Duff Johnson’s PDF Perspective

Immediately following the release of Reader 8.1, I informed readers that:

The down-side [of the Kinko’s button] is that taking unnecessary partisan positions in affiliated industries and the effective denial of equivalent functionality to all users of the software can undermine the sense of ubiquity, and ubiquity is the essence of the Reader value proposition.

Adobe has now seen the light. It turned out to be an oncoming freight-train belonging to the print industry, who credit themselves as Adobe’s oldest and best customers. Result: Reader 8.1.1, sans Kinko’ button, is due in October.

Like Ted, I was hoping that Adobe would take real advantage of the hubbub and create a new, more platform-oriented feature. The timely burial of “The Kinko’s Edition” could be converted to a significant opportunity. Adobe could make a simple api available to registered printers such that PDF creators could have their own programmable buttons appear on their Certified PDFs.

The Certification mechanism could be of real help here, because Certificates could be used to unlock simple JavaScript calls for “Creator button control”. (More on the promise - and reality - of Certified PDF some other time). Kinko’s (or any other printer) could then offer a service wherein they return a PDF of every print-job with their button added to the toolbar for triggering easy reprints, account modifications or other purposes. There are all sorts of possibilities for getting more mileage out of Trusted documents in this case - as long as it isn’t hardwired to a single vendor.

For the print industry (and indeed, for the rest of us), Reader appears close to a public trust, a notion which Adobe has certainly fostered, if not directly. Such beliefs are nonetheless our own misfortune, and Adobe is entirely within its rights to do what it will with Reader. Adobe Systems is a business, and businesses get to develop and market their products as they see fit, right or wrong. Nonetheless, my hope is that Adobe takes away the following lessons from the “Kinko’s Edition” debacle:

1. Reader is a precious software franchise not only because it is free, but because it is fundamentally nonpartisan where it counts. For example, Reader will open almost any old, malformed PDF from any source (including non-Adobe sources) without drawing attention to the fact. Likewise, Reader should appear completely agnostic about print vendors unless the creator explicitly chooses otherwise.
2. If Reader itself is to be sullied with advertising, the responsibility for that glory should be placed squarely on the creator (with the help of Adobe server products, of course). We can safely say that if PDF creators had a new opportunity to add features to the Reader toolbar, they wouldn’t complain about it.
3. Reader is SO valuable that it should not be used, by itself, to generate revenue, unless that method is author-driven. The Yahoo, Google and Kinko’s deals all “sullied” the brand. There’s greater value to be found in finding ways to serve everyone equally. The toolbar should remain in the service of the platform, not the next business quarter.
4. For platform software, ubiquity and customer enablement remain the true keys of success. All “improvements” that could impact these essentials should draw suspicion, rigorous scrutiny and deep consultation with affected industries prior to implementation, far more (clearly) than has gone before. This is the price of owning such a deep and wide franchise as Reader.

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Adobe’s goal of moving PDF from a publicly documented proprietary format to a true international standard is moving into higher gear.

AIIM’s new Portable Document Format (PDF) Reference Committee is holding its first meeting on July 16-17 (yes, in less than 2 weeks time), in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The page on AIIM’s website offers contact and meeting information - and (crucially) a “Download” button leading to the draft “Fast Track” document itself.

While I’ve spent relatively little time with it thus far (I do have a day job), it’s clear that Adobe has put a tremendous amount of work into revising the PDF Reference to prepare it for the ISO process. How will we know this version is really “equivalent” to the version 1.7? I’m looking forward to finding out. There must be something clever going on; the ISO PDF draft is a mere 768 pages, far shorter than the 1,310 page Reference it is intended to replace. Some old-school Adobe veterans have been managing the process, and I for one will be looking forward to their presentation.

As a self-appointed PDF Platform Evangelist, I was an instant fan of the “PDF-becomes-ISO” idea. I mean, duh. Microsoft sees the value as well, which is doubtless why they are now racing Adobe to see who can ramrod their own “electronic document” format into a standard first.

