers Tell-all autobiography Financial newsletters Petroleum exploration maps Tests Copyright 2005 FileOpen Systems, Inc. Adobe and the Bills of lading Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or Biotechnology analysis Financial reports Photography collections Textbooks trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United Branding proposals Geographic Information Systems Physics journals Theological theses States and/or other countries. Business school case studies Grant proposals Physics monographs Tout sheets Business school rankings Health information Price lists Train schedules Career guides Highway transportation statistics Private jet repair manuals Wind turbine schematics Certification training guides Home building plans Pump schematics Wine industry reports the best of

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• Section 508 Web Standards & WCAG Priority 1 sively full-featured access to documents. To be ac- Why PDF? Checkpoints A Side-by-side Comparison cessible, however, the document contents must be PDF files are uniquely valuable to government pre- available to these so-called “assistive” technologies. cisely because they guarantee authenticity to the • International Accessibility Standards To address the needs of visually impaired and other printed original. It was for this reason that in 1997 the users who must employ assistive technology in order Federal government chose PDF for their electronic • Accessibility - Standards and Guidelines: Canada to read, the U.S. Congress passed Section 508 in reading room standard. 1998, an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act. Sec- • Government of Canada - Accessibility Guide tion 508 requires U.S. Federal government agen- From public-facing content (reports, papers, etc.), cies to procure accessible software and to produce to record-keeping and high-use documents such as • California AB422 accessible electronic documents. While the regula- forms, PDF has remained the default choice for “final- tions went into effect in 2001, very, very few Federal form” official content. PDF files can comply with Section 508. government PDF files are known to comply - or have Now it’s your move. even been checked. The regulations can also apply in It is this very quality, fidelity to a printed original, which some instances to contractors who submit electronic makes accessibility hard to achieve in PDF. Until Ac- By Duff Johnson Contributing Editor documents to the federal government. The interested robat 6.0, the issue remained almost unaddressed reader is strongly encouraged to consult the website - the accessibility enhancement capabilities included Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Accessible PDF Learning Center set up to address this issue at www.section508.gov. with Acrobat were hopelessly flawed, and PDF was This article attempts an operational interpretation of fast gaining a reputation as “inaccessible.” A blind person cannot read from a screen any more Section 508 requirements for a common electronic than from a printed page. Technologies nonetheless document format: the humble PDF file. Since the release of Acrobat 6.0, however, PDF files exist that allow blind and other disabled users impres- are actually capable of far more structure than is re- Advertisement the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 43/81 quired for compliance with Section 508. So much, in ment” in Acrobat 6.0 - a far more accurate, albeit less Key Take-Aways fact, that a very high degree of usability for the dis- ambitious, description of its function. abled has become a realistic goal. This new capabil- • Accessibility starts with authors. ity, powerful as it is, raises complex questions none- The “Add Tags” feature in Acrobat 6.0, while a dra- theless, and significant pitfalls, pratfalls, pain-points matic improvement over its hapless predecessor, will • Section 508 compliance requires judgment and and lawsuits lie in wait for the unwary. nonetheless demonstrate to all but the most casual choices - it is not a checkbox. user that simply “adding tags” does not ensure com- What Compliance is Not - 508 Compliance does pliance with Section 508. If it did, you can rest assured • The degree of difficulty in assuring compliance is a notassure Usability (a.k.a. “happy users”) that Adobe would trumpet the news far and wide. In function of both content and layout complexity. It is necessary to distinguish between Accessibility fact, the term “Section 508” does not appear in the (what the law requires) and Usability (what works for Acrobat Help file at all - need we say more? • Disabled users don’t measure accessibility, they the average user). The expectations of assistive tech- measure usability. Therefore, purely technical com- nology users tend to explicitly revolve around usabil- Compliance is NOT a checkbox item pliance with 508 is highly unlikely to resolve user ity, not accessibility. You might think these terms are, Attaining Section 508 compliance involves numerous complaints. or at least should be, synonymous. A nice idea, but policy questions ranging from the development of al- it?s not the case. ternate text for images to the treatment of abbrevia- • The Make Accessible plug-in (the “Accessibility - Add tions. The process of ensuring compliance is rife with Tags to Document” menu item in Acrobat 6.0) does Section 508 delineates “formal” accessibility - requir- judgement calls, especially in balancing strict compli- not make a PDF compliant with Section 508. ing that complete document text and text equivalents ance against assured usability - a distinction with a of non-textual document content be deployable to the significant cost differential. • Neither the Accessibility Quick Check, nor the Ac- assistive technology devices available in the market- cessibility Full Check in Acrobat 6.0 can verify com- place. Charitably, one could argue that the intent is to pliance with Section 508. offload the usability issue to the interpretive software. One could also argue otherwise, but we?ll leave that Advertisement First, the Good News one for the lawyers. Many (possibly even most) PDF files are already largely compliant, and need little or no further work The point is this... a document might formally com- to become fully compliant. These files may be readily ply with Section 508, and still be incomprehensible identified as follows: when heard via a screen-reader. To assure that it is both compliant and comprehensible is a far more sig- • The file consists of text (i.e., it is not just scanned nificant accomplishment - and arguably, is the only images) meaningful accomplishment. • Layouts are extremely simple (i.e., there are only Compliance CANNOT be achieved by software alone one or two columns of text) To organize document content for assistive technology purposes, Adobe selected a method they call “tags.” • There are no images, and tables are very simple and Users of Adobe System?s popular Acrobat program relatively small may have noted the availability of a free “Make Ac- cessible” plug-in for Acrobat 5.0, which added tags to • Even if tags are not present in such a PDF, Adobe PDF content. A serious misnomer. Adobe renamed Reader 6.0 will make some fairly accurate assump- the menu item for this plug-in to “Add Tags to Docu- tions regarding text flow, at least. the best of

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A Caution question for graphic-designers! More Not-So-Good News: Tables Note that while such a document may readily comply, The Section 508 regulations include two separate it may not be especially useable. After all, a 500-page Even though it?s unavoidably their responsibility, provisions on tables - and for good reason. Conceived document may be compliant without bookmarks, but document authors and editors are typically unfamiliar by and exclusively for sighted users, tables are one if desired content is on page 450, then an assistive with the alternate text requirement. Even if they?ve of the most difficult content delivery vehicles to make technology user may have to plow through each of heard of it, significant education is generally neces- accessible. Imagine removing gridlines and cells to the preceding 449 pages to get there! We recommend sary to foster an understanding of alternate text, and reduce a table to a stream of text, and you will un- that ALL documents longer than a few pages include especially, how to make it useable. This is not, by the derstand why. The Section 508 regulation states that bookmarks that match the table of contents and major way, an issue solely for PDF. Images in any electronic row and column headers be identified. While possible, heading levels for this reason. document format, HTML for example, need alternate compliance with this requirement will require mastery text to comply with Section 508. of the Tags palette in Acrobat 6.0. To ensure usability The Not-So-Good News: Alternate Text (as opposed to mere compliance), document authors Since Section 508 requires alternate text for each While PDF does support alternate text for discrete im- may wish to consider using narratives to deliver infor- image, it is logical that achieving compliance should ages, there is still no easy solution for adding alter- mation that might otherwise have implied the use of involve the author, the editor or at least the caretaker nate text to the image contents of PDF/Searchable a table. of the document text. Who else is supposed to come Image files, a common “flavor” of PDF created from up with alternate text for each image? The graphic scanned documents. While I am aware of at least two Still More Not So Good News: Text Flow designer? What is the alternate text for, say, a pie- work-arounds, neither are readily available via the Ac- The simple way to understand text flow is to “Save As” chart, anyhow? It?s an editorial, actually a policy-lev- robat user-interface, and neither are completely sat- your PDF to an RTF file using Acrobat 6.0. Open the el, question. With respect, it is emphatically NOT a isfactory. resulting file in Word. You are now looking at the text

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flow a disabled user would have to contend with. If tory for Federal agencies and their contractors since PDF contains the text, graphics, bookmarks, links and you can?t make heads or tails of the document in this 2001, both the government that makes the rules and other elements of content that go to make up an elec- fashion, then neither can they. The tags in the PDF the electronic document industry that creates the tronic document. need more work. tools have each only just begun to stir. PDF, for years, a vital component in the government document infra- In addition to content, PDF files may also include While the Section 508 regulations do not explicitly structure, is now able to meet the challenge presented “structure”. Structure is the term for a set of instruc- state that text flow must make sense to the user (that by Section 508. It is up to the authors, the designers tions that define the logic that binds the content to- would imply that usability was the issue!), it is rea- and the policy makers to take the next step. gether - the correct reading order, for example, and sonable to assume that disjointed or erratic text flow the presence and meaning of significant elements violates the spirit of the regulation. Indeed, if the text What is Tagged PDF? such as figures, lists, tables, and so on. flow is so bad as to make the document “unreadable,” then the document simply does not comply. Sadly, By Duff Johnson Contributing Editor In PDF files, structure is expressed via “tags”. Tags on moderately complex documents, poor text-flow is may be generated automatically for any PDF file us- generally the rule, not the exception. Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Accessible PDF ing Acrobat 6.0 Professional, but unless the document Learning Center is very simple indeed, automated tagging alone is un- Conclusion likely to produce satisfactory results, and is certainly Whether PDF, HTML, or some other format, sustained PDF files can contain many things. At a minimum, a not a quick-fix for compliance with Section 508. compliance with Section 508 requires a top-to-bottom review of the document authoring process. To best A PDF file equipped with well-formed tags may be control compliance costs, document authors must be “reflowed” to fit different page or screen widths, and Advertisement trained in authoring for document accessibility, es- will display well on handheld devices. Tagged PDF pecially with respect to the development of alternate files also work better with the screen-reader devices text. Graphic designers must adopt policies that tend used by many blind and other disabled users. In most to reduce or eliminate the features that inhibit acces- cases, tags are necessary in order to make a PDF file sibility, such as the use of color to deliver information, comply with Section 508. or overly complex layouts. Adobe’s Acrobat 6.0 will add tags to a PDF file, but If active compliance with Section 508 were to become human intelligence is still required to ensure the tag- routine rather than exceptional, it would demonstrate ging process was performed correctly. There is little laudable progress towards a government for all. In ad- room for error in document tagging. Even seemingly dition to serving disabled users, there are other signif- small errors in document structure can easily render a icant benefits from enhanced accessibility. Non-native file completely incomprehensible. language speakers, illiterate and learning-disabled users can all benefit from structured documents. Im- Imagine using your computer with the screen turned proved accessibility will enhance online interactions off, and you’ll get some idea of how important logical and reduce the time required to locate information. text-flow is to anyone who needs a screen-reader to Document structure helps move content towards oth- read your PDF! er devices (phones, PDAs, etc) - a significant capabil- ity as the information age matures.

While compliance with Section 508 has been manda- the best of

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Characteristics of a properly tagged PDF:

• The PDF file includes a logical reading order for its content • Images are given correct alternate descriptions

• Tables are correctly tagged to represent the table structure

• Form-fields are authored to promote their utility to screen-readers

• Represents text as Unicode to clear up composition irregularities such as soft and hard hyphens

Editor’s Note: For the full list of resources relvant to Ac- cessibility Learning Center, see the “Resources on Acro- bat and PDF Accessibility” Article

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Introduction to Acrobat Development Getting Started - Developing for PDF By Dave Wraight Planet PDF Contributing Editor I remember what it was like when I first started de- veloping solutions around Acrobat and PDF, it was Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to Ac- daunting. So much information, too many technolo- robat Development Learning Center gies and no central location to piece it all together. This is where Planet PDF’s Developer area and its Introduction first learning center come in. The key to developing with Acrobat is an understand- ing and/or an appreciation of the Acrobat Software We put the information, technologies and resources Development Kit. The better your knowledge and un- at your fingertips and explain how all of the compo- derstanding of its contents, the better your position nents relate and combine so you can produce real will be to develop solutions with and for Acrobat. world solutions around Acrobat and PDF. Each of the articles in this Learning Center provide clear, concise This kit contains extensive code samples, complete and relevant information to the modern world of pro- Application Programming Interface (API) documen- gramming with Acrobat and PDF. tation, entire applications (including source) and ad- ditional resources that you need in order to develop solutions in and around Acrobat.

