Adding JavaScript References to the Acrobat Pro 6 Help Menu

By Douglas J. Alford

About the Author   Douglas J. Alford Planet PDF readers will probably know him best from his tireless work assisting the needy by posting answers in the Planet PDF Forum. He is also in charge of the documentation system at Techneglas.   More   RELATED ARTICLES Planet PDF & PDF Forum RSS Feeds Acrobat Developer Workshops in Europe to feature Acrobat 7 Introducing Planet PDF's Learning Centers Acrobat 7.0 - Our First Look

We don't know why. We don't know how. And we don't know who to blame. So somehow we'll just have to hitch up our trousers, roll up our sleeves, and fix it ourselves. Feel free to hitch your trousers back down if you're feeling uncomfortable.

For whatever reason, with the release of Acrobat Professional 6, the JavaScript Reference (known formerly as the JavaScript Object Specification) disappeared from its home on the Help menu. It was shouldered out of its position, apparently, by the "How To..." submenu. It's kind of like a scene out of one of those wildlife documentaries, where the big ugly Cowbird brat pushes the cute little Warbler baby out of the nest, only to be rewarded with regurgitated meal-worms by its diminutive and unaware foster parent. Just hard to watch is all. Just hard to watch.

But Baby Huey aside, we've got to put that reference guide back on the menu. So what do we do first?

First we find it. Because it's not's on the CD, and it's not on your hard drive. It's on the web. Where? At partners.adobe.com. But it's not just one document anymore. It grew an evil siamese twin -- the JavaScript Guide. So if you've got dial-up, brace yourself and start your download manager's engine. The two documents equal about 4 MB. (Stop giggling. I have a TV antenna, too. Life in rural America sometimes demands sacrifice.)

Get them here:

• JavaScript Reference
• JavaScript Guide

Let me know when you're done.

Have you noticed how cold it's been this year? And rainy? My gosh, the corn was up to my knee by the end of May! And the weeds in the garden? I pulled a sucker out by the windmill just last week that was taller than the chicken coop, and... Huh? Oh. OK. Ready?

Now you've got to save the files somewhere. I suggest you put them with their brothers in the ENU zone. (Isn't that a big ugly Australian bird? We may have a theme going here.) The specific path will depend on your platform and your mood. I have a boring old Windows installation (but I can multiboot Mandrake Linux...hey, Mandrake?...this is getting scary...), so my path looks like this:

        C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Help\ENU\

You'll find another couple of interesting files in there, named "Distparm.pdf" and "Pdfmark.pdf". If you think that you'll need them, you can add them to Help menu using the procedure below.

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