My money’s on Microsoft to win that race, but that’s mostly because no-one in the real world actually cares about XPS yet, if they ever will. People do already care about PDF. Whether that will translate into real stakeholder involvement in the standards process remains to be seen.

Later, I’ll attempt to report on highlights from both the meeting and the document. Stay tuned…

The deities managing major software release schedules didn’t smile on Adobe late last year.  Acrobat 8 rolled out just before Vista became the latest Microsoft mega-project to emerge years late and to weak (very weak) applause.

As a result, Adobe was in the somewhat uncomfortable position of launching new software that didn’t actually work as intended on XP’s newly released designated successor OS.  Arguments for Vista remain light on substance, heavy on “ribbons” (and RAM).  Buyers of new machines are glumly accepting the Newer Is Better mantra, but few are rushing to adopt the new OS.  Vista just isn’t a lot better than XP, and precious few users come close to appreciating the distinction more than they curse fresh learning curves, software upgrade costs and other obstacles to Getting Real Work Done.

The upshot is that Acrobat’s temporary inability to gain full operation under Vista may not have caused that much stress after all.

Anyhow, those days are over, 8.1 is out.  For details, check out Ted’s latest article, he’s summarized the goodies nicely.

For my part, I’m here to commend Adobe for one very important development - the timely release of a Technical Note that identifies changes and (very important) the bug-fixes that went into 8.1.  This sort of thing is a long-time request of the Acrobat power-user community, and it’s nice to see up-to-the-minute attention to this point from Adobe.  Some bugs do remain, of course, and there’s at least one new bug that I’ll personally enjoy seeing squashed in a future release. But that’s in the nature of the beast.

OK, so why the Big Deal, the “Full Dot” release?  Adobe doesn’t do it very often, and in this case, the new release is more about engineering enhancements than new features.  Some of the changes (Vista support, Office 2007 support) are things you’d just expect from an expensive mainstream business desktop application such as Acrobat.  Better integration with Adobe’s InDesign and improved Designer/XFA forms is welcome, but most users couldn’t care less.  So what’s up, Doc?

Apart from the underwhelming news that Acrobat now supports Vista and MS Office 2007, there are two main changes that consumers are likely to notice. I’m just not sure either one is for the better.

First and most obvious (some would say, garish), is the new Kinko’s button appearing on Reader’s default toolbar. (Acrobat users craving this functionality may add this button via toolbar customization).  Following the new tradition of glorified weblinks deployed as toolbar buttons, the new Kinko’s button launches an web-based process that can result in the upload, printing, binding and delivery of your PDF via a Kinko’s service center.

The big up-side, I guess, is that Adobe gets paid for their endorsement of the Kinko’s printing platform for US-based users of Reader.  That’s a lot of people, so it must be worth something.  It’s also true that users in the US get the option of sending PDFs directly to Kinko’s (and Kinko’s alone) from Reader.

The down-side is that taking unnecessary partisan positions in affiliated industries and the effective denial of equivalent functionality to all users of the software can undermine the sense of ubiquity, and ubiquity is the essence of the Reader value proposition.

Adobe shouldn’t inject themselves into the print-vendor playing field - that is - unless they want to give 3rd parties yet more reasons to find ways around using Reader.  The Kinko’s button can’t be reprogrammed for the PDF author’s choice of vendor.  Whether your application properly includes print service bureau functions or not, the “Kinko’s Edition” Reader is always ready to help spend your money and kill more trees. (Although for some reason, the Customize Toolbars UI in Reader 8.1 strongly implies that the Kinko’s button is only available if Document Rights are enabled, which certainly isn’t the case!)

Users outside the US (there are a few) get to look at the Kinko’s button and click it for fun, but no more  Deployed globally in the industry-leading viewer for the leading electronic document format, this button is useless outside the US.  That’s not good geopolitics; the US already has a perception problem abroad.  Do US-based software companies really want into that act?

OK, you can switch off those whine filters now.

The second change consumers are likely to notice in 8.1 is the new “quick and simple” PDF creation option, which uses the EMF printing functionality in Vista, highly preferable (in speed terms) to the thrashing of the Make PDF plugin, if nothing else.