03TAL011-ad_BOPP_9.1"x3.4".qxd 28-05-2003 16:58 Pagina 1 The key to developing with PDF is the PDF Specifica- Advertisement the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 48/81 tion. This specification, an ISO standard, is currently and InterApplication Communication exist outside of tools to use is to have an understanding of the limita- at version 1.5 and represents the concepts, specifica- Acrobat, where as Plugins and Javascript exist inside tions of each development tool. tions and technical limitations of the Portable Docu- Acrobat and indeed rely on Acrobat to provide a tool- ment Format. set from which its functionality extends. The following table compares some of the potential areas of development, each item is given a rating indi- The PDF Specification although bundled with the To develop any solution in or around Acrobat/PDF you cating the level of control or access to complete each SDK is revised and released independently. Go to the will firstly need to know which of the four development appropriate item, the higher ratings indicate more ac- direct download location. tools you will need. You may simply need to automate cess or control over the appropriate area. a mundane task (Javascript) or you may need to build To understand the Portable Document Format means a more robust standalone application within Acrobat Advertisement reading and understanding the PDF Reference man- (Plugin). Or you may even need a combination of ual. It’s big, almost 1200 pages big and although you these tools don’t need to digest the whole manual in one go you will over the course of time need to use most parts as reference.

The Acrobat SDK is available here, however there’s a catch. The catch is that you need to become a paying member of the Adobe Solutions Developer Network in order to download the SDK in its entirety. The details and pricing can be found at the Adobe site.

It’s not all bad news. Adobe has released several key documents as free downloads to ensure the contin- ued growth of Acrobat and also the developing user base.

Download or Join? As a paying member I get great value from the mem- bership, apart from access to the SDK, Adobe also provides complete and wholehearted access to other Adobe Developer and technical resources (web casts, white papers, pre-release software etc). If you make a living from developing for PDF and/or Acrobat then the money is well worth spending, but of course I’m a member so its hard for me to be unbiased.

. The Bigger Picture The following diagram illustrates Acrobat’s four main development tools. As you can see Visual Basic/JSO I have found that the best way to decide which tool or the best of

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Note: These ratings are purely subjective and do not rep- resent exact values.

Summary Javascript VB/JSO IAC Plugins By far the best thing to do is become familiar with the Access to the File System respective development tools. Using the Acrobat SDK 0 5 5 5 and/or Internet along with the specification for PDF Automation 5 2 2 4 will enable you to not only have a better understand- ing of the types of solutions you can provide but also Encrypt PDF files 3 3 3 5 the respective strength’s and weaknesses of each Set Document Info 5 5 5 5 type of development tool. Rotate Pages 5 5 5 5 Of course if you havent done so already create an Ac- count at the Planet PDF Forum and subscribe to the Delete Pages 5 5 5 5 Developer and Javascript conferences, its here that Insert/Extract Pages 2 3 3 5 you can ask, learn and maybe even help out other Acrobat/PDF Developers. Digital Signatures 2 2 1 5 Color Management 0 0 0 5 Developing with Acrobat Javascript Edit Images 0 0 0 5 By Dave Wraight Planet PDF Contributing Editor Extract Content 2 3 2 5 Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to PDF Merging/Splitting 2 4 4 5 Acrobat Development Learning Center Add Stamps 3 3 2 5 What is Acrobat Javascript? Adobe have integrated a fully fledged scripting lan- Manipulate Form Fields 3 4 3 5 guage inside Acrobat - Javascript (ECMA Script). Remove Content from PDF 0 0 0 5 Javascript which has been known in the HTML world Compress Graphics 0 0 0 5 for a long time. Javascript which is based on ECMA Script has also been modified to fit inside the confines Manipulate Links 2 2 2 5 of the browser. Different Browser vendors (Microsoft, Manage Bookmarks 3 3 3 5 Netscape, Opera) have added to and changed their implementation of Javascript to suit their individual Manage Multimedia 3 3 3 5 needs - Adobe have done the same thing, created a customised version of ECMA Script that suit's the needs of Acrobat users - AcroJS. the best of

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add marked elements to a pre-existing PDF, elements jects we need to place our scripts in the appropriate such as graphics, form fields and text. place. AcroJS can be inserted in the following levels:

The Acrobat Document Object Model (ADOM) The first diagram is a rough mockup of the Internet Explorer Document Object Model (as seen by Javas- cript). The second diagram is the Acrobat Document Object Model (as seen by Javascript).

Each diagram illustrates the hierarchy of objects in each respective environment.

Although Javascript in the Browser and AcroJS share the same common language foundation they oper- ate on completely different Document Object Models (DOM?s).

Why use Acrobat Javascript? Repetitive tasks are the most common reason for us- ing AcroJS. AcroJS allows you to automate tasks that you do manually time and time again, for example you • Folder/Application level could write some AcroJS that is part of a Batch Se- quence to add a series of Bookmarks to a folder of • Document level PDF documents. • Page level AcroJS could also be used to insert additional inter- activity into a PDF, for example Javascript in Acrobat • Form field level has the ability to create a custom Popup Menu that is accessed when you right mouse click. • Bookmark/Link level

If you have created some PDF Forms and want to If you want your AcroJS to be available to all PDF ensure your users enter only valid data then you could documents that are opened then you can insert them use AcroJS to validate and control the data entered. at the Folder level. Basically this means writing code For example you could make use of Regular Expres- that is placed into a .JS file and placed into the appro- sions to validate a Social Security Number or an Email priate directory (normally C:\Program Files\Adobe\Ac- Address (link to new article). robat x.0\Acrobat\Javascripts) How Do I Use Acrobat Javascropt? If you have a full version of Acrobat (v5, v6 Std, v6 Pro) We can write Javascript for different objects/elements we can make use of Templates to create a dynamic in Acrobat. To access the respective elements or ob- PDF. Templates (link) provide a way to dynamically the best of

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Document level scripts reside inside the PDF and are Summary Just like their HTML counterpart PDF Forms allow the available and accessible to all other elements and As a rough guess I would say about 75% of Acrobat author to capture information from users by way of scripts in the PDF. (links) can be scripted by Javascript, this represents the pos- submitting the entered forms data. sibility to save a lot of time through automation. Page level scripts aren?t accessible by/from any Currently the following PDF Forms fields are avail- other elements and can be one or both of the follow- By far the most attractive featue of AcroJS to myself is able: ing types: Page Open Action or Page Close Action. the opportunity it provides in the way of Form valida- (links) tion and interactivity. Javascript gave the Web brows- • Buttons er it?s life and AcroJS does the same for Acrobat. AcroJS placed at the form field level can be placed in • Text Fields various locations: For the full rundown on Javascript in Acrobat check out the Acrobat Javascript section in the Dev Learn- • Combo Boxes • Calculation Script ing Centre. • List Boxes • Validation Script More Info • Radio Buttons • Format Script • Articles by AcroJS Expert Kas Thomas • Check Boxes • Event triggered Script • Javascript resources • Digital Signatures • Keystroke Script • Acrobat Javascript Specification for (Acrobat 5) There are several major differences between HTML As you can see AcroJS at the Form Field level pro- • Acrobat Javascript Specification for (Acrobat 6) - forms and PDF Forms: vides a great number of choices. (partners.adobe.com) 1. HTML forms require a web browser, PDF forms re- When you need to run a script that?s activated when • Danny Goodman’s Javascript books - quire Acrobat or Adobe Reader to be filled out. you click a Bookmark or a Link then Acrobat provides (www.dannyg.com) this functionality as well. 2. PDF Forms require Adobe Acrobat or Adobe De- Developing with PDF Forms signer for their creation, anyone with Notepad and a Limitations and Possibilities web browser can create/view HTML forms. So what can?t we do? The single biggest limitation By Dave Wraight Planet PDF Contributing Editor that Javascript has it that it can?t access to the out- 3. Entered data in a HTML form is generally not saved side world - the operating system. This is actually a Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to for later use, the data is submitted to an online pro- good thing as it provides users with the confidence Acrobat Development Learning Center cess. PDF Forms can save their data to various for- that virii, trojans and the like wont ever be a problem. mats locally1 for later processing online or viewing in What are PDF Forms? Acrobat/Reader. In version 6 of Acrobat the interaction between plugins A PDF Form is a standard PDF document that con- and Javascript has become much stronger. This con- tains Form Fields. These form fields are placed onto 4. To prefill a HTML form requires the construction of nection illustrates almost limitless possibilities for seri- the PDF document using Acrobat 5, Acrobat 6 Profes- the entire HTML document, to prefill a PDF Form an ous application development inside Acrobat. sional or Adobe Designer and saved as a normal PDF FDF file can be constructed and later used to open document. the PDF with its form field data prefilled. the best of

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Advertisement 5. In a HTML form the data and structure are the same, Servlets, JSP and J2SE/Desktop applications. PDF Forms have a separation between the form fields structure and its data. Why Use PDF Forms There are two main reasons to use PDF Forms. The 6. Construction of a HTML form is far simpler than a first is the Forms Data Format (FDF) and the second PDF form due to the underlying structures of HTML reason is the ability to submit entered data in one of 5 and PDF. different formats.

What is FDF? By providing a way to abstract the entered data from The Forms Data Format is a standard way to repre- the form design it allows designers and developers sent form field data. FDF files are based on PDF and the opportunity to separate two disparate functions: have the same syntax and basic object types as PDF Design and Content. except an FDF doesn’t need to have a Cross Refer- ence Table. For example an online travel shop could provide dy- namic quotes from a database as an FDF file and The Forms Data Format is defined and described with- subsequently have this loaded into a standard PDF in the Portable Document Format specification (link), quoting template. No special user software is required under the section for Interactive Features>Interactive - only (at a minimum) Reader. Forms. It’s here that you can become intimate with the inner workings, tags, objects and technical informa- Entered form field data can be sent to a backend pro- tion needed to build, parse and understand FDF. cess in one of the following five formats:

Below is an example FDF file, it describes the form FDF files are not complex to create; they are text and 1. URL Encoded Format. This is the most common fields, their properties and of course the form field follow a very logical structure. However when you format for browsers. [application/x-www-form-urlen- data. need to programmatically creates a lot of FDF files it’s coded] useful to have a library to perform these tasks; enter %FDF-1.2 the Forms Data Format Toolkit. 2. Multipart/form-data. If you have ever uploaded a file %âãÏÓ to a web server this is the format it is sent as. [multi- 1 0 obj FDF Toolkit part/form-data] <> As mentioned the FDF Toolkit isn’t something you ] must have to develop or parse FDF files, it does how- 3. Forms Data Format (FDF). Essentially in the same >> ever make life a lot simpler by automating the mun- format as you would build an FDF, this format is spe- >> endobj trailer dane tasks of reading and writing FDF content. cific to Acrobat. [application/vnd.fdf] <> %%EOF There are three flavors; Unix, Java and Windows and 4. XFDF format. This is an XML-encoded version of two versions of the FDF Toolkit available from Adobe; FDF. Form Data is sent represented hierarchically. Version 5 and Version 6. [application/vnd.adobe.xfdf]

The Unix version of the FDF Toolkit provides wrap- 5. PDF format. Send the whole document in its en- pers for C and Perl, Windows has ActiveX, Perl and C tirety. [application/pdf] support and the Java FDF library provides classes for the best of

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This provides the developer with the greatest possible How to Develop PDF Forms Where Are They Used? chance for easy integration into existing backend pro- There are currently three key Adobe tools that pro- The largest producer/consumer of PDF Forms that I cesses. vide Forms authoring capabilities. Acrobat v6 Profes- have found is the United States Internal Revenue Ser- sional, Acrobat v5 and Designer. Despite its name the vice (IRS), as a rough count they have over 800 PDF Form Fields inside a PDF document can be program- FDF Toolkit cannot generate form fields, it can purely forms in use today (http://www.irs.gov). matically controlled with a much greater degree of describe the field name that the Data belongs to. validation and formatting available than with browser Summary Javascript. Adobe’s latest Form tool, Designer is able to generate In this article we looked at what a PDF form is, roughly (automatically) PDF Forms based on Database Sche- what they look like and also how they can be gener- For example it’s possible to place into a Form Field ma, XML Schema’s and even other PDF Forms. It can ated. The next step is to look at specific examples of a validation script, calculation script and keystroke have very tight integration with XML data structures how they can be used in a real way. script effectively trapping the users wrong input, add- providing a seamless end-to-end process for design- ing automatically and ensuring only the correct char- ing, validating and storing user entered data. acters are entered. Developing with Inter-Application Communication By Dave Wraight Planet PDF Contributing Editor

Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to Ac- robat Development Learning Center

What is IAC? Inter-Application Communication is a system whereby one application can send a message to another, ei- ther to exchange information or to make something happen.

