Wisdom of the PDF Sage

Adobe has posted a version of the ISO 32000-1 document on its web site and it is freely available.

Adobe has an agreement with ISO that it can post the standard for free provided it isn’t the “official” ISO version. So the running headings and footings have been changed and the introductory pages are different, but the technical chapters are identical including page and section numbering.

If you need an official version please pay for it at the ISO site. This is one source of income for this important standards organization.

A friend of mine from various PDF conferences wrote me to ask me the following question:

Enclosed is a file that looks great, but the text can’t be searched (or copied).  Is there a tool that can automatically detect that all/most of  the text in a PDF file can be searched (or not)?

I wrote - OF COURSE - Acrobat 9’s Preflight!

With one of the many new checks that we’ve added to Acrobat 9 Preflight, you can easily detect whether any text in a PDF can not be properly encoded as Unicode (aka can be extracted/searched properly).

I’ve built just such a profile and have uploaded it here!   Just download the file, then double-click it to install it into Preflight and it will appear in your "Quick Checks" section.

In response to my previous post, a long time friend and collegue (Claudia McCue of Practicalia - one of the best trainers I know) wrote to ask:

Thanks for passing this on, but it looks to me like the Crop Tool still just masks out content: prepress wants a REAL crop tool that destructively gets rid of extra content. Some pagination software ignores the Crop info and just looks at the “real” dimensions. I’ll keep looking to see if I’ve missed something, though.

Claudia - I am happy to report that Acrobat 9 answers your needs!  In fact, we provide two different ways to accomplish the task, depending on your particular workflow.

The best way to remove hidden information from a PDF - be it cropped data, unwanted metadata or other things that might be lurking about in your documents is the Examine Document command that was introduced in Acrobat 8.

In Acrobat 9, we have significantly improved this tool with more tests for hidden data, and an interactive display of the content to be removed so you can better pick and choose what stays and what goes.  Oh - and you can incorporate this into a Batch Sequence, if you want to do this to multiple PDFs.

Alternatively, for those who are more familiar with, or spend their time working with our Preflight tools - you’ll find two new Quick Fixes already provided for removing either information outside the CropBox or outside of Trim (more common in the print production world). 

Of course, if neither of those suits your exact needs - you can create your own fixup which deletes content from the area of your choice. And don’t forget that Preflight can also be called from a Batch Sequence or you can use the Droplets feature.

So Claudia - I hope that answers your questions and that you (and others) will find these new features helpful in your print production needs!  (P.S. In exchange, you buy the beer next time

One of the Acrobat engineers just shared with me a very useful feature that he put into Acrobat 9 to help out folks doing print production
with Acrobat. I thought I’d share it here.

Acrobat has had a Crop Tool since (at least) version 5, but that tool only let you set the CropBox of the page.  While useful for non-printing features, most printers didn’t like it because it only dealt with cropping while they deal with Bleed and Trim.   They could have used Acrobat’s Crop Pages dialog, but that requires you to type in values, and not work interactively and directly on the page.

Well not anymore!

Acrobat 9’s Crop Tool lets you set the newly drawn out area as the ArtBox, TrimBox, BleedBox or (of course) CropBox.  Just right-click (or control-click on a single button mouse) and at the top of the contextual menu are your choice of page boxes.

And with Acrobat 9 automatically showing the Art, Bleed and Trim boxes on the page, the result of your action is immediately visible.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had two major projects during 2007 and 2008 - Acrobat 9, which is now shipping, and my work on the transitioning of PDF from Adobe to ISO, which I’ve spoken about as well.

However, while ISO 32000 (part 1) was ratified in January, the standard itself wasn’t actually published until yesterday.  But now you can run out, and for just a few Swiss Francs, get your own personalized copy of ISO 32000-1.

AIIM secretary, Betsy Fanning, writes in her blog:

While the committee’s initial work has been completed in getting the standard through the approval and pubication process, the committee’s work is far from over. The focus for the committee will now be to identify new features and functions that may be added to the PDF file and included in the standard. To follow the activities of the US committee for this standard, please visit http://www.aiim.org/Standards/article.aspx?ID=33223.

