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.
Submitted by
Greg Ledger
Recent TidBITS Talk Discussions
- Alternatives to MobileMe for syncing calendars between iPad/Mac (1 message)
- Free anti-virus for the Mac (20 messages)
- iTunes 10 syncing iPod Touch 4.1 (2 messages)
- Thoughts about Ping (16 messages)
Published in TidBITS 773.
Subscribe to our weekly email edition.
- Matias Adds Sudden Motion Sensor Tech to Laptop Bags
- Mac OS X 10.4 Easter Egg Found and Lost
- Cooling Factor and Cool Factor in One Package
- Seattle Bans Free Wi-Fi After Coffeehouse Explosion
- Apple Announces Product and Marketing Plans
- Mac mini Shrinks to micro, nano, and pico
- Introducing the Power Mac GX Series
- Apple's iFuzz Nanotechnology Cools Hot Chips
Tiger Renamed; Ship Date Imminent
Following the quick coverage of the new iPod double-shuffle, Steve Jobs moved into current news, announcing that at long last the new version of its Mac OS X operating system is ready, and will be coming soon to a retail outlet near you. (OK, so that's not really news.) Mac OS X 10.4 will be available in stores and online starting at midnight, 22-Apr-05.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/>
In a surprise move, Apple revealed that the official name for this release would be "Mac OS X 10.4 Wombat." Even though Apple has been referring to this version of Mac OS X for over a year as Tiger, has distributed seeds to developers under the code name Tiger, and has portrayed a "Tiger fur" motif in the logo and in desktop screen shots, at the last minute, all of that was scrapped, and the Wombat designation was substituted. (Apple's Web sites referring to Mac OS X as Tiger have not yet been altered, and apparently won't be until after the product is in customers' hands.)
The purpose of this change, according to Steve Jobs in a post-conference question session, was to "stick it to those know-it-all rumor Web sites such as ThinkSecret." Jobs was particularly proud of the fact that a wombat isn't even a big cat, unlike previous Mac OS X code names such as Jaguar and Panther. "We knew those rumor sites would never be able to guess this one, not in a million years. It's not a cat! It's not even fierce!" said Jobs. "It's one of those cute little marsupials from Australia." Asked about how this change might be expected to impact developers who have already prepared software that is "Tiger-ready" and publishers who have already announced books with the name "Tiger" in the title, Jobs said: "They'll get over it." He was also dismissive of the question of how the sales of Mac OS X might be impacted by a name that, in Australia at least, can be a way of calling someone a bozo. After all, Jobs noted, wombats in captivity are easily house-trained and come when called - which, as he said, "will be true of Mac OS X 10.4 Wombat as well, thanks to its Automator feature."
<http://www.thinksecret.com/>
<http://news.com.com/Apple+suit+foreshadows+ coming+products/2100-1047_3-5513582.html>
<http://serf.org/womFAQ.txt>
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/ automator.html>
Get the all-new Dragon Dictate for Mac from Nuance Communications
and experience Simply Smarter Speech Recognition.
Learn more about Dragon Dictate: <http://nuance.com/dragon/mac>