Along with these new development abilities it’s now In the case of Acrobat, it provides a set of API’s that possible to integrate PDF Forms into your pre-existing Visual Basic (or any other supported programming Web Services. language (Delphi, VBA, C++ etc) can utilise to ‘re- motely’ control Acrobat’s features.

Generally speaking the exchange of messages is mostly in a one way direction, this can often make it harder to know the progress of a given task or series of tasks.

It is also important to note that any feature that chang- es a PDF document in the IAC libraries is available only to the full version of Acrobat (v3,v4,v5 and v6).

How does IAC work? the best of

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IAC works by creating a connection between (in our roExch.PDDoc’. We don’t really create this object in uments: IAC Reference, which has the methods and case) VB and Acrobat, this connection comes in the the traditional sense instead we use our view of the properties and the IAC Overview document which ex- form of an object instantiation - this object is of type document ‘AcroExch.AVDoc’ to get access to it. plains what objects exist and also how they are con- ‘AcroExch’. nected. Using the ‘AcroExch.PDDoc’ object we can access methods that allow you to directly manipulate the PDF To really get a handle on the kind of things you can document. Methods such as Rotate Pages, Create do with IAC you need to get a hold of the documenta- Pages, Delete Pages and more. tion. It’s in there you will find the methods available for each object. The Bigger Picture So let’s have a look at the other objects. The objects Let’s run through a couple of scenarios where you available to the VB/IAC programmer provided by Ac- could use VB/IAC. Using IAC and VB you could ro- robat breakdown into two broad categories: Acrobat tate the pages in a folder full of PDF’s or get detailed Viewer level or Portable Document layer. information (page count, page sizes etc) about PDF’s in batch. ‘AcroExch’ or Acrobat Exchange is the previous name This diagram shows the key objects and their relation- for Acrobat (version 3 and below), by creating an ob- ship in the hierarchy to each other. Why do we need Plugins? ject of type ‘AcroExch.App’ it allows VB to communi- The downside to VB/IAC is that Acrobat doesn’t ex- cate via IAC with Acrobat (the application). Once you pose all of Acrobat’s functionality to the IAC API’s. In- have an this object created it allows you to do some stead Acrobat only exposes the more common tasks. of the following: This means that we still need a way to extend and • Start/Close Acrobat control Acrobat’s core functionality and features - without limitations, this is where plugins shine. • Show/Hide Acrobat Introducing the JSO Bridge • Execute a Menu Item An amazing thing happened in Acrobat 6, the Acro- bat team introduced the Javascript Object -> VB/IAC • Remove a Menu Item Bridge. This bridge gave Visual Basic programmers with the ability to access almost all of the features and • Set Preferences functionality available to Javascript - but from within The Acrobat API for IAC has been designed in such a Visual Basic! If the ‘AcroExch.App’ object allows you to control Ac- way that each object that is created has a reference to robat how do we control PDF Documents? There’s the other objects that contain it or that it is a container For example VB/IAC can’t create Bookmarks - but Ja- another object of course: ‘AcroExch.AcroAVDoc’. for. An example of this is AVApp, it has a reference vascript can, using the JSO bridge it now means we This object represents the view of a PDF document to AVDoc and AVDoc has a reference to PDDoc and can create bookmarks using the VB toolset simply by through its window. This object provides methods to AVPageView. passing the commands across the bridge. load a PDF document into the window. What’s Possible? Although we don’t have the same level of inner control The next logical step is to create an object to manipu- The documentation for Acrobat’s implementation of as plugins do, we have a lot more exposure to the late the actual PDF document - this object is the ‘Ac- IAC is contained in the SDK. In fact there are two doc- kind of functionality that’s needed in the real world. the best of

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Get the SDK for the lowdown on the VB/JSO bridge. robat and you can very easily and quickly automate So what’s a scripting language? difficult or laborious tasks. Basically a scripting language is a programming lan- guage that generally resides inside a host application Check out our extensive range of free IAC programs and provides a sticky-gooey layer that makes it easy and sample code and also the additional articles avail- to automate otherwise boring and monotonous jobs able through our Developer Learning Center. and because it generally resides inside of a host ap- plication it has access to functions that mere mortal users don’t. Introduction to Acrobat JavaScript Adobe have integrated a fully fledged scripting lan- Other examples of scripting languages include Visu- guage inside Acrobat - Javascript (ECMA Script). This al Basic for Applications (VBA), Windows Scripting, Advertisement provides document authors, developers and system VBScript and some might even argue that Perl is a integrators with the ability to automate and maintain scripting language (not me though, I just like to stir their PDF documents from within Acrobat. the pot).

However when we talk about Javascript inside Acro- In the case of AcroJS there’s a great deal of power to bat we need to think slightly out of the box to get a be had with scripting the features and functions inside proper handle on the capabilities and limitations, we Acrobat. You can make mince meat of those tasks explore how to think ‘AcroJS’ in this Learning Center. that you normally farm out to the junior in the office.

If you’ve ever heard of JavaScript it’s more than likely What is Acrobat JavaScript? that you’ve heard about it in relation to Web Browser’s, By Dave Wraight Planet PDF Contributing Editor it’s here that JavaScript (which is based on ECMA Script) really took off as the scripting language to Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to make those dancing elephants fly across the screen Acrobat Development Learning Center or the blinking text that simply wont stop blinking. In fact JavaScript in the browser shares a lot of similari- A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away, oh, hang ties to JavaScript in Acrobat -- except for one small on that story’s already been told, so let’s have a look difference, its Document Object Model (DOM). at Acrobat JavaScript instead. AcroJS as it’s known in the world of Acrobat development is the scripting What’s all this DOM business then? language of choice (actually there’s only one scripting The DOM is probably the most controversial thing language so choice isn’t an option). since Microsoft introduced that annoying clippy as- sistant. A Document Object Model represents how Summary To be a little more precise Acrobat JavaScript is a pro- the host application looks (and feels) to the scripting Of all the programming languages I know, Visual Ba- gramming language that is contained inside Acrobat programmer. The differences in the DOM are what sic is easily my favorite. It’s lack of concern for braces, Standard and Acrobat Professional. Its sole purpose make Acrobat and Web browsers different from the brackets, semi-colons and more constraints makes it in life is to allow the developer to write scripts (pro- perspective of the JavaScript programmer. the ideal language for quickly developing or even pro- gramming code) that automates tasks that would oth- totyping applications. erwise be time consuming and mind numbing. Using the DOM, you gain access to the PDF docu- ment (and Acrobat) in a structured and object oriented Couple this with the API available via IAC from Ac- the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 56/81 fashion. A document object model basically sets out is that you only need to learn a little bit to accomplish The Bigger Picture what objects exists in the document and also which a lot. Actually I tried writing about the smaller picture but the features they provide to the programmer. font size was too small so I thought a bigger picture So to make your introduction to the world of AcroJS a would be easier on the eyes. Before we look at the So where do I put this JavaScript stuff? little smoother, we’ve prepared a whole series of ar- ‘Where Should I use Acrobat JavaScript’ it might also It turns out that you can stuff JavaScript into most ticles on AcroJS, including another introductory article be useful to see ‘Where Can I put JavaScript’. places in Acrobat, including (but not limited to), form explaining where you can use JavaScript in Acrobat. field buttons, page open and close actions and docu- So let’s get started on the road to AcroJS wisdom. AcroJS can be stored in the following places: ment opening and closing actions. But wait there’s more. (an offer for free steak knives is included at the Where Should I use Acrobat JavaScript? • Application Level bottom of this article). It turns out that you can also write JavaScript and place it at the Document Level, By Dave Wraight Planet PDF Contributing Editor • Document Level Application Level and Page Level, the biggest reason you might do this is so you can have central locations Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to Ac- • Page Level from which to call or execute JavaScript from. robat Development Learning Center • Form Fields Where to from here? As we alluded to in the previous article ‘What is Acro- The good news is that you don’t have to be a hard- bat JavaScript’ it turns out Acrobat JavaScript (Acro- • FDF Files core C++ programmer to write JavaScript -- it’s really JS) can be used in many places inside both the PDF easy, and the 03TAL011-ad_BOPP_9.1"x3.4".qxdwonderful thing about writing JavaScript 28-05-2003 document 16:58 andPagina through 1 Acrobat the application. Advertisement the best of

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There might be other places that JavaScript can be • Often requires more support for not-so-competent PDF specific form field data. stored but these are by far the most common places end users. so we’ll concentrate on these ones in this article. If • Can respond to events at the Document level (open- you decide to get adventurous there are many other • If your system crashes and you have to reinstall Ac- ing, closing and printing). resources in our Developer Learning Centre to help robat you may need to also have the JavaScript(s) you learn more. reinstalled. Cons:

Application Level Scripts • Only loaded on startup, so if you make changes to • If your PDF is large and too cumbersome to send These snippets of AcroJS are stored outside of any an external .JS you’ll need to restart Acrobat. over email it’ll make updating the Document Level PDF file and indeed outside of Acrobat the applica- Scripts quite a chore. tion. When these snippets are stored in files with a .JS Document Level Scripts extension and then placed into the appropriate loca- In the early days this way the primary place of exis- Page Level Scripts tion (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat x.6\Acrobat\Ja- tence for AcroJS, nowadays we are spoiled for choice. There’s actually only two places that you can put vaScripts) they will then get loaded ever so nicely by Document Level Scripts are stored INSIDE the PDF your page level scripts, right behind door number Acrobat. document, which depending on how you work could one which is Page Open Scripts or door number two: be a good thing or a bad thing. Page Close Script. Application Level Scripts These snippets of AcroJS are stored outside of any AcroJS at the document level can mean more than Basically whenever either of these two events hap- PDF file and indeed outside of Acrobat the applica- one thing: pen -- that is whenever a page in a PDF document is tion. When these snippets are stored in files with a .JS opened (including when you open the PDF document extension and then placed into the appropriate loca- • Document Action Scripts: Document Will Open, and it opens up a page) and of course the opposite, tion (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat x.6\Acrobat\Ja- Document Will Close, Document Will Print, Docu- when a page in the PDF document is closed. vaScripts) they will then get loaded ever so nicely by ment Did Print are all events that happen (or can Acrobat. happen) that Acrobat allows you to ‘hook into’ and Pros: do stuff when these events occur. Pros: • Great for when you need something to happen when • Document Scripts: Not triggered by an event such a page is opened of closed. • Available to all PDF documents and therefore all as document opening or closing but rather can be other JavaScripts at all other levels. called by other scripts in other places (i.e., form field • Useful when you have a movie or sound annotation or application level scripts). that you want to start or finish based on the page • Allows updating of your scripts without having to up- events. date your PDF’s. Pros: Cons: • Easy to disable (simply rename the files’ extension • Your script goes with your PDF, so there’s never a to something other than .JS). chance you’ll forget to package it. • You can’t respond to other events, only Page related events. Cons: • Good for storing common tasks or scripts that are repeatedly called; I like to think of these scripts as • Availability of some resources can be limited de- • Almost impossible to secure -- anyone will be able the main place for central repositories. pending on timing of your page loading etc. to read how bad your code is (err, I mean how good it is). • Makes sense for storing JavaScript for validation of Form Field Level Scripts the best of

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You are actually putting JavaScript into the form fields; when it comes time to update your JavaScript. automation just makes sense. JavaScript can be of various different flavors and be used for different reasons: To prevent this paragraph from turning into a story on I found that the most useful resource to find out what • Custom Data Validation JavaScript FDF and its many virtues I’ll let you have a gander can be automated using AcroJS is the official JavaS- through our resources sections. cript Object Specification (which can be downloaded • Keystroke Validation JavaScript here). Pros: • Action Based JavaScripts Document Manipulation • Solves some of those batch update issues men- Manipulation -- what on earth do I mean here? Rotat- • Calculation JavaScript tioned above ing, Deleting and Cropping Pages, Insert Pages from other documents, exporting form field data, connect- • and more ... • Very portable ing to web resources and much, much more.