The committee is already at work on part 2 (or PDF 2.0, if you will), with our next meeting taking place in Beijing in October.  I look forward to seeing the first (of potentially many) submissions from others on what they’ve always wanted to see in PDF but have not had the chance to suggest before.   But now it really is "Everyone’s PDF".

It’’s already been reported all over the Internet already, but I wanted to also put a comment up here about their availability, since it’s been a huge part of my life for the last 18+ months.  It is also the first full version of Acrobat that I’ve helped design & develop, and most certainly the largest piece of software that I’ve been involved with in my more than 20 years in the software industry.

Here are some links and places to go, if you’ve not already done so:

• Adobe Reader 9 for Macintosh and Windows
  • NOTE: Unix platforms are coming….
• Demo/Trial version of Acrobat Pro Extended for Windows
• Purchase Acrobat
• Lori’s wonderful 6 Cool Things Seminar
• Our new How To Video Workshop

Also, Lori posted some excellent sample PDFs that demonstrate the new Portfolio and Flash integration - if you’d like to see the difference these features make to the PDF experience - and why Acrobat 9 is such a “game changer”!

• this PDF Portfolio, which contains some of the Acrobat 9 marketing materials and a Flash movie.
• this Flash application which includes a flash controller, flash playbar, flash movie and captions which can be useful for accessibility requirements, or subtitles for localization

My colleague Joel Geraci, Adobe’s Acrobat Technical Evangelist, just posted an excellent blog entry about the new Enhanced Security model and Privileged Locations from Acrobat 9. It’s extremely important reading for anyone working with interactive PDFs.

Quoted from http://blogs.adobe.com/pdfitmatters/:

Enhanced Security: Privileged Locations

Security is often at odds with usability. Adobe Flash began addressing this problem several releases ago by implementing and standardizing on a cross-domain security model that has evolved over the years into a robust, secure solution. By providing controls for who may receive data from whom, Adobe Flash can power rich Internet applications that are safe and extremely flexible.

An excellent explanation of the cross-domain security model can be found here

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, Acrobat 9 introduces support for the Ghent PDF Workgroup’s recently published Proof of Preflight specification, the details of which can be downloaded from here.

In brief, this specification provides a way for any preflight vendor to identify PDFs that have already been processed, and the result of that processing - whether it be success, failure or only a warning.  The preflight vendor also clearly details the information about their product (name, version, etc.) as well as the profile used in the processing.  On the left is an example of the Preflight Audit Trail section of the Standards Panel that will appear when you open a file that has an Audit Trail added (in all versions of Acrobat and Reader).  In addition to seeing the information about the preflighting that has been done, you can also verify that the profile used matches the one on your computer - so as to ensure that the user hasn’t tampered with your profile in any way!

Finally, the file is "locked down" (via a standard PDF Digital Signature) so that it is quite clear whether it has been modified since the preflight operation has taken place. This prevents the file from being modified and possibly breaking the Audit Trail.  However, should you need to perform late stage editing, you can remove the Audit Trail via the link in the panel.

Acrobat 9 Pro and Pro Extended users, after completing the execution of a Preflight Profile or Quick Check just need to click the "Embed Audit Trail…" button at the bottom of the Preflight window in order to have the Audit Trail added to the document.  Even if the file didn’t completely pass the profile - the Audit Trail can still be useful to convey that information as well.

According to the Desktop Publishing glossary of terms, Overprinting is defined as:

Definition: In most cases, when two objects of different colors overlap they knockout — they won’t print on top of each other. To intentionally print one layer of ink on top of another is to overprint. Overprinting is sometimes used to avoid the need for trapping and avoid gaps between touching colors. Spot colors intended to designate the application of spot varnish are also set up to overprint.

But if you ask me - it’s just the biggest pain in the printing industry’s derriere.

The reason that it is such a nightmare for designers is that the act of overprinting only makes sense on high end printing devices - it doesn’t make sense on a computer screen or the average home/office printer. As such, for the longest time, designers had to print to see if they were doing their design correctly.  Fortunately, Adobe introduced "Overprint Preview" into Acrobat and our authoring applications so that you could see what going on, on screen, while authoring and with the finished PDF.