What is a “quick and simple” PDF, anyhow?  Who cares, right? It’s quick and it “looks fine”.  That’s all most users have ever wanted to know, and now they can get it from Adobe software as well.  Sound familiar?  Old-timers may be forgiven if it seems that the long-defunct PDF Writer, once buried by Adobe for making lousy PDF, has risen again.

Adobe are clearly responding to a very real desire for a faster PDF creation method, one more akin (ulp!) to Microsoft’s own EMF-based Save As PDF Add-In, or the PDF Export feature in the free Open Office suite, which is also blazing fast and turns out a plausible PDF.

The question is my mind is whether it’s a good idea for the health of the PDF platform (as opposed to Acrobat’s next business quarter) for Adobe to stoop to generic methods for PDF creation, thereby promoting dumbed-down output and lowering the barriers to the competition.  Microsoft’s PDF-from-EMF is, one assumes, just as good as Adobe’s PDF-from-EMF.

On the other hand, perhaps the mere fact that users will be offered the choice between “quick and simple” and “regular” PDF might get them thinking about all the things they might be missing if they go “quick and simple”.  Time will tell. In any event, PDF Writer is BACK.

Much touted in the new Acrobat release is “Acrobat Connect“, formerly Macromedia’s Breeze.

By now, I’ve participated in several Connect “sessions” as both presenter and presentee, so I thought I’d offer a few observations.

Connect hasn’t really got anything to do with Acrobat, and I’m really unsure why Connect occupies a prominent place in Acrobat 8.0 at all. Connect is something like WebEx, with some clever interactive tweaks. The polling, chat and status facilities are good, but it’s not a trivial affair, and it’s not really about managing or using documents. It might someday benefit from being pressed into service in the “Acrobat family of products”, but that day isn’t here yet.

In the present incarnation, Connect can’t actually use PDF files except in a desktop-sharing (ie, bandwidth-intensive) mode. This simply serves to highlight the lack of any real connection between Acrobat and Connect, even though Connect is available “with” Acrobat, even allegedly “integrated” into it.

While I have certainly experienced a number of connection issues (especially with the VOIP), I understand this is not the norm. Regardless of my circumstances, in today’s world, one can’t really expect that all users have big or stable pipes, be optimized for VOIP, or have adequate speakers or microphones for their environment. Laptops suffering wireless interference is increasingly common. Adobe recommends that presenters and viewers shut down their other chat, email and other applications to allow Connect to hog the bandwidth, and further, that you shut down the Presenter’s video uplink as well. At what point wouldn’t you rather make a YouTube movie or email a PowerPoint?

Even with the current generation of the software, a carefully planned meeting using the polling, chat and other features, and POTS (Ma Bell) for audio can work well, even for remote users. Connect has real potential to be a useful conferencing system for experienced users enjoying 1st class connectivity. As presently constituted, new and infrequent users are going to stumble and fall to a degree that will deliver poor impressions when they count the most.

While Connect sessions may be easily recorded by the Presenter, disclosure of this fact should be made clear to the end-user, visually and otherwise. The Presenter should not be encumbered with the responsibility of reminding each and every attendee that “this session is being recorded”, especially if the session is interactive.

At least some who check out the Connect “offering” through Acrobat come away confused and/or a tad miffed. The general opinion seems to be that Adobe doesn’t make it clear that Connect is not actually a new feature of Acrobat, but a new service, with it’s own (again, non-trivial) fee structure.

Lastly, my accessibility creds force me to point out that there’s nothing remotely accessible about Connect - it’s a free-flowing Flash interface, and screen-readers aren’t welcome here. This will, in the long term, have to be addressed if this technology is to have a big future in government.

All that aside, I like Connect - right down to the nervous anticipation that comes from wondering if it will all fall apart midflight, or that I’ll lose the thread, or go blind from squinting at the non-resizable copy in the UI. I just wonder if it’s properly co-located with Acrobat.