Pros: • Can be injected into PDF files over the web Printing You can create a little bit of JavaScript that prints out a • You can check the stuff entered into form field by • Easily modifiable single (or in batch!) PDF in exactly the way you want. your users Especially Acrobat 6 which now includes a new printer Cons: parameters object to let you control the fiddly little set- • Adding up numbers and ensuring the numbers en- tings that can really take the fun out of printing (ok, so tered are correct is dead simple. • In most cases it isn’t secure (it’s plaintext after all) maybe printing isn’t that fun).

• Using other scripts contained in other places is • Can be difficult to maintain when you have different Form Field Control easy. My favorite use of AcroJS is manipulating Form Fields. • PDF’s with lots of Form Fields. You can validate the data inside form fields, create • The validation for any particular field can be con- new form fields, spawn brand new pages based on tained in the field, which means it goes with the field Phew, So Now what? user input, move form fields around on the page. wherever it goes. If you didn’t go and eat your lunch during the last part then you should know a little bit more about some of Database Connectivity Cons: the places that you can put AcroJS in Acrobat/PDF. Still only available in the full versions of Acrobat (Std/ Pro), Acrobat Database Connectivity (ADBC) allows • You can’t access these scripts from other places in So the title of this article is (in case you forgot) ‘Where you to talk SQL (Structured Query Language) to any your PDF document (at least not easily). Should I use Acrobat JavaScript’, and below are some database you like (and even the ones you don’t like). ideas of where we can actually use AcroJS. * If you’ve got LOTS of fields it can be a real pain to SOAP update your broken or out-of-date scripts (unless of Automation Simple Object Access Protocol might sound a little course you never make mistakes). This is probably the most likely choice for using Ac- complex but it really is a great way to build enterprise roJS, you want to be able to automate the tasks that solutions using PDF and Acrobat. I’ve written an in- FDF Files you hate doing, or would rather not be doing because troductory article on SOAP titled ‘Introducing SOAP’, Forms Data Format (FDF) can be used to inject Ja- they take so loooong. A good example of this is when which has plenty of advanced JavaScript for you to vaScript into Form Fields and also at the Document you need to set the Document Information for lots of digest. Level inside a PDF. This can really make life simple PDF files or rotate the pages in certain documents: the best of

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Optional Content Groups Where to from Here? you write with one of these available events in Acro- Layers are fully scriptable. The full potential of Lay- To get started, read through the rest of the articles in bat, then it’s not going to execute. So, what are these ers hasn’t really been explored, but there are lots of this learning centre, also it would be a good idea to events, and where can I find them? resources available to explain some of the more basic have a wander and perhaps even read more of the concepts available to you when it comes to Layers articles referenced at the bottom of this article. What is an event? and AcroJS. When you need more specific advice or help, par- An event is a result of a user action. For example, a ticipate in the Forums (of course right after you do user could start the Acrobat viewer (App/Init), click on What Else? a search to see if your question hasn’t already been a button (Mouse Up), save a PDF file (Doc/DidSave), Well, actually, we forgot Batch Sequences. This is answered before ;). or close a PDF file (Doc/WillClose). The list goes on. where you create a sequence of tasks that do lots of The complete list of events that you can associate Ac- things for lots of PDF files (hence the batch part). It Working with Events in Acrobat robat JavaScript with can be found in the Acrobat Ja- just so happens that you can also run a snippet of Ja- JavaScript vaScript Scripting Reference document at the Adobe vaScript as part of the sequence (or as the only thing website, here: By Chris Dahl CTO, ARTS PDF Global Services in the sequence). http://partners.adobe.com/asn/acrobat/docs. I would recommend reading the articles by D.P. Story Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to sp#javascript on Batch Sequences; he does an excellent job ex- Acrobat JavaScript Learning Center plaining how to setup Batch Sequences and gives A selection of the more interesting events has been some great ideas on where they can be used. There are various events made available to people listed below, along with an example situation where it writing Acrobat JavaScript to associate their code would come in use. with. Without actually associating the JavaScript code Advertisement the best of

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You can associate JavaScript with this (and a number ARTS PDF Global Services App/Init of other useful events) in Acrobat under ‘Advanced > This is when the Acrobat/Reader viewer starts. Any JavaScript > Set Document Actions’. files with a .js extension (this is just a text based file Debugging Acrobat JavaScript Chris Dahl CTO, ARTS PDF Global Services containing JavaScript code) located in the Acrobat Ja- Example usage: Your organization may have a docu- vaScripts folder (usually in “C:\Program Files\Adobe\ ment policy that requires a disclaimer to be displayed Adobe Acrobat 6.0\Acrobat\JavaScripts”) will be pro- on printed versions of particular documents along with Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to Ac- cessed, and any code contained in these files will be the date/time it was printed. You can achieve this by robat JavaScript Learning Center executed. associating a JavaScript with the Doc/WillPrint event that fills a form field with the required values. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who has de- Example usage: Have a .js file sitting in the JavaS- veloped with Acrobat JavaScript and hasn’t had a cripts folder (as noted above) that customizes the Restrictions on Particular Events problem that has stumped them (of which can some- Acrobat/Reader viewer interface. This is achieved It’s important to know that particular Acrobat JavaS- times end up with the developer kicking themselves be using the JavaScript methods hideMenuItem(), cript methods and properties are restricted to be- when they discover it’s such a simple problem). When hideToolbarButton(), addMenuItem() and addToolbar- ing able to be associated with/executed on specific this happens, it usually results in the person writing Button(). events (for security reasons). the JavaScript to play around with their code, or ask a fellow JavaScript developer on one of the PDF related Batch/Exec Restrictions on Particular Events user forums. This is when a batch sequence is executed in Acro- It’s important to know that particular Acrobat JavaS- bat. JavaScript can be included as one or more of any cript methods and properties are restricted to be- If you’re the type of person who likes to try and solve number of commands in a batch sequence. ing able to be associated with/executed on specific such problems first before asking for help, then there events (for security reasons). are a number of different ways you can debug your Example usage: Create a new batch sequence that code in an attempt to get to the bottom of your prob- will execute the doc.addWebLinks() method across a If such a restriction is placed on a method or property, lem. In this article we’ll briefly look at the app.alert and folder of PDF documents. By using the ‘Run a JavaS- then there will be a security note just following the console.println methods for checking variable values, cript’ command in your batch sequence, and using the method/property description in the Acrobat JavaScript and then introduce you to the Acrobat JavaScript De- addWebLinks() method in your JavaScript, you can Scripting Reference document. In the above example bugger, which allows you to step through your code add interactive web links across a batch of PDF docu- (Figure 1), this means that the insertPages() method line by line for a better look at your code. ments. can only be associated to the Batch/Exec, Console/ Exec or Menu/Exec events. If you attempt to run it The app.alert Method Doc/Open on any other event, the operation will fail and an er- The app.alert method is used to display a message This event is fired whenever a document is opened. ror message written to the console stating -- ‘NotAl- to the user (and can also receive a response from the You can add JavaScript to be executed on this event lowedError: Security settings prevent access to this user, but we wont go into that here). It’s also a useful in Acrobat under ‘Advanced > JavaScript > Document property or method.’ tool for checking values of variables you use in your JavaScript’. JavaScript code. Examples Example usage: Add a new document level JavaS- If you’d like to see these events in action, you can // get user’s name cript that adds the current date to a form field when download the example PDF [PDF: 86KB] that illus- var fieldValue = app.response(“Please enter your the PDF is first opened. trates just a few of the events available. name”); Doc/WillPrint More Info This event is fired just before the document is printed. Example PDF [PDF: 86KB] // set form field value with user’s name var objField = this.getField(“txtName”); the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 61/81 objField.value = fieldValue; alert debug statements so they can be removed. with version 6.0 of Adobe Acrobat (only the Profes- sional version includes the Debugger), and can be In the above example code, we ask the user to enter The console.println Method turned on in the Preferences section (Edit > Prefer- their name into a textbox and then set the form field The console.println method works in a similar way to ences > JavaScript) by checking the ‘Enable JavaS- ‘txtName’ with the name they entered. If everything the app.alert method, in that it allows you send output cript debugger after Acrobat is restarted’ option. The went perfectly, then after the user entered their name, to the user. However, rather than displaying an alert debugger allows you to step through your code line this would appear in the PDF form field (‘txtName’). box to the user, the console.println writes the output to by line, set breakpoints and inspect variables via the However, imagine that for some reason it wasn’t work- the Acrobat console. debugger dialog. ing, and you wanted to find out where the problem is. So we’ll add some app.alert calls so we can see what Note: You can access the Acrobat console under the Ad- Note: A “breakpoint” is a placemarker that tells the ap- is happening when the code is executed. vanced menu, by clicking ‘JavaScript > Debugger’ or the plication to pause at that point to allow the user to inspect Ctrl+J shortcut. If the debugger menu item is disabled variables. // get user’s name you need to enable the interactive console in Acrobat’s var fieldValue = app.response(“Please enter your preferences (Edit > Preferences > General > Enable in- Once the debugger is enabled (if it wasn’t, you will name”); teractive console). need to restart Acrobat after selecting the checkbox), we need to tell Acrobat that we wish to run any Ja- // set form field value with user’s name This method comes in use when you want to review vaScript code that executes in ‘Debug Mode’. This var objField = this.getField(“txtName”); the output after your code has executed. For exam- is achieved in Acrobat under the Advanced menu, ple, if you wanted to inspect the contents of each form by clicking on ‘JavaScript > Debug from Start’. Once // check to ensure we retrieved this form field field in your document and you had a large number you’ve finished debugging your code, you can turn the if(objField != null) of fields, you don’t really want to have to click ‘OK’ debugger off by clicking on the same menu item (Ja- { to close each alert that appears when using the app. vaScript > Debug from Start). // form field retrieved alert method. Thus, if you use the console.println app.alert(“Form field found”); method instead of app.alert you can simply show the Whilst it’s possible to use app.alert and console.println // set value Acrobat console once your code has executed to view calls to try and locate problems with your code, using app.alert(“Inserting value: “ + fieldValue); the output. the JavaScript Debugger allows you to inspect any of objField.value = fieldValue; the variables that are being used and also gives you a } // loop through each form field in PDF good feel for the flow of your code. else for(var i=0; i

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check which version of Acrobat/Reader a user is run- today’s date is inserted into a form field named ‘to- Summary ning to see if you can use a particular object/method/ daysDate’. Each of the three techniques we’ve discussed for property that may only be available in recent versions debugging your Acrobat JavaScript are relevant to of Acrobat. // get new Date object anyone looking at enhancing their Acrobat and PDF var d = new Date(); experience using JavaScript. // full version, or just reader // format to mm/dd/yyyy Which technique you select to use depends on the var viewerType = app.viewerVariation; var sDate = util.printd(“mm/dd/yyyy”, d); problem you have at hand, whereby for debugging a simple problem you might try using straightforward // get version number // insert date into form field app.alert or console.println methods, but if you need var viewerVersion = app.viewerVersion; this.getField(“todaysDate”).value = sDate; to inspect a large number of variables and/or get a greater understanding of how your JavaScript code is if(viewerVersion < 6) See the example PDF file here being executed, then the Debugger can provide this { higher level of intelligence to the JavaScript devel- // cannot use printParams object 3. Run JavaScript on Document Open oper. this.print(); There are many situations where running a JavaS- } cript when the document is opened proves useful. For anyone looking for more information any of these else The current date could be set in a form field, each of three techniques, you should consult the related Ja- { the form fields could be reset (in the case that some- vaScript documents in the Adobe Acrobat SDK, which // v6 or above, can use printParams object one was previously using the form and saved values can be found at the Adobe site. // to define printer to print to in the fields). var pp = this.getPrintParams(); More Info pp.printerName = “Auto Canon LBP-800”; // variable to store whether document has been Adobe Acrobat SDK - (partners.adobe.com) this.print(pp); opened already or not ARTS PDF Global Services - (www.artspdf.com) } var bAlreadyOpened;

Example Acrobat JavaScripts In the above example we are looking to define the function docOpened() Chris Dahl CTO, ARTS PDF Global Solutions printer to print the PDF to. This became possible in { Acrobat/Reader with v6.0, so if we tried to use the Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Introduction to Ac- printParams object in earlier versions an error would if(bAlreadyOpened != “true”) robat JavaScript Learning Center occur. Thus, we use the app.viewerVersion property { to first check which version the user is running, and // document has just been opened In previous articles in this Learning Center we have if they are running v6.0 or above, then use the print- var d = new Date(); discussed what exactly Acrobat JavaScript is, where Params object to define the printer, otherwise to just var sDate = util.printd(“mm/dd/yyyy”, d); you can use it and how to debug it. In this article we’re make the print dialog appear. this.getField(“todaysDate”).value = sDate; going to jump right into the deep-end with some use- ful examples of using Acrobat JavaScript. Check back See the example PDF file here // now set bAlreadyOpened to true so it doesn’t soon for more tips and examples. // run again 2. Insert Today’s Date into Form Field bAlreadyOpened = “true”; There is a method in Acrobat JavaScript that makes } 1. Check Viewer Version and Type formatting dates quick and easy. The method is util. else There are certain situations where you may need to printd(), and there an example of this below where { the best of

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// document has already been opened • Example 1. Check the Viewer Version and Type -- PDF } • Example 2. Insert Today’s Date into Form Field -- PDF } • Example 3. Run JavaScript on Document Open -- PDF • Example 4. Dropdown List Value On Selection -- PDF // call the docOpened() function docOpened(); More JavaScript Tips To add a document level JavaScript in Acrobat, go to You can find many more JavaScript articles and tips at ‘Advanced > JavaScript > Document JavaScripts’, en- Planet PDF. Click here to locate them. ter a name for the script and click ‘Add’.