Unfortunately, for the longest time, only Acrobat itself could preview Overprint. It wasn’t until Reader 7 that the feature was added to Adobe Reader - and then, like Acrobat, the option/preference was OFF by default.  Designers, printers and the like had to make sure that they had their preferences set correctly and provide their users with proper instruction.  

With Acrobat 9, we decided that enough is enough! Designers need to know that users, whether they are using Acrobat or Reader, regardless of their preferences, see what is going to print.  Isn’t that a big reason why people use PDF??  

In designing this feature, we originally planned for it to just be completely automatic and appear only when a PDF had the necessary components. However, we discovered that there are many files out in the world that weren’t really supposed to be printed, and thus generate a "false positive" and produce inaccurate renderings. What is worse, is that 99% of these "false positives" are PDFs authored using a well known competitor to Adobe’s products - and we didn’t want to be seen as "playing favorites" with the quality of document rendering.

So we did the next best thing!  We went looking for a clue in PDF documents that demonstrates that they are - without a shadow of a doubt - destined for printing. That "clue" is compliance with PDF/X (ISO 15930)!  Since PDF/X is a standard designed for the creation of PDFs for blind exchange in print production - we can clearly say that all such files SHALL have Overprint Preview enabled.   And that’s exactly what Acrobat/Reader 9 does.   As part of it’s PDF/X Conforming Viewer implementation, when it detects that a PDF is compliant with PDF/X - it makes sure that overprint is properly rendered to screen.

We did, however, leave the preference in place - so that if you really want to turn Overprint Preview to "Always" or "Never", you are welcome to do so. We also left in that original "Automatic" option for anyone wanting to experiment and see the results.

Everyone in the print/publishing community that I’ve talked to is really excited about this feature…I hope you will be too!

PDF 1.4 introduced Reference XObjects, but it has not been implemented in Acrobat in the intervening years. With the growing popularity of PDF/X-5g documents and interest in variable data printing (VDP), the Acrobat team decided to add support for Reference XObjects in 9.0.

Read more about this from Shradha, one of the Acrobat engineers who made it happen!

As Adobe’s PDF Standards Evangelist, it was extremely important to me that Acrobat & Reader 9 supports all the various standards in which I participate - and I am quite happy to say that we’ve made Acrobat 9 the most standards-compliant and standards-aware version of Acrobat to date!  

Standards Panel

The most visible piece of this awareness is the new "Standards Panel" (image at left).  

When you open up a PDF that complies with one of the various ISO "subset" PDF standards (PDF/X, PDF/A, PDF/E), a new icon will appear in the Navigation Panels list on the left side of your screen.   It’s the PDF icon with the blue "informational ‘i’".  

Of course, an icon doesn’t really tell you anything the file itself…so, like the other icons, clicking on it will open up the full information panel (image at right). 

In the fully displayed panel, Acrobat now provides you detailed information about what standard the file claims to be conformant with (and if it really is!), what OutputIntent profile is being used, and for PDF/X, whether the file says that it has been trapped or not.

The Standards Panel isn’t just for paid Acrobat users - it also appears in Reader 9 as well, and on all OS platform (yes, Linux too!) and even when viewing PDFs in the browser.  The only difference is that in Reader or the browser, the clickable links for "Verify Conformance" and "Open Preflight" are not available as that requires the Preflight component of Acrobat Pro or Pro Extended.

In addition to information about the ISO standards, the Standards panel will also appear if your PDF contains a "Preflight Audit Trail" (more on this in a future blog entry) and provide you detailed information.  Briefly, Audit Trails are a new feature of Acrobat 9 preflight that are based on the Ghent PDF Workgroup’s Proof of Preflight specification.

Conforming Reader

All of the various ISO PDF Standards specify requirements for what a "conforming reader" should do when it is viewing a file that conforms to that standard.  Acrobat 8 offered an option (off by default!) to support PDF/A’s requirement, but with Acrobat 9 we’ve gone all the way.

Acrobat AND Reader 9 correctly implement conforming reader requirements for all ISO PDF standards - PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4, PDF/X-4p, PDF/X-5g, PDF/X-5pg, PDF/A-1, PDF/E-1 and ISO 32000.  This applies to not just viewing but also to printing as well.

