Wisdom of the PDF Sage

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

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.