The PDF that accompanies example #2 shows a Ja- vaScript running on the document open action. See the example PDF file here

4. Check Dropdown List Value On Selection In many instances where you provide a user with a dropdown list allowing them to make a selection, you need to perform some other operations based on their selection. By placing JavaScript code under the ‘Vali- date’ section of the dropdown list, we ensure that the value will be checked as soon as it has been commit- ted.

Additionally, if we want to ensure that any processing/ calculations are triggered as soon as the user makes their selection in the dropdown list (and not when the tab or click the mouse outside of the form field) there is an option (new in v6 of Acrobat) that allows you to specify this, named ‘Commit selected value immedi- ately’ in the fields. Figure 1. Form field’s validate tab See the example PDF file here

Associated Files the best of

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PDF Master: JAEGGI: As a consultant I help users and vendors to all the tips and tricks I have learned during the last 12 Stephan Jaeggi with Planet PDF implement PDF workflows. I also teach multiple semi- years working with PDF in prepress. By Dan Shea Planet PDF Editor nars in both German and English -- mostly in Central Europe, but also in Scandinavia and the US. I undertook a big challenge when I agreed to handle the “Problems of Greatest Concern” portion of the Editor’s Note: Stephan Jaeggi is a well-known expert in SHEA: Briefly describe the most significant Seybold PDF Usage Survey 2003. I am proud that PDF technology in Europe. Before founding PrePress change in the development or use of the technol- after a lot of investigation I was able to come up with Consulting in 1991, he spent five years at the Swiss solutions or at a least methods to avoid all of these Graphic Arts Association, where he supported 1200 mem- ogy, since you first began working with Acrobat/ problems! bers in the transition from traditional prepress systems to PDF, and why do you consider it significant? desktop publishing. Jaeggi holds a degree from the Swiss JAEGGI: There were two major milestones for me. There is also a chapter where I answer some of the Engineering School for Printing and Packaging (ESIG) The first was the introduction of PDF 1.3 in 1999, as frequently asked questions about PDF in prepress in Lausanne/Switzerland. He has introduced thousands it solved most of the issues raised in our Spring 1998 production. To resolve some of the problems we had of people to PDF in his seminars all over Europe. In white paper (“PDF for Prepress”). The second was the to develop special tools in JavaScript (e.g. convert 1998, Stephan Jaeggi contributed to the famous whitepa- introduction of PDF/X-3 in 2002. In this ISO standard double to single pages, create overlays in PDF, print per PDF for Prepress. He is also the co-author of the ISO we defined all the specifications necessary for using a visible trimbox). These scripts are exclusively avail- 15930-3 (PDF/X-3) specification and the author of four PDF as a reliable prepress data exchange format in- able for attendees of this workshop. free tutorials on PDF workflow, and the publisher of a cluding ICCbased colors. popular PDF newsletter in german language. Since 2000, SHEA: Acrobat and PDF are now used in so many Jaeggi has been a member of the advisory board of CIP4 SHEA: industries and in so many ways; do you see new ar- (development of JDF specification). Tell me, what is it about PDF that makes it useful to so many different people? eas that perhaps haven’t yet been tapped? Where do you see the greatest potential for growth? DAN SHEA: When and why did you first get in- JAEGGI: The most fascinating aspect of PDF is cer- volved with Acrobat/PDF? tainly its diversity. PDF can be created from any ap- JAEGGI: Despite its many applications, PDF has not plication and used for a number of different purposes. yet reached its limits. I think there is a great potential STEPHAN JAEGGI: Back in 1991 I was there when Over the years, many people have come up with in- in the marriage of PDF and XML: PDF to describe the John Warnock made the first public demo of “Carou- novative new uses for PDF. Adobe deserves some graphical representation of a page and XML to define sel” (code name for Acrobat) in San Jose. I was imme- credit, but the user community has been particularly the structure of the information including meta data of diately fascinated by the new data format. Back in that productive in this area. Originally PDF was only ment all objects. time I was specializing in PostScript and data conver- for the exchange of office documents. The first ver- sion for prepress applications. “Interactive PostScript” sion of PDF only supported RGB color. With each ver- Today this is mainly used for creating accessibility to IPS (as PDF was called at that time) seamed to be the sion more features have been added. I am sure that electronic document for people with disabilities, but in ultimate solution for (almost) all the problems we had this will still continue in the next couple of years. PDF the future I expect that this kind of information will be been fighting with for years. Although Adobe didn’t is only 13 years old. It’s still in its adolescence . also used for searching PDF archives (e.g. looking for seam to address the graphic arts professionals with a word only in the title and the abstract of a document) the first versions of PDF and Acrobat I never gave up SHEA: What’s your next PDF project? and repurposing of documents (text, graphic and im- believing in PDF. A lot of people (even close friends) ages). I also think that editing tools could benefit from thought that I was crazy to push the use of PDF at the JAEGGI: I am currently preparing a new english ver- the logical structure in a PDF document e.g. for edit- time. But they had to change their minds later... sion of my “Workshop for Advanced PDF Users” for ing entire paragraphs or for changing the typeface of DAN SHEA: For those who don’t know, what is it Seybold Amsterdam (in mid April) and Seybold San all captions in a document. that you are doing with PDF right now? Francisco (in August). In this seminar I am showing the best of

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Advertisement SHEA: What do you see in the future of PDF? of electronic data processing ‘garbage in - garbage out’ is also true for PDF. Not all PDFs are suitable for JAEGGI: From a prepress point of view the format is imaging in high quality. In fact I would estimate that 98 quite complete now. All of the points on my wish list percent of all the existing PDF documents cannot be where realized in PDF 1.5 (16bit images, JPEG2000, used for print production. They are intended for office layers), however I would like to see more animation communication, archives or the Internet. features for interactive PDF. That’s why we have created the PDF/X specifications. SHEA: What can Adobe change in the next ver- These ISO standards define the minimal requirements sion of Acrobat to make it better? for a PDF document to be used in print production. My favorite is PDF/X-3, which allows the use of CMYK JAEGGI: On top of the list are transparency flatten- and spot colors (like PDF/X-1a), but is also ready for ing and color transformation directly in PDF and not color management workflows by using ICC based only during PostScript output. Better editing features color definition as an option. and an easier preflight user interface would also be welcome, and I would also like to have the ability to I am sure that PDF/X will make the use of PDF in print define new layers directly in Acrobat. Further, it would production more reliable. This is especially true when be helpful if the prepress features were not scattered I look at the new features of PDF 1.5 like JPEG2000, across the entire user interface of Acrobat. I cannot compression of object streams, optional content understand why Adobe did not add a dedicated Pre- groups (layers). These new features are great, but press task button like for other feature groups (secu- it will take years until they will be supported by all rity, annotations, digial signatures)! prepress applications and workflow systems. To be on the safe side, I recommend the exclusive use of SHEA: Can Acrobat and PDF be all things to all PDF/X files in prepress unless you are certain that people? the receiver is able to deal with PDF 1.5 documents More Info properly. PrePress-Consulting JAEGGI: Why not? PDF is just a container for infor- mation. But it’s important to understand that not all PDF Aktuell newsletter (in German) PDFs can be used for all purposes. That’s the reason to define special subsets of PDF: PDF/X for prepress Seybold Amsterdam 2004 data eXchange, PDF/A for Archiving and now PDF/E for Engineering purposes. Seybold PDF Summit Amsterdam 2003

SHEA: Briefly describe a common misconception PDF 2003 - Frankfurt, Germany (www.pdf2003.de) about or frequent problem you’ve seen with Acro- bat/PDF that you’d like to try to clarify for others PDF/X Standard [PDF: 120kb] - Stephan Jaeggi, Sey- and/or provide a tip to address. bold SF 2001

JAEGGI: A lot of users think if they convert their lay- CIP4 and JDF FAQ [PDF: 89kb] outs to PDF, all of the problems are solved automati- cally. That’s definitely not the case. The old principle Information about JDF - CIP4.org the best of