One area where this is extremely important is prepress/publishing, where users of Reader will see the correct colors and overprint that users of Acrobat see!  No more issues with lack of "Output & Overprint Preview" - it works as expected!

NOTE: this may/will mean that what you saw in Acrobat/Reader 8 and earlier does not match what you are seeing in Acrobat/Reader 9 when viewing standards-complaint files.  But guess what - that’s because Acrobat 9 is now correct!

Preflight

The version of Preflight in Acrobat 9 has seen many, many improvements (I’ll write about those in a future blog as well) - but for now, I want to concentrate on it support of standards.

You can verify compliance with all of the standards that I’ve mentioned previously, and also create files conforming with all but the PDF/X-5 standards.  It doesn’t even require that you go to Preflight to do it - just File->Save As->PDF/X (or A, or E).  It doesn’t get much easier than that to make a conforming file!

So that was just a taste of what’s in store for our users of Acrobat & Reader 9 when it comes to support of the various standards.  If you’re concerned about standards compliance (and who wouldn’t want to be) - you’re going to LOVE Acrobat 9.

As you can see from the lack of content on this blog in the last year - I’ve had a VERY busy year!

There were two things that kept me from writing.

First was the ISO Standardization of PDF, which my colleague Jim King has written about on his InsidePDF blog.

The second, was announced this morning - Acrobat & Reader 9! There is so much there to talk about, and I’ll be writing shortly. In the meantime, start with Lori’s blog for some general info and then check out Rick Borstein’s AcroLaw for more details.

A colleague sent me the following statement today and asked me to respond to it. I first wrote only to him, but then thought that it was worth posting here.

He wrote:

Policymakers seem to cherish the ‘perception’ that the advent of ODF and/or OOXML will make PDF/A-1 a ‘redundant’ standard for long-term document preservation. Their ‘case’: it’s based on XML and XML-related open standards, so long-term accessibility is granted. They may reason as follows: just wait, implement a few Office plug-ins for conversion of the useful Office legacy files to ODF and/ or OOXML and ‘we’ have taken care for the long-term accessibility of these legacy files, adequately. This will keep ‘us’ away from ‘obscure’, PDF-derived, open standards. If it’s not XML, the format has no right to exist, at all. Even Adobe admits this by developing MARS. Please, let ‘us’ avoid the costs involved in developing and maintenance of PDF-infrastructure, PDF-training and PDF-knowledge.

Here is what I have to say.

Before one can argue over file formats, one needs to determine what it is that is being archived and why. For example, if I was interested in archiving an address book - I would probably focus on the data and not on a single presentation of that data. However, if I was archiving the Declaration of Independence, then I would focus on the presentation of the content in addition to the actual content. I also want to ensure that any content is maintained in its original “format” - so that vector diagrams from a CAD-generated floor plan would remain as rich vectors and not be converted to something like raster data. Finally, in all cases, I would want to ensure that any relevant marginalia (metadata, comments/markup, etc.) could be incorporated.

This is why the archival community approached Adobe about the use of PDF for long term archival storage of content containing text, images and raster data. PDF is the only format that encompasses ALL of the above needs - content, presentation and metadata for all standard content elements (text, vector, raster). Combined with that is a technical design that enables easy creation of a “reference implementation” at some point in the future without any ambiguities - thus ensuring that the content and its presentation will survive.

Neither OOXML or ODF address all these needs. In fact, they are focused primarily on the textual content and (limited) metadata - and in no way help preserve the presentation of that content. As such, they aren’t even acceptable for the archiving of simple Office documents They also do nothing to address the needs of those wishing to archive scans, CAD drawings, print publications and many other types of documents. Combine those limitations with the fact that neither was designed with the intent of ease of creation of a reference implementation (it’s IMPOSSIBLE to write a fully compliant OOXML viewer), also make their use as archival standards insufficient.

This morning (East Coast time), Adobe announced that they intend to submit the PDF 1.7 reference to ISO. In addition, there is a FAQ that should address some common questions.

This is the next logical step for PDF in its long history of openness, and will serve to strengthen PDF’s position as the truly open solution for electronic document distribution and archiving. In addition, it will give others an opportunity to bring their specific needs and desires to PDF helping to drive it in new directions.

