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Find Text Leading from Acrobat PDF

Ever have to recreate a document from an Acrobat PDF? You can find out most everything about the text by using the Object Inspector, except the leading. Well, here's a cheesy way to figure it out. Open the PDF in Illustrator (you just need one page). Release any and all clipping masks. Draw a guide at the baseline of the first line of text, and one on the line below. Now, Option-drag the first line to make a copy, and position it exactly next to the original first line at baseline. Then put a return anywhere in the copied line. Now adjust leading of the copied lines, so that the second line of copy rests on the baseline of the second line of the original. Now you know your leading.

Or you could buy expensive software to find the leading. Your choice.

Visit Mac Production Artist Tips and Scripts

Submitted by
Greg Ledger

 

 

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ExtraBITS for 29 March 2010

We haven't heard from him for years, but former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée last week suggested a reason for why we haven't seen the iPhone on Verizon Wireless's network yet. Other interesting articles include a disturbing report about how many people open suspect spam messages, how Gmail is protecting against account hacking, and information about Marketcircle's Daylite for Now Up-to-Date & Contact users. And if you're jonesing for an iPad, check out Apple's new guided tour videos.


Apple Posts iPad Guided Tour Videos -- We won't have iPads in our hands until this coming weekend, but if you're curious to know more about how the iPad works, Apple has posted a series of guided tour videos. For example, the video for iBooks demonstrates the capability to perform searches and look up words in the iPad's built-in dictionary.

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Email Security Survey Finds Many Read Spam -- ZDNet reports on a survey from the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group that finds a surprising number of people open suspect spam messages and even click on included links or forward the messages. We're not entirely sure what to make of the survey findings overall, but anyone interested in the spam problem would be well served to read the full survey (in PDF, linked in the ZDNet article) and ponder the results.

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Gmail Warns of Geographically Distant Logins -- In Google's ongoing effort to prevent Gmail account hacking, Google has added warnings about geographically suspicious logins. In its blog, Gmail's engineering director says that with the feature turned on - which it is, by default - you will be warned if your account is accessed from broadly different parts of the world. Google also recently added an option to log out other open Web sessions.

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Marketcircle Posts Daylite Details for Now Up-to-Date & Contact Users -- Marketcircle, maker of the Daylite "business productivity manager" software, has posted a page showing some of the ways that Daylite can be configured to act more like the defunct Now Software's Now Up-to-Date & Contact. Daylite offers features beyond just contact and calendar management, which could be good or bad, depending on your needs. The page also discusses how Daylite differs from Now Up-to-Date & Contact, and how to migrate data between the programs, along with offering a 30 percent discount on Daylite.

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Jean-Louis Gassée Opines on Verizon iPhone Possibility -- Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, suggests in this blog post that we won't see the iPhone on Verizon Wireless's network any time soon because Verizon wants to run its own mobile app store and not cede control to Apple. He goes on to postulate that Apple will make deals with Sprint and T-Mobile once AT&T's exclusivity expires, as a way of pressuring Verizon into accepting the iPhone and App Store.

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