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Job Definition Format (JDF) Overview [PDF: 280kb] -Press Consultinggesellschaft mbH, a business-consult- ZIPPER: There are two areas. First, of course, there ing firm, he has been a pioneer in providing knowledge are the applications we use in our office. We use PDF What is CIP4’s JDF and how can it help my print and high-quality information about the latest workflow to send jobs out for commercial printing, for tasks in- workflow? [PDF: 250kb] - Stephan Jaeggi, Seybold and publishing technologies. PDF technologies, in par- volving filling out forms in the office, and for archiving. SF 2002 ticular, are a specialty of his. His “PDF+Print” series of My team and I also use PDF for presentations in books is internationally known for its coverage of PDF some cases. Secondly, PDF is involved in the service PDF/X3 Inspektor [PDF: 102kb] - Stephan Jaeggi, and other media technologies, and it has been republished I offer. In my consulting for printers, ad agencies, and Seybold NY 2002 as article series in Publishing Praxis, Deutscher Drucker, manufacturers, I offer advice about how PDF can be the Seybold Report in the U.S., and in other trade maga- used to optimize complex workflows and make them PDF/X3.org zines. As publisher of the German on-line news service, more reliable. In particular, I emphasize dynamic gen- Advertisement pdfnews.de, he is sought after as a pragmatic consultant, eration of PDF (also known as “PDF on the fly”). This moderator, and speaker. concept has been well received, particularly in ad agencies and manufacturing firms, where some of the biggest opportunities for cost savings since the DTP DAN SHEA: When and why did you first get in- revolution are now being uncovered. Working on the volved with Acrobat/PDF? standardization of PDF is also among my tasks, espe- cially with respect to the printing industry. BERND ZIPPER: I think it was 1992 or 1993. In those days, I was a prepress operator and department man- These are the primary areas of my writing and consult- ager for a prepress firm in Essen. A dealer had brought ing. I also report on my PDF experience and analysis us a stack of Adobe diskettes, and he was very proud in my presentations and seminars. In addition, I con- of having gotten hold of them. At that time (during tinue to work on my book projects (e.g. PDF+Print, the DTP boom) one of my jobs was researching new which is available in the local languages in the U.S., technologies that might possibly give us a jump on the Europe, and Japan). On occasion, I also consult for competition. But I found I couldn’t do much with the vendors of PDF applications, on topics such as mar- pile of diskettes. Following installation, a tool called ket introduction, monitoring of developments, concep- “PDF Writer” was recommended as a method for gen- tual approach, and localization of PDF tools. erating a 1:1 copy of my Quark layout. That would have been really nice, but unfortunately the fonts we used in the layout didn’t show up in the copy, and that SHEA: Briefly describe the most significant change in the development or use of the technol- Quite Imposing Plus wwwquite.com . meant that we couldn’t use PDF at the time. So I used PDF only for sending letters via Compuserve (my on- ogy, since you first began working with Acrobat/ line service provider back then). By 1995, the PDF PDF, and why do you consider it significant? PDF Master: situation had changed. In the business I was running The world according to Zipper then, we were already producing completely digital ZIPPER: For me, the most significant development in By Dan Shea Planet PDF Editor catalogs on CD-ROM (including an ordering mecha- the field of PDF is not the technological progress (al- nism) in PDF. It didn’t take long before it was clear to though that certainly has been important) but rather me: I needed to pay more attention to PDF. the international standardization of PDF, in the form Editor’s Note: Bernd Zipper has been involved in the pre- of PDF/X and PDF/A. Collaboration among partners press industry for more than 14 years. In the context of around the world can only be achieved if there are his activities as technology and strategy consultant, and SHEA: For those who don’t know, what is it that global standards. Members of the PDF/X develop- as owner of ZIPCON NewMedia und Pre you are doing with PDF right now? ment group -- pioneers such as Martin Bailey -- have the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | | 67/81 been able to position PDF/X as an undisputed world- cult time if they don’t show their corporate clients that wide standard. ZIPPER: Well, it’s confidential. I’m very reluctant to these tasks can also be taken over by a print-and-me- talk in public about my clients and my current proj- dia service provider. Looking at the technology issues, linking XML with ects. But I can disclose that there will be a new book PDF has been one of the most important new devel- that will deal with the topic of “PDF on the fly.” The In addition, PDF will surely be integrated into more opments. Also, support for multi-media and integra- background research for it is currently proceeding at and more programs. The fact that this hasn’t hap- tion with MS Office have helped make PDF easier to pened sooner is most likely due to obstacles created top speed. implement and more suitable for new applications. by the licensing policies of one vendor or another. The implementation of layers, added in the latest ver- sion is another step forward -- if only there were a tool SHEA: Acrobat and PDF are now used in so many SHEA: What can Adobe change in the next ver- available that would let you create layers in a reason- industries and in so many ways; do you see new ar- sion of Acrobat to make it better? ably sane way, and above all, simply. The use of PDF eas that perhaps haven’t yet been tapped? Where in Apple’s OS-X is also a great step forward, but a do you see the greatest potential for growth? ZIPPER: Oh, I can think of a lot of things. The creation few areas still need to be fixed there as well. I think and handling of layers needs to be simpler. Acrobat Apple should just invite in a few users and ask them ZIPPER: I believe, as Adobe has also recognized, has also become very complex to operate. Adobe’s what needs to be improved in the next version of PDF that the greatest potential is in corporate and govern- approach is close to optimal for the current offering, integration -- the current state of development is not ment applications. But Adobe’s work in the print and but I would like to see a type of “start-up selector” that particularly useful in practice. media industries is not yet complete, so the task of would allow Acrobat to be launched in various dif- PDF “evangelists” is not to conquer new industries, ferent modes. Then, it would be possible to arrange SHEA: Tell me, what is it about PDF that makes it but to achieve better market penetration. There are things so that even a beginner could convert PDF files useful to so many different people? still a lot of people who don’t use PDF because the to PDF/X, or so that a professional could hide a few process of working with it seems too complex. But if options to avoid being constantly overwhelmed by ZIPPER: Put simply, PDF is an interface. With “stan- PDF becomes better integrated with XML, I expect a the multitude of functions. There is still a great deal dard” PDF, Adobe created the first international stan- new PDF boom. Together, PDF and XML guarantee for Adobe to do in the area of OS-X support. And the dard that, although it required a special browser, al- that many kinds of work will become totally automated forms functionality needs to be made still simpler. lowed people around the world to communicate. I in the future; and it is in this type of automation (as There is an “optimizer” in the latest version, and this won’t attempt to list all the functions that make PDF so with PDF on the fly, for example) where the greatest can be made still better. The competing tools, such as useful for people who work digitally. But I can’t imagine opportunity for growth lies. Apago’s PDF Enhancer, show how this can be done. doing without PDF as a method of exchanging mate- rial to be printed, as a forms tool, and in many other So there is still much to be done. And perhaps Adobe SHEA: What do you see in the future of PDF? areas. The vision of John Warnock (who I admire not needs to rethink its Acrobat licensing model. Other- just as the inventor of PDF and PostScript, but also wise, cheaper but less-functional products will take as one of the few technology leaders who makes sure ZIPPER: Well, as I already mentioned, PDF will be- over the corporate market in the long run. that his developments are relevant to people and their come dynamic when teamed with XML, and will take reality) was crowned by the development of PDF. on the next level of publishing: on-line production of SHEA: Briefly describe a common misconception (He is also a great guy, by no means an out-of-touch prepress files. That will make remote proofing easier, about or frequent problem you’ve seen with Acro- techno-wizard.) So PDF is the connector, the medium and whole workflows will be automated -- including bat/PDF that you’d like to try to clarify for others of exchange among people, nations, languages, and preflight and all subsequent steps -- and suddenly, and/or provide a tip to address. thoughts. many companies will find themselves “publishers” without ever having thought about it before. For some ZIPPER: Being an old Macintosh fan, I think PDF SHEA: What’s your next PDF project? in the printing industry, this will no doubt be a diffi- support in OS-X is a hot topic. Peter Kleinheider and the best of

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I published a comprehensive analysis of this in The but consistently preflighting every PDF file that comes money it will cost you if an error ends up on press Seybold Report, and I think it’s worthy of study. I into or leaves your shop can save you lots of hassle. because you didn’t preflight. strongly recommend reading that article. One of the most common questions people ask when People are always hesitant to add extra steps to their More Info they start learning about preflight is where in the work- workflow, but there are few processes that have such flow it should happen. Does the designer have to pre- an enormous return on investment as properly imple- ZIPCON - (www.zipcon.de) flight his QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign file, or does mented preflighting. pdfnews.de - (www.pdfnews.de) he have to preflight the PDF generated from those The Seybold Report - (www.seyboldreports.com) native application files? Or is preflighting something What’s the Problem With This PDF? that needs to happen when the publisher or printer re- By David van Driessche CEO, Enfocus Software ceives the PDF file? There are two different factors to PDF Preflight take into account when answering these questions. Have you ever been shocked when you saw the fi- Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Preflight Learning Center nal printed result of something you had designed or On the one hand, look at all steps in your workflow. pulled your hair out because the perfect PDF file you Whenever you are not certain about the file you re- Isn’t PDF perfectly suited for graphic arts? Wasn’t the just received doesn’t behave as you expected? In this ceive, you have to preflight. If you just assume the Learning Center at Planet PDF, Enfocus’s David van format developed for print and publishing? What can previous step in the workflow yielded correct results, be so terribly wrong with my files then? Driessche explains why that happens and what you you open yourself up for trouble. The only exception can do to again sleep well at night... to this rule is when you can use technology such as Actually, PDF was not developed for use in graphic Enfocus Certified PDF to take away that uncertainty; What is PDF Preflight? arts at all. It was developed as a format for the Internet if you can’t guarantee the quality of files coming in, and enterprise world and until the third revision of the By David van Driessche CEO, Enfocus Software preflight them. language it was generally unusable for graphic arts use. The file format has evolved of course, and the Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Preflight On the other hand, I recommend that you preflight Learning Center latest versions of PDF (starting with PDF version 1.3) as early as possible. If you have the opportunity to are perfectly suitable for a wide spectrum of graphic preflight the native QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign arts applications. The next time you travel by plane, notice that the pilots file, do so. Detecting problems there gives you a very will get on the plane quite a bit before you do. That’s easy and quick way to fix them. But as a designer, That inheritance caused a lot of non-graphic arts fea- not because they like their cramped cockpit so much you should also preflight your PDF files before you but because they have a whole long list of preflight tures to be built into the PDF file format. It makes PDF send them to your printer or publisher. Creating that so versatile, but also presents a danger for graphic checks to run. By the time you get on the plane, they PDF file is an extra and complicated step; preflighting already know it’s in good working condition... arts workflows. What happens if you include a sound the PDF file guarantees that it was successful. If you fragment or a movie in a file that is going to be print- send out a bad PDF file it will bounce back to you and ed? There are plenty of opportunities to create a PDF The term preflight was derived from that process; be- cause delays. It might even have to be fixed further fore you make an expensive plate and start making file that will not print correctly or not print as expected. down the workflow resulting in extra costs or uncer- Let’s look at some of them. a gazillion copies, you want to make sure the file you tainty over the final result. have is actually correct and will print the right result. I make it sound as if you will be doing a lot of preflight- Preflight essentially acts like a safety net. It takes ing... and you will be. If you’re worried about that just some extra time to go through the preflight step (you’ll consider how little time it will take you to preflight in see later that it is perfectly possible to integrate the your workflow and compare it to how much time and extra processing step seamlessly in your workflow) the best of

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Different PDF Versions Images be visible when you preview the file with Adobe Ac- The original PDF version was (logically) 1.0. Right PDF files support images in any resolution. Low reso- robat. Only specialized preflight software will pinpoint now we’re up to version 1.5. That poses a problem as lution images might look acceptable on screen, but those problems so that they don’t slip through. not all software and hardware can handle the latest when printed they will look a lot less impressive. versions of PDF documents. Being able to have trans- These problems don’t mean that PDF isn’t a viable parent objects in a modern PDF file is a cool feature, Fonts format for graphic arts use. It does mean that proper but not all RIPs out there will know what to do with PDF is very versatile with regards to fonts; from the care must be taken to create PDF files correctly and such a file. very beginning the format was designed to alleviate that you shouldn’t just assume any PDF file is auto- font problems by supporting font embedding. If a font matically good for print. Colors is embedded, the designer doesn’t have to send it with The large majority of graphic arts workflows are based the document as often happens with QuarkXPress or Knowing What to Look For on CMYK and spot (named) colors. PDF files allow for Adobe InDesign documents. All information needed to By David van Driessche CEO, Enfocus Software much more than that; they support RGB, LAB and dif- display that font is present in the PDF file itself. Unfor- ferent types of color managed colors (the PDF Color tunately, a font does not have to be embedded when Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Preflight Learning Center will tell you all about it). Sending such the PDF file is created. If it is not embedded, Adobe Learning Center colors to a press might result in the press just giving Acrobat will fake it on screen, but a printer will either up and print nothing; or in hideously wrong colors be- not print the file or print it totally wrong (substituting What is a problem in your workflow might be an ad- ing printed without further warning. the missing font with Courier for example). vantage in mine. What problems you need to detect during preflight all depends on how you use PDF files Notice that a number of these problems will not at all in your setup. Just take image resolution as an ex- Advertisement the best of

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Advertisement ample; depending on the output technology and ma- tion active in your market segment can help. Many terials used to print a job, printers might have widely industry associations are active in developing guide- different ideas on the minimum resolution needed for lines; preflight profiles are often part of those guide- images. lines. Since 2002 the Ghent PDF Workgroup organi- zation streamlines the work done by more than fifteen So, determining that you need to preflight your PDF such industry organizations. Their web site contains a files is one important realization. But even more im- collection of preflight profiles, Adobe Acrobat Distiller portant is to come up with the correct set of rules to be settings, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress output used during preflight. That set of rules is often referred settings for nine different marketing segments. to as a preflight profile and most preflight technologies out there allow you to configure preflight using one of Profile Description those profiles. Newspaper Ads for newspapers, allowing medium resolution, CMYK and/or spot colour In most cases you don’t have to and shouldn’t make Magazine Ads for magazines, high resolution CMYK only preflight rules from scratch. A number of organizations Commercial sheet offset printing and digital imaging have already spent a considerable amount of time on Sheet CMYK CMYK only this subject. The result is a number of standards and Sheet Spot Hi Res all colour printing (including CMYK and/or spot colour) specifications that define preflight rules for various Sheet Spot Lo Res all colour printing (including CMYK and/or spot colout), allowing low scenarios. It is in your best interest to look around at resolution what is out there. Even if you have to customize the Commercial (cold set) web offset printing (newsprint), with allowance for medium resolution preflight rules for your particular situation, start from Web CMYK News CMYK only a standard set of rules for a situation that resembles Web Spot News all colour printing (including CMYK and/or spot colour) your own and modify those. No need to reinvent the Commercial (heat set) web offset printing wheel! Web CMYK Hi Res CMYK only