In a second article for Planet PDF, I offer a frank discussion of the PDF-to-ISO move, along with (yet another) dose of unsolicited advice for Adobe Systems.

The first article offered some context for Adobe’s move. For this second piece, I discussed the question with a number of industry leaders, several of whom are quoted. I also asked Adobe Systems to formally respond to a number of rather pointed questions. Adobe’s Director of Product Management, Sarah Rosenbaum, was kind enough to provide answers on the record.

For those with an interest in how or why the PDF Reference 1.7 will (or should) become an ISO Standard, this one’s for you.

I was on vacation with penguins when Adobe announced that the latest 1.7 edition of the venerable PDF Reference was to be shepherded towards an ISO Standard via AIIM.  I returned to a pile of email.

What’s it all mean?  I’ve written one article on the subject to offer a little context and to invite further exploration. ”PDF goes to ISO, Some Background“, the first in a two-part series, is now posted on Planet PDF. There’s an interesting post by Adobe’s Andrew Shebanow which describes some of the sentiment behind this move.

For a really good introduction to the ways in which Standards are meaningful to consumers (and how to think about them), look no further than Rob Weir’s great post; “How Standards Bring Consumer Choice“.

The big players in software standards are moving fast right now, and Adobe has thrown PDF into the standards ring at a very interesting time.  Other industry biggies, Microsoft and IBM in particular, but including ISO, ECMA, AIIM and many, many other very interested parties, are presently at full squabble. There are serious fireworks between self-proclaimed uber-practical proponents of Microsoft’s OOXML versus the (relative) idealists like IBM’s Bob Sutor who argue for the (let’s face it) far more genuinely “open” OpenDocument (ODF) format.

(Do I show my colors in calling it “Microsoft’s OOXML” instead of just “OOXML”?)

My second article will bring together some comments from a few of the real grandmasters of PDF, and should be ready in a week or two.

I was sufficiently intrigued by the Adobe Document Center to put it to the test with a real document distributed to a reasonably savvy group of people.

I’m one of those people who finds Flash more than a little overused. Once the initial buzz from the soft-focus feel of the all-Flash UI wore off, the Document Center did nothing to dispel this view.

Certainly, the process of adding new Policies and then applying them to documents was very easy. The Document Center doesn’t make it especially clear that applying Policies to documents is conducted from within Acrobat, which it is.  Create a Policy, go back to Acrobat, open your document and navigate to Advanced -> Security -> Manage Security Policies, login using your Adobe ID, select your Policy and save.  That’s it!

Less easy, as I went through version after version of my document, was retaining any meaningful picture of actual usage over time, one of the great Policy Server Promises.  I couldn’t delete revoked documents from the UI, or consolidate their statistics - perhaps that’s just a reporting issue, but it’s significant.  I also couldn’t group users, and I could never tell if or when the interface actually updated, and resorted to logging out and back in, which always seemed to do the trick. 

So, it’s a freebie interface for a freebie demo application, so I guess that’s OK.  I sure would hate to have to use it as a going concern, though.  Subtle hint.

I also found that my document recipients (and they are savvy, no kidding) were in a surprising number of cases quite stumped when confronted with a Policy Server protected document.  Part of this was due to a degree of reticence (or forgetfulness) in loyally signing up for Adobe IDs as is necessary for Adobe Document Center-protected documents.  Part of the problem was clearly also the cumbersome, Flash-heavy (why?!?) signup screen, which sapped enthusiasm further in at least two cases.  Worst, a disturbing number of reports (ie, more than 1) attested to the files consistently “crashing Acrobat”, which certainly wasn’t what anyone wants to hear.

So, I guess I have to report that thus far I’m not totally charmed, there are some definite rough-spots.  The Policy Server is undeniably an extraordinary concept, and I’d like to see much more of it. I certainly proved to my own satisfaction that I could flip a switch in Boston and watch my chosen file go “dark” all over the world, almost instantly, from Manila to Moscow.  For a second, lightning crackled between my fingertips as well.

