C. Scott Miller
Noted Acrobat PDF authority and consultant C. Scott Miller, author of the well-known PDF Research Companion Web site, takes the "Learning Acrobat 5" CD-ROM-based instructional tool from Lynda.com for a spin.
Bryan Guignard
Bryan Guignard notes that PDFWriter is no longer part of the basic installation with Acrobat 5, and explains why that's a good thing for PDF users and PDF.
Shlomo Perets
In the third in his series of short, focused articles designed to help users create optimal PDF files and understand the various factors involved in doing so, Shlomo Perets of MicroType explains the hows and whys of developing an effective, efficient linking strategy.
Dr. D. P. Story
If you're an Acrobat 5 owner who has not yet discovered -- or at least explored -- the product's greatly enhanced batch processing capabilities, you're not getting your money's worth from the program. To show you just a taste of what you've been missing, Prof. D. P. Story offers an introduction to 'Batch' -- Acrobat 5 batch processing and scripting. He also offers tips on how to expand what you can do by easily creating your own custom sequences.
Kas Thomas
One of the things that makes JavaScript such a powerful, easy-to-use language is its relaxed data-typing. But sometimes, you NEED a number to be a number. New Planet PDF columinist Kas Thomas gives you the insight into a host of JavaScript tricks to perform variable type conversions.
Developer
September 20, 2001
Shlomo Perets
Acrobat's bookmarks can be a particularly efficient navigation mechanism that provides easy access to common locations and actions. With nesting and expand and collapse capability, bookmarks create a constant conceptual display of the document's structure. Add easy navigation to all important items in your PDFs.
Kas Thomas
Kas Thomas shares a few work habits and practices that will help you write better code--assuming, of course, that you already know at least the basics of programming!
Shlomo Perets
There's a persistent myth that PDF files by their very nature are large in size; the fact is that in the majority of cases where file size is a legitimate issue, the result is due to poor authoring techniques, a lack of sufficient user knowledge about pitfalls and/or about what steps can be taken. Shlomo offers some valuable pointers.
Kas Thomas
One trick I've learned (the hard way) for reducing the number of bugs in
my JavaScript is to make use of any and all tools and techniques for
cutting down on the amount of typing I have to do. Kas unveils new 'secret weapon' against typos.
Kas Thomas
Kas presents an exercise on how to set up an image map in a PDF file and couple it to a Perl script running on a server, creating an RGB color picker as an example.
Kas Thomas
Kas offers a crash course in manipulating color in PDF files.
Kas Thomas
Kas is always looking for ways to improve his -- and your -- script-writing skills and practices. He's got another shortcut that will cut down on your keystroking, and thus lessen the chance for the dreaded Script Typo.
Kas Thomas
The watch() method, although present in Acrobat JavaScript, doesn't work correctly (at least under Acrobat 4.05 for Mac). It causes the property that's being "watched" to become undefined.
Kas Thomas
Kas shares with us an efficient way of popping windows-based messages from within PDF documents.
Kas Thomas
The (disturbing) subject of bugs in Acrobat, and points out one problem that could very well cause you grief if you ever try to do any numerical operations on character values in strings.