For me, this announcement is the start of a journey that I am looking forward to - that of shepherding PDF through the process to being an ISO Standard. I will be sure to keep folks up to date with this blog and hope you’ll come along for the ride!

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Brian Jones recently wrote up a history of OOXML for Microsoft and it dawned on me that I wasn’t aware of anything similar for PDF that demonstrated its long history of openness. After a bit of web searching - I only found a few outdated things - so I felt that this was an excellent task for me as the Evangelist for PDF Standards.

So I created a new page for this blog with all the details about PDF. Not only from Adobe, but also standards bodies such as AIIM, DDAP and ISO. In addition, I incorporated some key open source project dates.

A History of PDF Openness

Enjoy!

Well, I’ve returned to the “mothership”…

Starting last week at the Adobe Max conference, I am now a Technical Standards Evangelist for Adobe Systems - focusing on PDF-related standards such as PDF/X, PDF/A, PDF/E, etc. as well as the new Mars project that I mentioned in my last blog entry.

This means that I can continue to do my work to move the standardization of PDF technologies forward with all the resources of Adobe behind me. In addition, I get to help the engineers here at Adobe create the most standards-compliant PDF on the planet! It’s a lot of work - but I am already in the thick of things and loving every minute of it.

It should also mean that I’ve got more time to write about the various standards, since it’s now part of my job description .

Oh, and if you’re in the Omaha area next week - come see me speak about PDF Standards and Mars at the new PDF Central Conference.

This post is for all those people who have avoided PDF because “if it’s not in XML, then it’s not good”, for those that think that Microsoft’s XPS is the “future of electronic paper”, and for those who won’t use anything not based on 100% OPEN STANDARDS…

Adobe announced today MARS - the Portable XML-based Document Format. The format that will give techno-geeks what they’ve been looking for in an electronic document format - based entirely on open standards.
Living inside of a ZIP archive is a collection of both custom and standard XML grammars (including a slightly extended SVG for page contents), standard image formats (JPEG, JP2K & PNG), font (Type 1, TrueType & OpenType), and other binary formats (ICC profiles, etc.).

BUT unlike some of the other options out there, it’s not just “electronic paper”! It has all of the interactive features that users of PDF have come to expect - forms, hyperlinks, annotations/markup, multimedia, etc.

Oh, and every copy of Acrobat AND Reader 8 will support it natively - just like they do with PDF today. No explict conversions necessary (unless that’s what you want to do).

Why would you use anything else?!?!

Hopefully this wets your appetite for MARS…and I plan to write more about it in the coming weeks.

NOTE: MARS is NOT a replacement for PDF - it is simply an alternative representation/serialization of the features and capabilities of PDF based on XML.

I got into a discussion/argument today in an online forum about the process of conversion of PDF->PS->PDF to help “clean up” PDF files. This process, called refrying is one that used to be quite popular - but since Acrobat 5.0 has been frowned upon by Adobe and others.The reason for this process being avoided is due to the wide variety of PDF features that can NOT be represented in Postscript.  Remember that the last update to Postscript (Level 3) was in 1997, while PDF has undergone 3 revisions (1.4, 1.5 & 1.6) since then - with 1.7 coming shortly with the release of Acrobat 8.
Here are a list of things that you might use in the content of a PDF that don’t translate well to PostScript

• Transparency
• ICC-based colors
• 16bit color
• JBIG2 compression
• JPEG2000 compression
• Layers (Optional Content Groups)

Also consider that any additional information added to PDFs during a PDF-based workflow (such as from Creo, Agfa, Quite, etc.) will be removed during the PDF->PS downgrading…

Of course, there is also the myriad of non-content elements that can be found in a PDF that don’t translate to Postscript/print, such as

• Hyperlinks
• Annotations, Commenting and Markup
• Forms
• Multimedia (movies, sounds, etc.)
• Bookmarks
• Metadata
• and more….

There are also concerns regarding fonts & text “searchability” that can be introduced into the refrying process DEPENDING on how the operation proceeds.  Differenet PDF->PS conversion tools, different OS platforms and even simply ‘printing to PS’ will produce wildly different Postscript output for the same PDF - thus producing wildly different output PDFs.