Web Spot Hi Res all colour printing (including CMYK and/or spot colour) The best that can happen is that a publisher or printer you are going to work with on a project has already developed a collection of preflight rules. Such rules are perfect since they are the rules your publisher or If neither of the above helps, don’t despair. There is printer will use to validate your PDF files as they re- an ISO standard out there called PDF/X that will serve ceive them. Always take the time to check out their as a very good base guideline for you to start from. In web site and see if they haven’t already done the work fact most of the preflight rules mentioned above are for you. An excellent example of such a web site is built on top of the PDF/X standard. the Time, Inc web site that contains explanations of what they expect and downloadable preflight profiles PDF/X is an internationally accredited standard devel- for different vendors. Web sites that collect specifica- oped by the ISO (International Standards Organiza- tions from different printers and publishers can help tion). What it does is define which features in PDF are here too; an example of this is the CertifiedPDF.net usable in print oriented PDF files and which are not. web site. That means that if you know someone is sending you a PDF/X file, you are sure it is much more reliable and If you aren’t that lucky, perhaps an industry associa- has a higher chance to print than if they send you just any PDF file. the best of

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As PDF/X is targeted towards the whole print industry possible involve all relevant players in the workflow. better solution. pdfInspector2 from Callas Software is it is a very broad standard. Some of the preflight rules Don’t limit it to your own company. one solution; this is the same technology as included you will want to use in your particular workflow are not by default in Adobe Acrobat Professional 6. One other part of the PDF/X standard. Again image resolution is It sounds very altruistic and not very commercially solution is Enfocus PitStop Professional, which does a prime example; as everyone in our industry has a oriented to go out and educate for example your cre- comprehensive preflighting but also allows users to fix different idea about the perfect resolution for images ators and printers if you are a publisher... But in the the problems found (we’ll talk more about fixing prob- the PDF/X standard doesn’t define what image reso- end it’s really not; it’s the smartest thing you can do. lems in the next piece). lution should be. Much more information can be found A workflow that implements proper quality control on the PDF/X web site. will gain you so much in cost-savings and efficiency Automated Preflight that it is well worth the initial effort. The third part of If you have a larger volume of PDF files that need Selecting the preflight rules you will start from and the question for this article is the “How?” and there is to be preflighted, you are probably better off with a then adjusting them to your unique workflow is very no easy answer on that. Let me give you a couple of solution that does not require Adobe Acrobat Profes- important. It is well worth spending time on this, as guidelines though. sional but works standalone. Enfocus PitStop Server the quality of the results you receive during preflight is one such hot folder based preflight tool, but almost is largely dependent on how good your preflight rules First of all, you’ll have to decide which preflight tech- all major workflow vendors (Agfa, Artwork Systems, are... nology you want to use. Decide that by looking at the Creo, Screen...) have their own workflow system that quality of the preflight engine and how user-friendly integrates preflight. Depending on what you are look- Preflighting PDF...Who, Where and How it is for your purpose. Also keep in mind that the pre- ing for in terms of price and feature set one of those might be your perfect solution... By David van Driessche CEO, Enfocus Software flight rules you want to use might make a difference in your choice as well; not all preflight engines out there support the same preflight rules. I can’t tell you which product to use -- as I work for Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Preflight Learning Center Enfocus Software, that would not be fair. But there are The preflight technology you select probably exists in reviews enough out there to give you an independent It doesn’t matter where you are in a workflow; you’re multiple forms, and they all have their purpose. So overview. And if you are in doubt, ask people on the always at the right spot to implement preflighting. That consider where you want to preflight and then check prepress forums or even better, download trial ver- may sound strange but it is basically true; regardless out your options. Let’s look at a couple of possible sions and test for yourself. of what happens in the rest of the workflow, if you pre- ways you could use preflight software in your work- flight you will be better off. The only possible reason flow. you might have to skip preflight is when you are 100% sure that the files coming in will be perfect 100% of PDF File Creation the time (and the same for the files you send out of A number of applications such as Agfa Apogee Cre- course). ate, Creo Synapse and Enfocus Instant PDF integrate You do have to realize that you will have to go further the PDF file creation and preflight process. If you reg- to reap the full benefits of good quality control through- ularly have to create PDF files and then verify that out a workflow. Implementing preflight in one spot will they are all right before sending them off, this might benefit the workflow, but not as much as when all of be an ideal solution. the players in the workflow get involved. Manual Preflight If we look at the case studies we’ve done on preflight- If you receive a small volume of PDF files, or regularly ing and quality control that is one of the most impor- have to open PDF files in Adobe Acrobat, a plug-in tant conclusions and it always comes back: if at all preflight tool that works in Adobe Acrobat might be a the best of

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I Have Problems Going Back to the Original Application they don’t like it but did have to fix something is at least By David van Driessche CEO, Enfocus Software The advantage of going back to the original applica- as big. Fair warning! tion is that it is usually easier to fix the problem. So Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Preflight much information about the document is lost when PDF Colour Learning Center converting to PDF that it can be a bit of a challenge Many details on color usage in PDF and PostScript to make certain corrections in the PDF file. The other have been published by Adobe and other sources, but So you’ve decided to preflight (which was smart!) and advantage is that your original native document stays it can be a daunting task to understand it, much less put now you have a preflight report that shows a number up to date. it into practical use. This Learning Center discusses the of errors... It seems like your problems have only just color secrets of PDF and their associated myths. It also begin... Of course it isn’t always possible to go back; in some attempts to provide a clearer picture of how color is ap- cases the original documents are no longer avail- plied in PDF as well as the related issues for composite Not quite though, you’ve identified what is wrong with able. In other cases there just isn’t time to go back to color prepress workflows. that PDF file; that is very valuable information. At least the creator of the file. And finally a number of prob- you now have a chance to fix what is wrong, the file lems simply aren’t fixable in the original application; PDF and Colour Spaces no matter how many times you go back to Microsoft won’t go further down the workflow and come around By Gary Armstrong Planet PDF Contributing Editor to haunt you later on! Let’s see how you get some Word, you’re never going to get proper CMYK color June 30, 2004 more information on what is wrong with your file and out of it... how you can fix it. Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Color Learning Fixing the PDF file Center. Preflight reports can be cryptic, and the first step in So fixing the PDF file is sometimes the only available figuring out how to fix the errors in the file is under- option. Adobe Acrobat supports a limited amount of The PDF format supports objects specified in a number standing what they mean. For all errors that have to editing, and allows opening line-art and images in an of device dependent, device independent, and special do with the PDF/X standard, you can download the associated editor (such as Adobe Illustrator or Adobe color spaces. Except for certain controlled environ- “Ultimate Guide to PDF/X”. It can (amongst other Photoshop) for editing. ments (i.e. PDF/X), production professionals should as- places) be downloaded from the IPA web site. It con- sume that different color spaces may be intermingled in tains the typical errors you can get when you preflight For truly extensive editing, have a look Enfocus Pit- any document, perhaps in any page, particularly if you a file against the PDF/X standard; explains what they Stop Professional. This plug-in allows fixing problems have graphics or pages included from different sources. mean and how you can go about fixing them. during preflight (correcting certain problems on the The trick is to understand what is going on and to plan fly) and it also allows a vast array of manual and auto- accordingly. In a similar fashion, all errors and warning message mated editing on any object in the PDF file. you can get during preflight using Enfocus technology Device color spaces are those used by the creation de- are documented on line on the CertifiedPDF.net web Be realistic... vice. For images, this would often be the color space site. Whatever arguments you favor, try to remain realistic. of the data from the scanner. However, it could also be Chances are that sooner or later you’ll find a use for the color space applied in Photoshop or Quark, or the Typically those resources give you the choice of fixing both methods. So make sure you know what is pos- result of color conversion by the printer driver, which- the error in the PDF file you have, or explain how you sible; when the time comes you’ll be grateful you do. ever made the last modification. Normally all of these have to fix it in the original application (after which you programs go to great lengths to preserve colors. With have to recreate the PDF file from the original appli- Enfocus has had its PDF editor since 1997 and the care, device dependent color reproduces quite well, but cation). Both approaches have their advantages and amount of people that walk up to us and say they think that is also its weakness. That care is manifested as art, disadvantages... editing PDF files is a bad idea is really big. However, craftsmanship, the amount of people that have to grudgingly admit the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | 73/81 or cross-organizational communication - items that This de-couples the creation and rendering of color in- rendering intents are defined but others are possible. are becoming more scarce in our fast-paced, decen- formation. You only need apply the appropriate profile The table below lists the rendering intents and some tralized world. at the destination. Also, it means that N+Y profiles are of their properties. needed, instead of NxY profiles for traditional color In an effort to control the variety of color spaces users management. have resorted to trying to implement color manage- ment throughout these processes. The reality is that ICC color also recognizes that the same colors can the scanner data might not display the same colors on be applied different ways. This has led to the notion of a monitor or printer. This has led to the notion that you “rendering intents” for different objects. Four standard can attach a profile that will provide the information to convert from the source colors to the colors specific ICC, PDF & PostScript Rendering Intents to the destination device. The problem is that if you attach a profile that makes the colors look right on the Rendering Intent Objective Best for Advantages monitor, then it probably won’t look right on a printed page, and vice versa. To get around this dilemma, Absolute Measure the same across some color management systems will have one pro- Colour matching Logos, colour catalogues file for each destination device or printing condition Colormetric media (print technology, paper, ink) per each source device. Relative Media adjusted colour Looks the same across If you had N source devices and Y destination devices Vector graphics matching media or print conditions, this could lead to NxY profiles to Colormetric construct and manage. Saturation Preserve saturation Business graphics Vivid Document creators may not know where their files will Preserve colour relation- Scanned images Pleasing be printed or on what type of device. Often, the print Perceptual ships buyer decides this at the last minute, based on the best price, delivery schedule, and destination. If the creator relies on trying to color manage their PDFs ICC, PDF & PostScript Rendering Intents there is no guarantee that they are applying the right profile and that they will get the intended colors. Rendering Intent In-gamut mapping Out-of-gamut mapping

To get around all this, Adobe, Apple and a few other Absolute companies proposed an industry standard for device Exact All to in-gamut nearest colour Colormetric independent color. Initial implementations included the CIE-based device independent color in PostScript Relative To nearest in-gamut colour, white point Exact, but white point adjusted Level 2 and Apple’s ColorSync. The group, and the Colormetric adjusted effort, eventually became the International Color Con- sortium (ICC). The premise of ICC color is that you can use a profile Saturation Exact sometimes To nearest, most saturated in-gamut colour to map source colors into a mathematically-rigorous absolute color space and have other profiles to map Compressed relatively within in-gamut Perceptual Compressed relatively into in-gamut region from this absolute color space to destination colors. region the best of

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Color Spaces in Practice By Gary Armstrong Planet PDF Contributing Editor ICC, PDF & PostScript Rendering Intents Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Color Learn- PDF Colour Equivalent PostScript ing Center. Type 1st PDF Vers. 1st Acro Vers. Space Colour Space Color conversion is not always exact. There is the chance that you will have some round-off error, partic- DeviceGray D 1.0 1 DeviceGray ularly for the more sophisticated mathematics involved in ICC color. So, you can’t always expect to end up DeviceRGB D 1.0 1 DeviceRGB with exactly the same color after doing a conversion and its inverse. Therefore, the fewer conversions you DeviceCMYK D 1.0 1 DeviceCMYK do the better. CalGray I 1.1 2 CIEBasedA Separation logic, i.e., conversion into CMYK also can CalRGB I 1.1 2 CIEBasedABC lead to surprises. Even under perfect conditions you might find cases where what you believe is a single Lab I 1.1 2 CIEBasedABC color separates onto two or more plates. Separation S 1.2 3 Separation Particularly for high key images, you might find dots on the black plate when you did not expect them. This Indexed S 1.2 3 Indexed can be exacerbated by the choice of image compres- sion. This is generally not a problem for lossless com- Pattern S 1.2 3 Patteren pression where you get back exactly what you started with after a compression-decompression cycle. It is DeviceN S 1.3 4 DeviceN more likely to happen with lossy compression, such as JPEG. ICCBased I 1.3 4 See Comments (Below)

The accompanying table shows a comparison of the Unavailable I CIEBasedDEF color spaces supported in PDF and PostScript and Unavailable I CIEBasedDEFG how they relate. For every PDF color space, there is an available PostScript color space. This also explains why PostScript is the output file format for graphic arts Color Space Types: D = device dependent, I = device independent, S = special applications. A corresponding chart for PCL would have too many gaps.

