The advent of the personal computer and desktop publishing inspired technological pundits to predict we’d have no need for paper documents by the year 1990, [old timers like Alex Podressoff remember “Paper free in ’83!” Ed] but today there are more paper documents produced daily than ever before in human history. The theory was good — easily-accessed, searchable, hypertext-linked documents that consume no trees and never wear out. The problems, though, were many — plain ASCII text documents had none of the important fonts and formatting of the original, and documents that contained font and formatting information weren’t very compatible between different computers using identical operating systems, much less across different computer platforms. And graphics? Forget it, there were simply too many different possible formats.
Enter Adobe
Last year three different companies threw their hats into the electronic document ring. Adobe created something called Acrobat 1.0, a series of programs that produced and viewed PDF (Portable Document Format) files — theirs was the most promising of the bunch since it was the only one to offer viewing options for the four primary computer platforms (Windows, Macintosh, DOS, and Unix X-Windows), it could maintain all font information from computer-to-computer, and it was supported by the world’s largest and most successful computer graphics company.
Adobe made some serious marketing mistakes, though, foremost of which was their insistence that anyone who wanted to look at a PDF file purchase a $50 reader application — it turns out very few people were that interested in electronic documents.
Thankfully, though, with Acrobat 2.0, Adobe has finally done it right — it includes freely-distributable Reader programs, and its current PDF format allows documents to contain a plethora of nifty features. It retails for $195 (street price $139) and includes Acrobat Reader (for Macintosh and Windows), Acrobat Exchange, the PDF Writer printer driver, and a CD Sampler. The Acrobat Pro version adds Acrobat Distiller and retails for $595 (street price $419). Let’s examine how it measures up to the electronic document ideal.
Meeting the Electronic Document Ideal
First, electronic documents need to be accessible. Acrobat succeeds pretty well in this area because the Acrobat PDF files can be viewed on the four most popular computer platforms in use today. PDF documents look identical on every platform, using (depending on options set when the document is created) the same fonts, colors, and layouts of the original.
There are only two limits to Acrobat’s accessibility: the Acrobat reader application is required to view a PDF file, and some form of Adobe Type Manager (ATM) must be installed. The Reader applications (and their accessories) require 1–14 Mb of disk space (1 Mb for Macintosh) and 2–8 Mb of free RAM (2 Mb on the Mac) to run — this isn’t a problem for most users, but can mean that Acrobat Reader must be the sole application running on low-capacity machines. The Reader installer automatically installs a limited version of ATM on a system if it’s not already there, but on the downside, every added system extension increases the odds of conflict and crashes. Nonetheless, PDF files are still about as portable as one could hope.
Next on our list of features an electronic document program should offer is that documents should be searchable. Acrobat does a great job within any single document: one click on the Find button (a pair of binoculars) allows you to find all examples of a word or words with options of matching partial words and ignoring capitalization. Searching among multiple linked documents is a little more restricted — only Acrobat Exchange can search more than one document at a time, and an index has to be pre-generated before the search can be done. Unfortunately the only way to generate the indexes is with Acrobat Catalog, a program currently only available for Windows (as part of the Acrobat for Workgroups package).
Once an index is generated, though, any number of interconnected documents can be searched using the standard Find options mentioned above, as well as more complex searches such as looking for words that have similar meanings, sound alike, or are within a certain proximity of other words. In general, Acrobat succeeds very well in its searching capabilities.
Successful electronic documents must also contain powerful hypertext links, and Acrobat shines in this area. Any part of any page can be linked to other pages and sections within the same document, pages or sections of other PDF documents, and to any external file (like a spreadsheet, QuickTime movie, etc.). That means that a complex “web” of documents can be created, logically linking vast amounts of information within a company or organization. With extensions to Acrobat currently available or in production, documents can even be linked around the world through a variety of conduits including the Internet.
The problems that electronic documents have had in the past are all neatly avoided by Acrobat. All of the formatting of the original document contained, including fonts, graphics, and layouts are all maintained in an Acrobat file. When a PDF file is created, Acrobat offers the ability to include none of the original fonts (generating a smaller document but requiring anyone trying to read the document it to have the same fonts you used), all of the original fonts (generating a larger document but ensuring anyone will be able to read it properly), or just the characters of the font that are actually used in the document (striking a nice balance between size and useability). The layout of the document looks exactly as it did in its original application, whether that was a word processing, drawing, or page layout program. And graphics of any kind can be included in the PDF file, including PICT, TIFF, and EPS files.
Acrobat goes even further, offering a number of other features. Notes can be added to a document, allowing you to make notes for your own purpose or notes that others can read — a PDF file can be passed from person-to-person or department-to-department, and everyone who views it can make electronic comments without altering the original.
Documents that contain multiple columns or that have multiple stories can take advantage of Acrobat’s “articles” feature, allowing a reader to simply click the mouse to jump from column to column, page to page, following text logically with ease. Navigation through a document can also be aided by the use of “bookmarks,” essentially a customizable table of contents, or with “thumbnails,” tiny versions of every page that can give the reader a visual cue.