So in conclusion…

JUST SAY NO TO REFRYING

Since the announcement of Acrobat 8, many people have been taking this opportunity to blast Adobe for their “poor treatment of the Mac OS” Acrobat user - none more vehemently than my friend John Welsh.

As a long time Mac user (bought my 128K Mac in the first 100 days they were available!) as well as a heavy Windows user (since most of my clients are), I wanted to take the opportunity to bring some facts to the table.

I’d like to start by breaking the Acrobat Professional package into 3 parts.

1. Acrobat Professional
2. 3rd party application integration (aka PDFMakers)
3. LiveCycle Designer

Taking these in reverse order, LCDesigner continues to be a Windows-only application with Acrobat 8. Some have suggested “hacks” that would enable Designer to run on Mac - I agree with John that this is NOT a real solution. I also am of the belief that Designer will NEVER show up on the Mac…but for good reasons! If you consider that the Mac users who want Designer aren’t (mostly) in “IT”, they are instead “Creative Professionals” - then I would prefer to see Adobe integrated form creation support into their CS application (esp. Illustrator & InDesign). This would address the end-goal of the user - making Acrobat forms - but in an environment that is more to their liking (since Designer is NOT “graphic designer friendly”). I say this only as my suggestion/recommendation to Adobe - I know nothing!

Next, let’s look at the situation with PDFMakers…It sucks to be a Mac user . I’ve heard all the arguments - both technical and marketing - for why their are fewer and less-functional Makers for the Mac. But I think this is a case where, while Adobe is certainly not giving Mac users a fair shake, it just doesn’t matter! The right solution for this, IMHO, is for Apple to continue to improve the built-in PDF support and for developers to start leveraging it to provide better PDFs from their own applications. Also, I think this is an excellent opportunity for 3rd party Mac developers - just as it is on Windows.

Last but certainly not least - the main application, Acrobat Professional. While the majority of the application is written in a cross-platform manner (Acrobat SDK), sitting on top of that is a native application. In the case of Acrobat 8, this is a COMPLETELY NEW Cocoa-based Universal Binary! You can’t get more “drinking the Apple Kool-Aid” then that . (FYI: Distiller 7 was also a complete rewrite as a Cocoa-based application). Within the application, there is 100% feature parity - except where the feature integrates with a specific OS platform or 3rd party application. For example, on Windows, there are commands for integrating comments into Office or communicating with MSCAPI that simply aren’t available on the Mac. HOWEVER, Mac users aren’t left out as we have Keychain integration and (limited) Services support. In addition, printing from Acrobat Mac is BETTER (faster & higher quality) than on Windows due to close integration with the CUPS printing system on Mac OS X.

Bottom line - yes, there are some things that come in the Acrobat package where Windows users are getting “more for their money”. But Mac users are NOT second class - we are getting a top notch, Mac-savvy, core application from Adobe.

Although I don’t use this feature of Acrobat 8 as much as some of the others, and since no one else has commented on it - I will!

While the average IT-type user tends to use tools such as Adobe Designer as their form design tool, most of the “Creative Pros” who are taske to create forms will instead favor the tools they know - such as Adobe InDesign. Unfortunately, there are no “form tools” in InDesign - so what to do??
Enter Acrobat 8 & the new Form Field Recognition feature!

I just open up my existing “flat” PDF, such as this printable version of the FedEx form:

I could sit there and manually add all the fields - but I have better things to do (and it wouldn’t really be a good demo!). Instead, I will go to the Forms menu of Acrobat 8 & choose “Run Form Field Recognition”.

Acrobat will process for a little (it’s VERY fast!) and when it’s done it will hilight all of the newly created fields while presenting me with a detailed report on all created fields and suggestions for what to do next.

Now, it’s not 100% perfect (at least on this form) - but it certainly is saving me a LOT of work!

Oh, and if the graphic changes, I don’t need to re-run the recognition (esp. since I’ll have already added more fields, added logic, etc.) - I just use the Replace Pages command to replace the content out from under the fields.

What would a blog entry about a new product be without a Top X list?? Well, I don’t know if these are my “Top 8″, but they are most certainly some interesting new things in Acrobat 8…and in no particular order.