What is the best color space for production work? No matter which you choose, you should consider what steps you will be taking downstream from Acrobat. If you are printing directly from Acrobat, life is simpler. But if you are outputting PostScript files to other down- the best of

volume 2 Contents Adobe Acrobat 7.0 General Interest Government and Enterprise Developer Creative and Print | home | 75/81 stream processes, such as trapping or imposition, then you need to verify that each of these adhere to the same assumptions. PDF & PostScript Colour Spaces PDF Colour As stated before, different color spaces may be used 1st PS Level Comments within a page. However, for some objects you have no Space color space choice. True PostScript 3 duotones, tri- 1 tones and quadtones are specified in DeviceN. Spot DeviceGray colors are represented using Separation color space. DeviceRGB 1 Optionally, either of these color spaces may be printed to separate plates or converted to process color on out- Late addition to PS 1, formally added ir. PS2. Level 1 & 2 separation 1.x put. This leads us to RGB versus CMYK versus ICC- DeviceCMYK mechanisms are different Based color. CalGray 2

RGB versus CMYK CIEBasedABC can cover any 3 component devices independent colour 2 By Gary Armstrong Planet PDF Contributing Editor CalRGB space, e.g, CalRGB, Lab, etc.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Color Learning Lab 2 Center. For spot colours. Crop marks etc. are done in Separations-All to appear 2 Separation on all plates. If you are preparing documents solely for the web, then for the same number of image samples RGB is negligi- Table for a fixed number of input values. All but Pattern and Indexed 2 bly faster with possibly smaller file size. If you are pre- Indexed may be indexed. paring documents for print, then CMYK is better since it preserves spot colors, and separating RGB may be Pattern 2 unsatisfying or not possible. If you are preparing docu- For duotones, HiFi colour spes, etc. Appears as composite colour in 3 ments for both web and print CMYK is the better choice. DeviceN Acrobat CMYK documents coexist quite nicely in the RGB world, but the converse does not always hold true. And there A PostScipt 2 or 3 CIE Colour space with the same number of compo- ICCBased nents may be used. are ways to convert high-resolution PDF images into low-res for the web. Permits 3-component table look-up before normal CIEBasedABC 3 Unavailable processing. There are cases though where you can’t always choose CMYK. Many PDF documents originally created using Permits 3-componet table look-up before normal CIEBasedABC pro- Unavailable 3 Microsoft or other PC applications will arrive in your cessing shop as RGB. Your choices are basically two: 1) im- mediately convert them to CMYK, using any of several 3rd party tools for Acrobat, or 2) rely on downstream processes, such as in-RIP separations, to convert RGB to CMYK. the best of

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Monitors, scanners, digital cameras, etc. deal in vis- to tweak your profiles with the appropriate tools. ible light. The color spaces to express these (RGB or Done properly, color-managed PDF should give you various ICC color spaces) are designed to include all increased color reliability and reproducibility across visible light. Printing, on the other hand, deals in light time, location, and output device. reflected off or through inks, which allow a narrower color range, or color gamut. An on-going issue is how PDF Creation Tips are more visible colors converted into the fewer col- By Gary Armstrong Planet PDF Contributing Editor ors of the CMYK print gamut. See the Rendering Intent table above for more on this subject. Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Color Learning Center About ICC By Gary Armstrong Planet PDF Contributing Editor For any document that may be professionally printed, from your creation application you should embed all Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Color Learn- fonts and either create a PostScript file and process ing Center. it through Acrobat Distiller, or use “Export to PDF” properly configured, which performs virtually the same There is a mathematical beauty to ICC color, but the function. You should always use the Distiller PPD for way that ICC is converted to CMYK is defined through this process. the profiles and the tools that create them. With “canned” profiles, there is no guarantee that gray text Does the PostScript level make any difference when will be constrained to the black channel. If you don’t preparing a file for distilling? Yes, it does. As you can believe this you can try it yourself in Adobe Photoshop. see from the PDF & PostScript Color spaces table Using Lab color, select a gray value (a=b=0) then look above, certain applications, such as duotones or spot Adobe Acrobat Distiller Images Settings Panel at the CMYK equivalent. Odds are that you have non- color gradients can only be satisfied by PostScript 3 zero values for all CMYK channels. and PDF 1.3 or higher. In general, for maximum ap- First, a look at image compression. For color and plication capabilities, you want to create PDFs in the grayscale images Adobe has specified “Automatic” Do you need ICC color for everything? Perhaps not. latest version. Naturally, you also need to have the lat- compression at maximum quality, which usually Computer generated text and art is created with pre- est version of Acrobat to go with it. equates to minimum compression and larger file size. cise specification of color, i.e., in a device independent The automatic compression chooses JPEG. JPEG is way. This is usually something like “give me 50% green Much has been written elsewhere about various Distill- a “lossy” compression which means that a round trip and 30% red”, but it supplies a precise definition. Most er color parameters but it doesn’t hurt to review a few gives you different data from that with which you start- device dependencies are a result of scanning. So, if points. You should start with the “Press Quality” set- ed, but they look equivalent. If the data is 3 compo- you used the same profile for text, graphics and imag- tings. With a few exceptions, Adobe has made pretty nent, such as RGB, it also is transformed to separate es, you are probably unintentionally altering the color good decisions overall and you can make new settings luminance from chrominance. Adobe is trying to do the of the text and graphics. to meet your needs. right thing, i.e., preserve the black channel. But there are no guarantees that transformation, compression, ICC-based color management is a discipline, as is all and decompression will be 100% successful. To avoid color management. You need to establish proper pro- this transformation, change the selection to “ZIP”. If cedures, but you can get good results. You will want greater compression is more important, select “JPEG” to conduct test runs with step wedges of primary and and a different quality level. secondary colors. Based on the results you will want the best of

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fault. Reverting back to the good old days of Acrobat 3, the right choice, apply transfer functions, has reap- peared as the default in Acrobat 6.

Why are transfer functions there anyway? The best I can determine is that they are often there to compen- sate for the fact that Photoshop CMYK JPEG files are the inverse of normal CMYK JPEG files. The simple workaround is to use TIFF format instead. Other cas- es seem to center around PageMaker trying to hide undesired elements. Those can simply be deleted.

There is no disagreement about “Preserve Halftone Information”. Generally, this should be “Off” since it can be specified consistently for the entire job when going to the RIP. Having all the same halftoning will minimize moiré on the press. You might turn this op- tion on if you want to preserve halftone information when reproducing special effects for single page out- put.

Adobe Acrobat Distiller Color Settings Panel Adobe Acrobat Distiller Color Settings Panel

Press Quality specifies “Leave Color Unchanged” for The default profile selection, “Dot Gain 20%”, is Ado- Distiller’s PDF color creation. This is the clear choice be’s worst idea on this panel. This choice adjusts only if you are trying for a traditional CMYK workflow. The one type of data for a case that may or may not apply. other options are variants of a color-managed work- The good news is that it is limited to grayscale imag- flow, and allow you to select ICC color profiles. Of es. The problem with this will become more obvious these, I prefer “Tag Only Images for Color Manage- as we discuss transfer functions below. ment”. With this setting text and graphics, which usu- ally have precise color definitions anyway, will not be The other color options address UCR/BG, transfer altered. Also, this selection allows black text to remain functions, and halftone functions. “Preserve under defined as CMYK black. color removal and black generation” provides instruc- tions for a PostScript RIP to convert RGB to CMYK with varying degrees of rich black. This is really a user preference.

In Acrobat 4 and 5 Adobe’s worst choice on this panel was selecting “preserve transfer functions” as the de- the best of

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Distiller’s “Advanced” panel has one other parameter stream. If your OPI server replaces just the image Occasionally, one wants to create a two-color docu- related to color, that is, “Preserve OPI Comments”. In stream, then the profile will apply to the high-resolu- ment. Particularly with Microsoft applications on the earlier versions of Distiller Adobe’s choice for this was tion data as well. But if the OPI server replaces the PC, one selects from their color palette. Many people “On” which has the side effect that images are created entire “image object”, then the profile may be lost on incorrectly assume that those are spot colors and are in PDF as Form XObjects rather than the simpler Im- substitution. specifying a spot color and black. Not so! The palette age XObjects. Some Acrobat plug-ins have difficulties colors are RGB. So they end up with data on black interpreting these more complicated objects. So if you Colorized bit maps or “fake duotones” is another spe- plus at least two other plates. If available, use Enfo- don’t use an OPI workflow, leave this selection “Off”. cial case. Users will place a grayscale TIFF image cus PitStop Professional (see below) to globally con- Conversely, if you use an OPI workflow, remember into Quark XPress, apply a color to the placed image, vert the second color to spot. Another approach is to that only the low resolution preview is placed in the and set the background of the picture box to a dif- use colors in the creation application that are close PDF. Any color operations performed in Acrobat or by ferent color. On screen, the color background shows to ink primaries, or as Microsoft calls them, pink or plug-ins are not performed on the high-resolution file through the colored image. But for composite print- turquoise for magenta or cyan, respectively. You can that is actually printed. ing workflows, the image knocks out the background use any ink you like for the second color when you run and spot colors are often converted to process. Agfa it on a press. There is one other ambiguous aspect to OPI. With has developed a free Quark extension, “AgfaCTIFF”, color management, you are “tagging” the images. But to “fix” colorizing images in this way. The extension if you are also using OPI, is your tag for the preview is available at www.certitec.com/downloads.htm. Af- only? Or will it also apply to the substitute high-resolu- ter Distilling, the PDF contains DeviceN color space tion image? In PostScript, often the color space defini- commands. tion is within the “image object” but before the image Advertisement the best of

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Life as a PDF works quite nicely when viewing “web-ready” PDFs in color spaces. One example is Creo’s TrapWise. By Gary Armstrong Planet PDF Contributing Editor Acrobat. Another curious state exists when you try to edit a Editor’s Note: This article is part of the PDF Color Learn- There are three cases for trapping page data: before PDF image or graphic in Photoshop or Illustrator. ing Center it is a PDF, when it is a PDF, or after it is a PDF. Be- What happens when you edit a color managed docu- fore it is a PDF comes in two basic flavors; composite ment on a workstation where color management is Altering color in a PDF falls to a few trusty tools. Pit- color traps, or pre-separated trapping from applica- turned “Off”. Are you editing the color managed, or Stop Professional is the best tool for preflight, correc- tions where an Acrobat plug-in, Seps2Comp, has re- unmanaged data? Alternatively, even if color manage- tion and editing PDF text and graphics. It currently sup- combined the separated PDF. The objective is for all ment is “On” in the workstation, you may want to verify ports nearly all of the PDF color spaces, and comes in data to comply with the same standards, in this case, that the appropriate profile is in use in both Acrobat handy for global color changes. composite color. The second case is trapping a PDF. and the editing application, otherwise your color ad- Ideally, one wants to trap directly in PDF. Currently justments will be off. Images are best handled by ARTS PDF ImageWorks the only product that can do this is SuperTrap from which provides numerous tools for editing image data Heidelberg. Part way to the third case are tools that When Acrobat 4 was announced, it was hailed as and managing whole images, such as, image substi- allow you to set the trap parameters and page zones ready for graphic arts applications because it now tution or extraction. Image size is the single biggest for in-RIP PostScript trapping. The other variations of supported ICC color. Ironically, it was Acrobat 3 that difference between a document for print and one for the third case are downstream PostScript trapping ap- was ready for graphic arts applications because it the web or CD. For these applications, it is not neces- plications. These applications should be PostScript 3 supported CMYK and spot colors. sary to convert CMYK to RGB to be web-ready. CMYK fluent to support all the various PDF and PostScript

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Moreover, there is a wide spread misconception about what the ICC color support in Acrobat is. Many people assume that you can attach an output device profile and everything will come out okay at the printer. If you were to do this you would be making your PDF docu- ment device dependent. Adobe correctly did not adopt this approach. For the ICCBased color space, Acro- bat supports the “A to B tags” (scanner and monitor profiles), and not the “B to A tags” (printer profiles). In other words, Acrobat is supporting the conversion of input data into common color space coordinates that can be understood by all downstream processes and printers. Because it is the responsibility of the output device to render the colors correctly, PDF documents remain portable. the best of

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