Jan. 28, 2002
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another city/county if you think it would benefit them to be part of our group!
Attendance
Rich Lovett, KCMO
Susan Waters, Overland Park
Randy Ellis, Overland Park
Chris Audano, Overland Park
Dot Watkins, Belton
Jody Craig, MARC
Robyn Stewart, Leavenworth
Sonya Fendorf, Shawnee
Vicki Charlesworth, Shawnee
Roman A. Madrigal, Shawnee
Steve Rodhouse, Gladstone
Jennifer Kinnard, Blue Springs
Todd King, Johnson County
Kevin Whelan, Johnson County
Karen Davis, Lawrence
Desiree Garcia, Miami County
Danny Rotert, MARC
Barbara Hensley, MARC
Chris Holdman, Olathe
Norman Shriver, Belton PD
Paul Christus, KCMO PD
Dan Berry, Raytown
Adobe Acrobat
Vince Pingel, Division Vice President of Document Automation
Development, was our guest speaker and gave us more information on using Adobe Acrobat.
Why use Acrobat for the Web?
- The technology is indiscriminant; the files can be played on any device anywhere (CDs, Palms, all PC/Mac operating systems)
- Acrobat files retain the exact page layout and format, maintaining the integrity of the original document.
Anything that is printable to paper (or scanned hard copies) can be put
in PDF. There are three ways (options) for converting a document to Adobe PDF:
1. PDF Writer (click
on File, Print, it shows up as a printer option)
- Best used for simple text and graphic files such as Word or Excel.
2. Acrobat Distiller (own icon)
- Also a printer emulator, but goes through PostScript.
- Best for complex files or ones to be sent to a printer such as Quark, PageMaker or InDesign.
3. PDF Maker (in Office 2000, Windows only, one-step button used to create PDF)
- Sends file to Distiller behind the scenes and processes with the current Distiller options.
There may be the need to make a few PDFs for a file, one to go to the
printer with high resolution and PostScript, one optimized for the Web, one for laser printers, CDs, etc.
Acrobat Reader is the free plug-in used to read PDF files. While it can be downloaded from Adobe.com, it now comes
standard on most PCs and on all Macs. Reader only allows a user to retrieve, save and print PDF files. There is
a more elaborate Reader with extra built-in search capabilities called Reader Plus Search (these features are not
for the Web, but can be rather handy on a WAN or CD-Rom). Reader does not allow users to create or edit PDF files.
If you are currently using Acrobat 5.0, make sure to upgrade your version to 5.0.5. Some bugs were worked out with
the new version. You can download the upgrade at:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1309
.
If your files processed through Distiller seem rather large for the Web, you may need to change your job options
to Screen. If you want to play around with the settings, go to File, Preferences.
If you use some non-standard fonts in documents created in PDF Maker, you can embed the fonts into the file so
they aren't substituted in the end-user's file.
There are three "flavors" of PDFs
- Formatted text and graphics (comes from electronic file such as Word, PageMaker, etc.)
- Image only (.tif, .jpg files such as maps and photos or scanned in pages without Capture, finds and searches won't work)
- Searchable image (can search text content, created with Adobe Capture - $800)
There is an Adobe Paper Capture plug-in for 5.0 at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pluginreg.html. 4.0 versions of Acrobat have it installed already.
Vince suggested some resources for learning more about PDFs:
- Adobe Acrobat 5.0 Classroom in a Book
- PDF Reference Book (for the more advanced user, gets into the programming)
- http://www.pdfzone.com/
- http://www.planetpdf.com/
Make sure to fill out your Document Summary for all PDFs (File-Document
Properties-Summary). This information can be searchable via the Web.
The Catalog feature can create a catalog database of PDFs saved on a network (Tools-Catalog).
If you have questions, you can contact Vince at vince@docs2cd.com or 913/288-4360.
Next Meeting: Roundtable
Our next meeting will be held at 9 a.m. on Feb. 25 (the 18th
is a holiday for some) at the MARC offices. We will discuss whatever you would like to bring to the table. We will
have a computer with Web access available. One topic will be web site statistics programs.
If you have any ideas for future topics or guest speakers, please share them with Rich Lovett, KCMO, (rlovett@kcmo.org)
or Susan Waters, Overland Park (sjwaters@opkansas.org).
SJW