Security can be an issue whether a document is distributed throughout a company or around the world, and Acrobat offers several impressive features to address that. Any document can be protected, allowing only those with a custom password to open it. Whether or not it’s password protected, options are also available that restrict or allow printing the document, making changes to it, the selection of text and graphics (which controls the ability to Copy something from the document and Paste it elsewhere), and the modification of notes.
Producing Acrobat Documents
Adobe Acrobat documents can be generated two different ways. The Acrobat 2.0 package includes a Chooser-level driver that makes creation a snap. Simply select PDF Writer in the Chooser and print your document — poof! Certain programs don’t work properly with PDF Writer, however, especially those that don’t print well to QuickDraw printers. To get around this, owners of the Pro version can use Acrobat Distiller to turn any PostScript file into a PDF document. Simply print a file using the standard LaserWriter driver (Adobe recommends version 8.2 or later) with “File” selected in the “Destination” section, then run the resultant file through Distiller.
Distiller has the added advantage of generating the smallest possible PDF files — it can include partial fonts and can reduce the resolution of bitmapped graphics in the document down to a level that looks good on the screen but are a fraction of their original sizes. Distiller is also great for converting PostScript and EPS files into an editable form (see sidebar).
Examples
I used Acrobat to generate several PDF files and tested them on different machines. One original was a 13-page QuarkXPress file that included quite a few grayscale compressed TIFF graphics and duotone EPS files, and nearly two dozen fonts. On disk, the file and graphics take about 13 Mb. Creating a PDF file via PDF Writer generated an 11 Mb file which looked great in Acrobat Reader but which took forever to view due to the relatively-high resolution of the graphics (PDF Writer can’t downsample graphics like Distiller can). When I printed a file to disk from QuarkXPress of the same document (using the LaserWriter driver), the PostScript file was 32 Mb, but the distilled PDF file was less than 1 Mb! Everything looked good except the duotones, which translated very badly. I turned them into PICT files and ran through the same process again and it worked great.
Looking at PDF files from another perspective, I took this article (without any graphics and using 3 total fonts) and ran through the same series of steps. The article was a 22K QuarkXPress file originally; it took 154K as a PDF file created via PDF writer; it took 95K as a PDF created using the PostScript/Distiller method (this time Distiller was able to save a lot by only using the letters of the fonts I actually used). Both files looked identical in Reader.
Conclusion
Both programs come with the CD Sampler which includes over 200 PDF files including the entire King James Bible (23 Mb), the collected works of Shakespeare (10 Mb), Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (2.5 Mb), Robin Williams and Steve Cummings’ great book Jargon (10 Mb), and a whole bunch of other stuff including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This CD alone is worth half the purchase price.
Adobe Acrobat 2.0 is fantastic, and it’s proving itself out in the real world — PDF files are popping up all over the Internet and online services. While Acrobat isn’t perfect, it’s the first real step in popularizing electronic documents. If you’re at all interested, invest in Acrobat today (before it becomes the de facto standard and the price triples) — it’s a great deal. And if you’re involved in desktop publishing, it’s one of the greatest conversion programs ever made (see the sidebar “PDF in DTP”).
PDF in DTP
One of the primary curses of desktop publishing is the incredible number
of graphics formats. I’ve been regularly stymied by uneditable EPS graphics (created with an old version of FreeHand or Canvas, or on a DOS machine). A combination of Acrobat Distiller and Adobe Illustrator can get around this, however—simply import the EPS into a page layout program, print the page to disk as a PostScript file, run the file through Distiller, and open the resulting PDF file in Illustrator. You get a file that can be modified to your heart’s content.
A similar process can be used with PageMaker files that contain embedded graphics you’d like to access. Printing the file to disk as PostScript and running that through Distiller results in a PDF file which can be opened in Illustrator. When it is, Illustrator asks you where you’d like to put the bitmapped graphics (TIFFs and EPS scans)—instant Adobe Photoshop files that can then be opened and modified at will.
This same process works when you’ve created a great-looking logo or graphic item in a program that can’t create EPS files or creates lousy ones when it does, like QuarkXPress. Running a Quark EPS or PostScript file through this sequence of conversions gives you a high-quality Illustrator EPS.
And if you’ve wanted to convert a Quark or PageMaker page into a TIFF file, you can print the page to disk and run the file through this process. Open the Illustrator file in Photoshop and it’ll rasterize it (convert a line drawing into pixels) at any size you’d like.
Note that all of these tricks hold true for nearly every Macintosh program — create an editable Illustrator EPS or Photoshop TIFF file out of Excel, Word, FileMaker Pro, Persuasion—anything you can print using the LaserWriter driver can be converted this way!
Adobe Acrobat Pro 2.0 has already proven invaluable in my day-to-day operations, even without the need to create electronic documents.
(Note: You’ll need version 1.0.2 of the Illustrator Acrobat PDF File Format Plug-In, available free online from Adobe to open PDF files created with Acrobat 2.0 — the plug-in that ships with Illustrator 5.5 only works with Acrobat 1.0 PDF files.)
Acrobat Info
Adobe Acrobat — Retail $195; Mail $139.95
Adobe Acrobat Pro — Retail $595; Mail 419.95
also available for work groups.
Adobe Systems, Inc.; 1585 Charleston Rd.; PO Box 7900; Mountain View, CA 94039; 415-961-4400, 800-833-6687, fax 415-961-3769.
