Duff Johnson's PDF Perspective

Kindle: Putting the match to paper books?

duffjohnson — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:31:41 +0000

Amazon’s study of book-buying habits appears to have convinced founder Jeff Bezos that The Time is Now.

Time, that is, for an update in the fundamentals of how people read. The dead tree is under attack as never before. Trees that live are coming back into style.
There have been other ebook readers, but none combining e-ink and wireless technology, and none with the market-awareness of Amazon.

I’ve heralded e-ink as the savior of designers who might otherwise be relegated to nothing but graphics and animations, the art of heterogeneous page layout gone forever in a sea of templates.

Amazon’s Kindle may be a key step away from our paper addiction. Sure, I already read the New York Times on a Treo, but this gadget is for normal people.

It’s potent enough as a serious play for a historically hard-to-sell form-factor even without the works-everywhere (in the US) connectivity. This device generates and bundles services and opportunities together in a new way… a “doh!” way. I’m thinking it’s going to fly.

But - and I’m far from the first to say this - perhaps THE major failing in this iteration of Kindle is (drumroll please), the lack of support for PDF. What’s up with that!

3rd party software developers (Adobe included) will likely watch the reaction to this device for a month or three before finalizing their own plans. If the love-fest continues much past the initial splash, I suspect we’d see Kindle supporting PDF one way or another sometime in the not too-distant future.

In reading the user comments (no, I certainly haven’t seen one in the flesh), I’m noticing that many of those with positive comments either are or anticipate spending a lot for their content.

Hmm. What’s all this I hear about consumers expecting content for free? Turn the page, people!

Amazon may have come up with a license to print money (using e-ink). This bears watching.

8.1.1, a missed opportunity?

duffjohnson — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 18:32:57 +0000

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.

The first PDF Reference Committee Meeting

duffjohnson — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:27:13 +0000

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…

Reader 8.1 “Kinko’s Edition”

duffjohnson — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:06:03 +0000

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.

Non-English PDF Resources now a page

duffjohnson — Tue, 29 May 2007 13:02:05 +0000

Since my previous post, I’ve received a couple of comments from users suggesting websites and forums with PDF resources in languages other than English. To give this idea a higher profile, I’ve created a page for it. I’ll update this page whenever I learn of a new non-English site dedicated to matters PDF. Keep them coming!

Resources in languages other than English

duffjohnson — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:57:58 +0000

I want to begin highlighting 3rd party sources of information about PDF technology, and one important place to start is with non-English language sources.

Today, I’ll mention two such well-established established sites that provide lots of valuable information in languages other than English. Critically, both sites include forums in which users can ask questions and get answers in their native languages.

pdfzone.de (German)
PDFLab (Italian)

If you know of other such sources, please email me (duff a-t document-solutions.com) or comment on this post, and I’ll be happy to compile a list.

About Time!

duffjohnson — Wed, 16 May 2007 05:39:32 +0000

Finally, news that color e-ink is real.

The crucial paragraph (but it’s all good):

The image is designed to be comparable to print quality, LG.Philips said. The display is less than 300 micrometers thick, and only uses power when the image changes.

Graphic designers, your jobs are secure. The future of PDF? Bright indeed.

Welcome to the Display for the 21st century.

AGI’s Acrobat PDF Conference 2007

duffjohnson — Tue, 15 May 2007 02:54:57 +0000

Organized by Christopher Smith’s AGI (recently acquired by Aquent), last week’s 2007 Adobe Acrobat PDF Conference in Orlando, Florida was a notable success. The co-location with the CRE8 conference for graphic designers expanded the scope to the benefit of all attendees.

The Scene

From the opening welcome party complete with Mickey Mouse and open bar, to Al Gore, Marissa Mayer and the mid-conference networking party (also well lubricated) to many fine sessions including the Acrobat Alternatives melee and rowdy Power Panel, this conference was both educational and highly enjoyable. Adobe offered a very tasty (if very early!) Thursday breakfast for members of Adobe’s Acrobat User Groups.

The Keynotes

While the PDF Conference may be one of the smaller platforms for Al Gore’s famous presentation on global climate change, the former US Vice President gave it his all. He delivered a convincing demonstration of both the facts of our planetary predicament and his passion in communicating on the subject. More than a few attendees noted a substantial improvement in the former Veep’s silhouette. Having cut a Hitchcockian figure at the recent Academy Awards, Gore has clearly been working the problem in the gym. Let’s just say he was inspiring in more ways than one!

