An Acrobatic Presentation in Adobe PDF
Don Story's latest interactive Seybold SF 2002 creation
26 September 2002
By Kurt Foss, Planet PDF Editor
In late June we reported on the creation of an interactive survey instrument both on and in PDF, developed by Prof. Don Story, and used by organizers of the recently completed Seybold PDF Conference. Story, something of a legend among long-time Acrobat users for his early -- and continuing -- work with integrating JavaScript and other means to add interactivity to PDF files, was also a speaker at Seybold's latest San Francisco gathering earlier this month.
Story -- who's a University of Akron faculty member teaching in the area of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics, as well as a former summer employee of and special consultant to Adobe Systems -- shared more of his secrets and experiences in a presentation titled "JavaScript Techniques using the Console, a Menu item, and a Batch sequence." The theme of his panel presentation was a discussion of "some methods for using JavaScript through the console, a menu item, and a Batch sequence. Some special techniques will be introduced for using FDF (Forms Data Format) to insert Document Level JavaScript and to execute 'discardable' JavaScript through a menu."
For those interested in but unable to attend Seybold, Planet PDF has again solicited presentations from all speakers involved in the three-day Seybold PDF Conference. The good news is that the vast majority have provided copies that are now available for download. The less good news is that in most cases, downloading and reading the exact document used to give an on-site presentation is less rewarding than having attended the session. More often than not, presentations are developed simply as outlines for what speakers want to address -- details and comments not expressly included in the presentation document, along with any follow-up Q&A during a particular session, aren't available to post-event readers.
In most cases, that is. Having archived presentations from various PDF-oriented conferences and events for a number of years now, we've had the fortune to see some examples where speakers took extra steps in preparing their presentations so that conference-centric presentations viewed out of context would still convey considerable content value to belated viewers. 
A frequent speaker who consistently stands out in this regard is Jim King, Adobe Systems' Principal Scientist, who typically includes nearly the full text of his comments made during a presentation within the document itself -- usually in the form of page-by-page Acrobat notations that can be exported and read (or printed), offering better comprehension of the presentation when downloaded after the event. One example is his Seybold Boston tutorial on "Using JavaScript with Acrobat Forms." After downloading the PDF version, one can export King's more detailed slide-by-slide annotations into a second PDF, handy as a reference when viewing the base tutorial.
With his Seybold PDF Conference 2002 presentation, Story has raised the bar, demonstrating how much value can be retained beyond simply a static recounting of the keypoints covered in a session. Of course, his topic lends itself to greater theatrics -- which is supported and enhanced by his expertise -- than some others might allow. In short, it's a presentation that practices what its presenter preaches. Even if you missed the live performance, you'll get a pretty good feel for the information as well as a good deal of the content.
While most Seybold speaker presentations download as single, self-contained PDFs, and a few as stray PowerPoint files, Story's presentation initially downloads as a compressed, 360kb .ZIP file. When decompressed, you quickly get a sense there's a lot more to this one than the typical static document.
Inside the .ZIP file are three PDF files, an Acrobat JavaScript (.js) file and a "demo" folder containing an assortment of other goodies -- more PDFs, more JavaScript, several EPS files, forms data and several .WAV sound files -- utilized during the presentation.
A few words of advice from Story for anyone downloading his presentation; after decompressing the .ZIP file, follow these steps:
"At the top level are the presentations:
- Take the file myJS.js, and place it in the JavaScripts folder of your Acrobat installation. (Remove it later.)
- The file talk_p.pdf is the paper version of the talk with many details included. Print, if desired, and read along with the presentation.
- first_page.pdf: this was my opening page. Click on the lower-left hand corner of the blank page to see a bubble sort of my title page.
- If everything is set up correctly, after the animation, the actual presentation should be loaded into the viewer.
- Page through the demo, there are some links and buttons to press.
- On the last page of the talk, there are two acrobat "ribbons", one a link to the FrameMaker source file of my demo (see instructions at the end of the talk_p.pdf document) and the other to the PDF version (already distilled). Click on the PDF link first, and watch the magic.
- The Executable and discardable JavaScript import icons for an animation, import sounds for some sound effects, make all pages into template pages, and creates a navigation bar at the bottom of each page. Turn on your sound system, you are going to need it."
One detail that didn't make it from the in-person presentation to the downloadable version: Story called the landscape used as the background in his slide series -- featuring rolling hills and a floating cloud -- "a view of Planet PDF."
