Adobe Acrobat 3.0 Internet Publishing WITH ACROBAT® by Gordon Kent A comprehensive reference for creating and integrating PDF files with HTML on the Internet and intranets. Certain functions of this digital document have been secured to protect copyright: the ability to copy text.and graphics. Quick Start... Clicking on any of the links below to the left will take you to that section of the book. Use the direct links once you become familiar with the book’s contents. Clicking on any of the links below to the right will take you to this document’s last page where a duplicate, but much longer, home page is repeated with in-depth links into the book. Ch 1 Ch 9 About this book Ch 2 Ch 10 Ch 3 Glossary Table of Contents Ch 4 Appendix Ch 5 Index How to Use this Digital Book Ch 6 TOC. Ch 7 Acknow. Where to Purchase the Paper Edition Ch 8 Home Page Copyright © 1996 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior writ- Back to Top ten permission of the publisher. HTML PDF Published by Adobe Press, Adobe Systems Incorporated. Paper Edition: ISBN: 1-56830-300-9; Library of Congress Catalog No.: 96-77066 PDF HTML First Digital Mastering: September 1996; Digital Design and Interface: Patrick Ames 1 Introduction Adobe Acrobat® software helps you create content for the Internet that is compact, graphically rich, interactive, intuitively navigable, and easy to publish. Portable Document Format (PDF) publishing on the Internet unshackles your creativity from Web-specific publishing applications and allows you to use the almost limit- less design capabilities of to-day’s powerful print-publishing software. If an appli- cation can print, it can be used to create compelling content for the Web. The World Wide Web introduced most people to Adobe Acrobat and PDF files— and still does. Early in the growth of the Web, Adobe recognized the value of Acrobat and PDF files as a solution for publishing visually complex information on the Internet. PDF files exhibit a number of characteristics that make them well suited for the Internet: ■ They are cross-platform binary files, requiring no translation or conversion when moved among popular platforms, such as Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, and other operating systems. Introduction 3 ■ PDF files are surprisingly compact (in file size) for the amount of visual and contextual content they contain. ■ They support text, graphics, and other media formats. ■ PDF files are interactive and navigable. To encourage the use of PDF files on the Internet, Adobe regis- tered the PDF file type as a standard file type (like JPEG graph- ics and HTML files) for use on the Internet. Adobe published the specification so that others could develop software that uti- lized the PDF technology. With this evolution of the Acrobat technology, a Web browser could be configured to automatically launch the freely available Acrobat Reader as a helper applica- tion and open a PDF file after it was downloaded. Adobe’s Weblink plug-in—an add-on module formally introduced with Acrobat 2.1—enabled Reader (and Acrobat Exchange) to com- municate with most Web browsers. This communication allowed authors to create links from PDF files to other sites and files on the Web—the same way links are used in HTML documents. Acrobat 3.0 (originally code-named Acrobat Amber) takes this link in communication among the Web, PDF files, and Acrobat one step further. Acrobat 3.0 integrates the relationship between Web browser and Acrobat Reader by enabling the Web browser to display the PDF file within the Web browser’s document win- dow (usually reserved for HTML and image files). Now when viewing a PDF file, the basic Acrobat toolbar appears so the user can navigate and interact with the PDF file as if it were being viewed in Acrobat Reader. Historically, Web publishers shied away from PDF files, feeling they were simply too large to be useful for publishing on the 4 Chapter 1 limited-bandwidth Web. Originally, PDF files were developed for local access networks or large internal networks (intranets), which typically had much greater bandwidth capabilities than the average Internet user. PDF files also can be large because of the types of documents that are published as PDF files. Authors and designers creating PDF files wanted to preserve exactly the electronic magazines, newsletters, technical drawings, and other visually complex documents with their original fonts, extensive use of color, images, graphics, and other design elements. These features included all the attributes that publishers had come to expect from modern page layout, design, and word processing software applications—including large file size. These files had to be completely downloaded before they could be viewed. Ironically, history has shown that PDF files are not significantly larger than HTML files and are sometimes smaller or the same size as most comparable HTML designs. Adobe Acrobat 3.0 allows the publication of even smaller PDF files than previously thought possible through new compression schemes. Now with Acrobat 3.0, PDF pages render as each page element is downloaded, in much the same manner as HTML files; and, only the pages requested are downloaded—no need to wait until the entire file has downloaded before it can be viewed. This allows PDF pages to be viewed as fast or faster than most image-heavy HTML files. PDF files are the portable document file format of choice for hundreds of companies that publish documents on the Internet. Other companies also use PDF files as the file format of choice when distributing information via intranets, CD-ROMs, private computer networks, floppy diskettes, and other media formats. About This Book 5 PDF files also are the document format of choice for electronic magazines, technical documentation, books, marketing docu- ments, catalogs, readme files, white papers, and other document types that need to be distributed via various computer platforms, operating systems, media formats, and networks. From a publisher’s perspective, little experience beyond the skills of most print publishers is required for producing PDF files. Every major desktop publishing software package and a number of graphics applications support the PDF file format. Publishing content as PDF files requires no new design training, as HTML did. Many of these software applications have additions, plug- ins, macros, or other utilities that quickly and simply convert document information such as tables of content, cross-refer- ences, and notes into intuitively navigable and interactive PDF file objects. Creating PFD files is easy. This book will help you publish PDF files expertly. 1.1 About This Book Internet Publishing with Acrobat is the essential reference guide for publishers of PDF files on the Internet, or those who want to publish PDF files on the Internet. This book is both a technical reference and a content development guide. It contains the most comprehensive technical information about Acrobat and Internet publishing available to date. Much of this information comes directly from Adobe engineers working on Acrobat, and countless third-party developers, power users, and experts. Unlike the plethora of books on HTML and Web publishing, and the handful of books on Acrobat, this book provides the infor- 6 Chapter 1 mation necessary to determine how best to serve content: as Portable Document Format (PDF) files, or as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files. Many of today’s Internet sites created using HTML are ineffective and could benefit dramatically from the addition and integration of PDF files. Internet Publishing with Acrobat provides the knowledge a publisher needs to seam- lessly integrate PDF and HTML files at both the document and site-wide levels. The efficient exposition of technical informa- tion—often compactly in tables or figures—will help the Internet publisher determine the most appropriate Acrobat tool to create compelling PDF files for various document types. The combination of detailed technical information and content development solutions will answer questions, while opening up new content publishing possibilities. Rather than recycling and repeating the information found in the numerous tutorials, user guides, books, magazine articles, and online discussion groups that focus on using Adobe Acrobat, this book concentrates on what the publisher needs to know to devel- op content for the Internet. If you are new to Acrobat, you’ll find yourself referring back to Adobe’s documentation and user guides. If you have limited experience working with HTML files, you may want to take a tutorial in HTML markup before delving into some of the more complex information found in later chap- ters. This book lists numerous resources for Acrobat-related issues. So if you’re not familiar with a topic or concept, you’ll know just where to look for more information. Internet Publishing with Acrobat has been carefully focused to provide Internet publishers with exactly what they need to expertly pub- lish PDF files on the Internet with Acrobat. Using This Book 7 Internet Publishing with Acrobat covers Adobe Acrobat 3.0, a major update of the Adobe Acrobat family of software. Acrobat 3.0 includes a number of new Internet-specific features and enhancements that make publishing with Acrobat more efficient and exciting than ever. However, even users of previous versions of Adobe’s Acrobat software (2.1, 2.0, or 1.0) will benefit from the technical information and content development strategies described throughout this book. Most of Acrobat 3.0’s features have been added or enhanced to make publishing and using PDF files on the World Wide Web faster, easier, and more compelling.