Regrettably, Mr. Gore didn’t spend much time discussing PDF (his preference for presentations is Apple’s Keynote), but he did take note of FormRouter’s GreenPDF initiative. Don’t print it; PDF it instead, and help control global climate change!

Google’s Marissa Mayer, Vice President for Search Products & User Experience, enraptured the crowd with a simple but telling survey of the company’s activities. Her presentation described how Google’s goals are organized around the concept of “responsiveness”, which Google measures in microseconds and considers a (if not the) key metric in almost every application. Just how they get their servers to respond faster than my tricked-out Windoze machine can do locally, I suspect I’ll never know. I’m just glad I bought the stock.

From Section 508 to copy-and-paste

Nettie Hartsock of Planet PDF managed to endure my own session without (it seems) terminal boredom. It’s not easy to make PDF accessibility a scintillating subject, but I had an attentive audience, one several times larger than last year’s talk on the same subject.

The benefits of accessible PDF extend well beyond disabled users, and folks appear to be catching on, even outside Washington. There was a great deal of interest in how PDF accessibility affects search-engine performance, and a lot of nodding heads when I described how and why PDF files are characteristically ignored by web content managers. I’ve posted my presentation (pdf, 555 kb) for your reading pleasure.

Other News

Adobe has posted a Vista FAQ answering (in part) the growing chorus of users wondering when Acrobat 8 will work properly under Vista. I may now quote Adobe as stating that: “In the first half of 2007, we [Adobe] expect to issue a free update to Acrobat 8 to support Vista.”

Lose the Buttons: An Acrobat 8 Tip

duffjohnson — Mon, 14 May 2007 05:47:20 +0000

I learn something (in fact, usually two or more somethings) at every single PDF event. Last week’s Adobe Acrobat PDF Conference in Orlando was no exception, and I’m not talking about Al Gore’s magnetic presentation on global climate change.

This tip is really worth the mention because it is so simple, yet of real value to those who deliver PDFs for presentation purposes. That’s a lot of folks (although not including Gore, who uses Apple’s Keynote).

(A BIG thank-you to Adobe Systems PDF Developer Evangelist Joel Geraci for this tip, and especially for not rubbing my nose in the fact that the solution was so near-to-hand!)

OK, perhaps you are wondering about my problem. Let’s take a look.

Open any PDF using Adobe Acrobat or Reader 8. Unless you view it in full-screen mode, you are very likely seeing a set of icons to the left side of the page - icons almost as big and loud as the copies I’ve posted here on the left.

In version 8, these icons provide access to a variety of systems that may be available within the document. The most familiar of these Navigation Panes are bookmarks and thumbnails, but there are at least 14 altogether, not including “auxiliary” panes. Click on a navigation pane button and the corresponding pane opens to the right.

Prior to version 8, navigation pane buttons consisted of tiny demure gray folders with overlapping hard-to-read labels nestled together on the upper left edge of the page. The design didn’t really help users switch between panes, but these little labels were so small and quiet they made virtually no impact on the presentation of the page, and were easily ignored.

Acrobat 8 introduced a much wider Navigation Panel Button bar, with big, brassy icons… but no obvious way to turn them OFF. Yes, you can right-click, Hide and Save each file, but that’s far too much like real WORK, and it can’t be done in batch, nor from a menu item, nor with a (published) javascript. In short, it’s Not Obvious, and it should be.

This is where Joel’s Acrobat 8 Tip of the Month Award comes in.

To HIDE the Navigation Pane Buttons, so your uses don’t suffer them when you don’t want them to, simply check Hide Window Controls in the Document Properties (Control-D) Initial View dialog. In Acrobat 8, this switch has effect of hiding both the navigation pane buttons AND the split-window icon and vertical scroll bar on the right side of the page. Critically, this feature may be managed on any number of PDF files at once using a simple Batch Process in Acrobat Professional.

Thanks, Joel!

Mac Life “interview”

duffjohnson — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:47:03 +0000

Readers may recall that a few months ago I was contacted by a writer for the magazine now known as Mac|Life (formerly MacAddict) for a review of Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional.

While I offered a number of thoughts at the time, few made it into the April issue, which isn’t surprising - I can be very long-winded.

More interesting (frankly) is the proportion of space allocated to Connect, a rebranded Macromedia product unrelated to Acrobat. So why spend most of a review of Acrobat talking about Connect? The only “connection” between Acrobat and Connect is a link to the Connect website from the Acrobat toolbar, so Adobe’s marketing folks clearly know their business.

Rather than read my carping about misguided editorial (and other) judgments, I’ll let you decide for yourself. Here’s the piece (PDF, 180 kb).