Here’s hoping that Adobe will leave it in place past the end of the new year, or else limit freebie users to 2 protected documents at any given time… or something of the sort. Let the people kick the tires!

The ability to issue a truly embargoed document and then seamlessly (to prepared users, in any event) update it while simultaneously and effectively deleting all prior distributed copies is, quite simply, MAGIC.  Policy Server could be a real smash-hit if the execution, marketing and sales can be made to match, or even approach, the power of this product concept.

Those who read my (too) frequent tirades knows that Adobe has to do a lot to impress me. In that spirit, I am VERY happy to report that Adobe has (finally) done something really smart in marketing a LiveCycle product; they’ve put a Policy Server online for anyone and everyone to try out at no charge - through the end of 2006, at least.

Simply put, Adobe’s new Document Center allows you to secure PDF (and now .doc and .xls!) files in meaningful and really useful ways. No dinky, readily cracked passwords here! With a couple of simple clicks at the Document Center, you can:

• Ensure only specific recipients can view a file (based on verified email address)
• Restrict printing or copying file contents, even with “authorized” recipients
• Set specific time-periods where access is or isn’t permitted
• Allow documents to work offline for a specific time-period before “calling home” to log offline access
• Cause PDF files to “embargo” themselves until a specific date and time
• Cause every copy of a document to “expire”, and (optionally) prompt the user to retrieve an updated file.

You’ll need Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional 7.05 or higher to access the Adobe Document Center, but users with Adobe Reader 7.0x or higher will be able to view your encrypted PDFs - if you’ve specifically allowed them to do so. You’ll also need a (free) Adobe ID, which is reasonably painless. NOTE: Your files are NOT uploaded to Adobe in the encryption process, so you need not worry that Adobe will suddenly know your secrets.

So, get over to dc.adobe.com at some point in the very near future. I guarantee you’ll be impressed as well. You may even be thinking “Wow, this is kind of crude, but now that I’ve seen it, I wonder if I could live without it? I suspect that’s the idea.

The Adobe Document Center is FREE right now, for a limited time only, at dc.adobe.com.

For those who do more with heavy technical reference tomes than merely prop open the window, you’ll be interested to know of Adobe’s latest opus; the (now) 30.9 MB, 1,310 page PDF Reference (and accompanying Errata and Redaction Addendum). 

When Adobe Systems originally decided to publish the PDF Reference, the document that describes in all significant detail the innards of PDF, was fairly manageable in scope.  With a few months dedicated effort, a reasonably competent development team could (in theory) build software to make simple PDFs every bit as good as PDFs made with Adobe’s own code.

Since then, many third-party developers have tried their hand at PDF creation, manipulation and management with a wide variety of results. The challenge of “keeping up with Adobe” has grown massively since initial publication of the Reference, and most 3rd party developers don’t try - many of the newer features in PDF are simply unnecessary for their applications. Thus far, anyhow, Adobe has seen itself honor-bound to respect PDF files meeting a very broad definition of “valid”, no matter how old (or creaky) they may be.

The PDF Reference 1.7, the “Acrobat 8 update”, is now available for free download from Adobe’s PDF Technology Center.

For those who yearn for maximum PDF power, Adobe has posted essential new reading in the latest JavaScript Reference for Acrobat 8.

As the brag states, Acrobat JavaScript “…implements objects, methods, and properties that enable you to manipulate PDF files, produce database-driven PDF files, modify the appearance of PDF files, and much more. You can tie Acrobat JavaScript code to a specific PDF document, a page, field, or button within that document, or a field or button within the PDF file, and even to a user action.”

As my colleague Thom has noted, Acrobat Javascript now supports ECMA-357. Now XML may occur natively in Acrobat JavaScript.

Those who develop with Acrobat, especially those who have used menu-item commands in their applications, will want to pay SPECIAL attention to this new version of the Reference. Already, some poor souls are finding out that things have changed in Acrobat 8, not necessarily to their advantage.

Those familiar with Acrobat JavaScript are strongly encouraged to begin by skipping to page 733, “New Features and Changes”.