Nearly four years in the making, AIIM’s PDF/UA Committee today agreed to submit their draft standard to ANSI to be submitted to ISO as an ISO NWI (New Work Item). It’s the first formal step from the Working Group’s document to begin the full international process. AIIM and Adobe launched the PDF/UA effort knowing that […]
View PostThese folks are making an annoyingly large amount of news in the PDF space these days. Hard on the heels of its announcement that Google would begin to OCR and index image-based PDFs came improved support for PDFs in Google’s Chrome browser. Now Google’s gone and added PDF viewing support to its Gmail application. My […]
View PostGoogle released version 1.0 of their Chrome browser yesterday. When this software was first released in beta three months ago, I gave it the quick once-over, concluding that (from the PDF Perspective), it wasn’t close to ready for prime time. Things have changed. My show-stopper gripe regarding the Chrome beta was the fact that Fast […]
View PostAs a PDF ‘services’ person who recently parachuted down into the dungeons of server software, I can report by now that there are different monsters down here. In fact, it’s an entirely new level! A few of the thoughts that come bubbling to the surface: There’s nothing new under the sun; computers and programming haven’t […]
View PostThe transition from Acrobat-driven Reader Extensions to LiveCycle-driven Reader Extensions should be SMOOTH. Instead, it’s like the difference between stepping off the curb and hang-gliding from a cliff. I’ve been talking to clients and others about the Reader Extensions feature in Acrobat Pro 8 and 9, and it certainly gets a lot of attention. When […]
View PostI’ve been reading some feedback on my earlier post about why Reader remains the standard for PDF viewing. Some people just love to hate the big company that gives away great and reliable software for free. They are sure that they’ll have little or no use for bookmarks, form-fields, JavaScript, and so many other PDF […]
View PostI recently exchanged emails with a client to answer questions about how their large insurance business could take advantage of Reader Extensions for PDF files. Here’s one question and my reply: > 1. When I download the PDF can I work on it and save it while I am > working on it in case […]
View PostIn cooperation with a client’s server developer, we recently designed a large forms implementation using FDF. For months, we encountered serious difficulties, as individual forms would fail here and there for frustratingly silly reasons. I asked the server folks how they were making their FDFs. They’d examined sample FDFs, they claimed to have read the […]
View PostFDF has been part of PDF almost since very early days. Adobe didn’t exactly have a long track record as an interactive forms company at the time, but in FDF, they succeeded in creating one of the most powerful and flexible forms solutions ever devised. As of last summer, FDF is part of ISO 32000, […]
View PostThe lords of search over at Google recently announced an interesting new feature for PDFs created from scanned pages. Searchable PDF files are nothing new – and neither are searchable PDF files produced from scanned pages. Simply run OCR and voila – your scanned PDFs are now searchable. But let’s say you didn’t OCR your […]
View PostAdobe today posted a new set of content designed to enhance end-user understanding of accessibility in PDF. These documents are edited by Adobe PDF accessibility specialist Greg Pisocky, and they pull together know-how from many sources. Anyone interested in Section 508 compliance and accessibility in PDF files should download and check them out! …and from […]
View PostThe vast majority of Acrobat users have no interest in scripting. For most, they get their money’s worth (they think) if PDFs are easy to make, work reliably, are of small file-size, are reasonably secure, and so on. Little do most users suspect what scripting can do for their PDFs, and (thereby), their electronic document […]
View PostI’m always intrigued by new browsers, and Google is always intriguing anyway due to the company’s strategic heft. Of course I had to look at their just-announced browser, Chrome. I’m going to try to live with this browser for a while and will report my views in greater detail, but I’m still getting used to […]
View PostPDF/A (‘A’ is for ‘archive’), otherwise known as ISO 19005, is the subject of my latest feature article, The Content that Endures: What to know about PDF/A. Opening with the question “What happens in the year 2023, when someone has to open an Outlook PST file from 2003 to settle a lawsuit?” the article draws […]
View PostBack in 1996 when I started Document Solutions, Inc., most of our services revolved around scanning to PDF. This background may help explain why I’m so fascinated with Adobe’s new ClearScan technology introduced with Acrobat 9. The ClearScan concept is disarmingly simple. Starting from a scanned page, the software analyzes the image to determine which […]
View PostWhat’s the difference between a document and the software used to view the document? In the paper or microfiche worlds, no software is needed, so the question is meaningless. The only potential barrier to legibility is the physical condition of the document. Electronic documents are different. The physical condition of the document is assumed, otherwise […]
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