1. PDF Packages. Others have written about them, but I think they are a nice solution for gathering up multiple PDFs into a single container with added “metadata” for grouping/collating.
2. Improved PDF/A support. In addition to improved compliance testing, you can also have Acrobat correct some of the simpler errors that it finds. Also, Acrobat is now the first product to support PDF/A-1a - the Section 508 version. Most important, perhaps, is that Acrobat can now function as a PDF/A compliant viewer!!!
3. Reader Enabling of Forms to SAVE! No more “If it could save, they’d call it Saver!” comments on forums. Acrobat Pro 8 users can now add the ability to Save to forms that they create - provided no more than 500 people will SUBMIT the form back to you (via paper, fax, or electronic). Thanks Adobe - this is GREAT!
4. Acrobat Connect - screen sharing & conferencing for the masses!! My only complaint - no “per-use pricing”.
5. Better organized menus & toolbars - the new task bar combined with cleaned up menus means that users can find what they are looking for, usually where they expect it! Also technical terms have been removed (where possible) in favor of common language.
6. Shared Review - multi-user review and commenting WITHOUT the complexities of a special server. My favorite part - works with Apple’s iDisk!
7. Integrated Redaction - it’s not the comprehensive tool that Appligent’s Redax is, but it will give users (in the box!) enough to make sure they don’t end up on the front page of the NYTimes.
8. Performance, Performance and Performance! Both Mac & Windows versions not only load faster, but they also work faster. Rendering/drawing, tool selection, etc. Cross the board - the app flies.

So that’s some of my favorites…Feel free to tell me yours…

So Adobe has announced Acrobat 8!

With a new Acrobat, of course, always comes the latest revisions to PDF itself. For the first time in a while, Adobe hasn’t really made too many change to the file format. Let’s take a look at the changes…

• MAJOR improvements to 3D!
• Support for 3D (via a new 3D Annot) was added in PDF 1.6 and since Adobe has gotten lots of real-world feedback about what was still missing - so PDF 1.7 addresses many of those limitations.
• Ability to annotate the 3D model
• Control of visual appearance w/o resorting to JavaScript
• Control over animated playback
• Printer Controls!
• Users have been begging Adobe for this feature for as long as I can remember…
• A PDF can now include default print characteristics including paper selection and handling, page range, copies, and scaling
• Portable Collections
• Known in the Acrobat UI as “Packages” and detailed by my colleagues.
• It expands on the existing embedded file mechanism (/Names/EmbeddedFiles) to support a variety of interesting new solutions - while maintaining backwards compatibility with Acrobat 6 & 7.
• Improvement to dimensioning of annotations
• Polyline & Polygon annotations can now have scale & measurement-aware dimensions attached to them
• More Tags for Tagging
• Interactive elements
• Table improvements
• Pagination objects such as headers & footers
• Document Constraints
• These enable a document author to specify certain criteria that must be met in order for the document to be usable in parts of a workflow.
• Signature Constraints - is the signature valid, does it contain certain DN keys, etc.
• Viewer Constraints - does the PDF viewer support and/or have enabled certain features?
• this will help authors of complex document prevent it being loaded by older (or non-compliant) viewers!

And that’s it for PDF 1.7….for now…

There is a long standing bubbe meise among publishers & printers that Adobe Illustrator can be used to edit PDF documents. Guess what folks - that is simply NOT TRUE! And I’d like to look at two aspects of this.

Aspect 1 - PDF as AI’s native format
The bubbe meise may have come about due to a common misunderstanding about the “native file format” for Illustrator (since version 9). Even though the file extension is .ai, the file is, in reality, a 100% valid PDF document. Just change the extension and open in Reader - no problems!

However, even though this is true, Illustrator doesn’t actually use the “PDF parts” - it just uses PDF as a very nice envelope for it’s own private data. This is accomplished through the use of the /PieceInfo key on the /Page dictionary as documented in Section 10.4 of the PDF Reference. The actual Illustrator internal data is organized into the /Private key of /PieceInfo. Illustrator just reads this - ignoring the rest of the PDF. Photoshop also does the same thing with its “Photoshop PDF” format. This is why programs like PitStop, when you attempt to edit Illustrator or Photoshop documents, present a warning.

Aspect 2 - Illustrator’s ability to read/process & write PDFs
For many years, Illustrator has had the ability to open up PDFs and let you work with each “object” using the native AI toolbox - thus propogating the bubbe meise.

Although Illustrator CS2 supports most features of PDF, there are a variety of things that it is simply unable to handle correctly when opening. Fortunately, Illustrator will warn you about them - but most folks tend to ignore such warnings. Some (but not all) of the features not supported include:

• Multiple colorspaces (AI only supports a single colorspace on its canvas)
• All features of PDF transparency (groups & blending spaces, esp.)
• Certain complex smooth shadings
• Subset fonts using custom encodings
• Embedded fonts not installed on the editing computer (including Type 3 & TeX fonts)

In addition, any non-content elements such as bookmarks, hyperlinks, metadata, annotations, etc. will all be “thrown on the floor” by Illustrator. So keep that in mind as well.

BUT WAIT - there is some light at the end of the tunnel…
Adobe Acrobat (both Standard and Professional) include a tool called the Touchup Object Tool, that enables you to take an entire “object” and have it edited with an external editor. By default, the editors are Photoshop for raster data and Illustrator for vector & text. To use, just select the Touchup Object Tool (it’s connected to the Touchup Text Tools on the Advanced Editing Palette), hilite the object you wish to edit, right/control-click your mouse and choose “Edit Object…”. Off you go to your editor, make your corrections, then save - and the updates will appear back in Acrobat. Cool huh??
[This tip courtesy of Ted Padova]

Back from the LONG weekend holidays here in the US (and in Canada, which I was visiting)…I thought I’d write a bit about some of the standards related to PDF from ISO (International Standards Organization).

PDF/X - this is the first of the standards the ISO built around PDF. The X is for “eXchange”, specficially blind-exchange among prepress providers (such as advertisers to magazines). There is current PDF/X-1a (for CMYK & Spot colors), PDF/X-3 (for color managed data) and PDF/X-2 (which no one has ever actually implemented!). PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5, which introduce newer PDF features such as transparency and layers/optional content are on the way!

PDF/A - this is the recently finalized (Oct 2005) standard for “long term archival storage of electronic documents as PDF”. Where it took PDF/X a number of years to gain traction, PDF/A is getting adopted (or in the process of adoption) by both vendors and users VERY quickly! Currently, the version is PDF/A-1a (for tagged & highly metadata-aware documents) and PDF/A-1b (for the average document). PDF/A-2 is currently in discussion to match the advances of PDF/X-4.

PDF/E - focusing on the needs of the Engineering community, PDF/E is currently in late stages of standardization and coming together nicely. It leverages the latest and greatest features of PDF that are targetted for engineering, such as 3D and object-level metadata.

PDF/UA - still very early in discussion, this standard is focused on providing Universal Accessibility to PDF documents by building on the work already present in PDF for Section 508 compliance.

And there are even more that are just starting up…So keep your eyes peeled for more versions of PDF focused on specific market segments and needs.

I thought I’d start things off with something useful to all comers…

Using the “Pages” feature of this software, I’ve added a new permanent place where I’ll be keeping a list of my favorite PDF programs/tools.

The first six tools to make the list are:

• PDF CanOpener
• PitStop Professional
• FTMaster
• Redax
• Enfocus Browser
• PDFlib Font Reporter

Go here for more details about each of the listed programs.

It’s hard to imagine this - but some of you reading this blog might not know who I am…

First and foremost, I am the Chief Innovation Officer for Apago.  I am responsible for the design and development of our cross-platform PDF tools such as the award winning PDF Enhancer and our recently announced PDF/A tool, PDF Appraiser.

In addition, I continue to provide the ONLY Adobe-authorized Acrobat & PDF developer training as the Chief Technology Officer of PDF Sages.

I also do a lot of work with the Open Source community as a maintainer or contributor for a variety of projects related to PDF and graphics.

If you want to read more about me - you can check out my bio here.

As the expression goes - “Enter at your own risk”…

This blog will be a place for me to comment on issues related to PDF and related standards such as PDF/A, PDF/X, etc. They will be usually, though not always, be of a technical nature. I will also try to drop in the occasion user tidbit or tip about using Acrobat or maybe some comments about other 3rd party software.

Hopefully you’ll find some things of value.

Leonard