Adobe Acrobat 7.0:
STC Web-telephone seminar recap

by Lori Shantz, Competition Manager

PDF (Portable Document Format) files have become such a common part of our lives that it's hard to remember what life was like without them. Brian Wood, who presented the February 9 seminar, reports that PDF has become the de-facto standard for digital documents and there are more than 20 million PDFs on the public internet.

After speaking a bit about the widespread use of the PDF file format and describing the Adobe Acrobat family of products (which includes, Adobe Reader, Acrobat Elements, and the Standard and Professional versions of Acrobat) Brian demonstrated some of the many new features included in Acrobat 7.0. This article provides a condensed list of the new features Brian demonstrated. For a complete list of new features, visit Adobe's Acrobat site at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/main.html.

Creating PDFs

• Reduce the time needed to create a PDF. Improved PDF creation time (up to 80% faster in some cases!)
• Select new PDF formats: PDF/X, which uses the ISO Standard for pre-press content exchange and is designed to reduce frequent errors such as font embedding and wrong colours, and PDF/A, which is a new archival standard.
• Integrate with MS Outlook and Internet Explorer. Acrobat 7.0 gives you the flexibility to create PDFs from one e-mail or a whole folder of e-mails, as well as from Web pages or selected text from a Web page. When you create a PDF of a folder in Outlook, Acrobat automatically creates bookmarks by sender, date, and subject to help you locate any e-mail.
• Discover improved integration with drawing programs such as AutoCAD and Visio. PDFs created in these programs retain their layers and object metadata. Anyone viewing the PDF can show or hide layers and search object metadata for specific content.
• Create PDFs directly from a scanner. You have the option of creating text using built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) functionality or creating a searchable image from the scan.

Editing PDF Documents

• Add headers and footers to a PDF document. This is great for adding page numbers if you've created a PDF file from several different source files.
• Add watermarks or backgrounds of images or text and indicate whether these should be visible on screen, when printed, or in both scenarios.
• Attach files to a PDF.

Reviewing and Commenting PDFs

• Allow comments from within Adobe Reader. When you enable a PDF for commenting in Reader, the file opens in Reader with an intuitive palette of commenting options.
• Use new commenting tools for drawings, for example, create callouts or dimensioning arrows.
• Export comments to AutoCAD.
• Try a new wizard for sending a PDF out for review by e-mail. The wizard enables you to customize the review options that you want your reviewers to use.

Setting Up Security

• Create groups of security settings that you commonly use with a new "Policies" feature.

Preparing PDFs for Print

• Receive warnings about common problems like overprinting when you use the new output previewer.
• Convert colour models, for example, convert colours from RGB to CKMY values.
• Attach a JDF (Job Definition File) to the PDF.

Overall, Adobe is making Acrobat more flexible, more intuitive, and more relevant to the many needs of its users.

About Lori Shantz

Lori stumbled into technical writing while looking for work as a museum curator. She figured that if she could explain Einstein's theory of relativity to fifth graders, she could probably explain technology to adults. (The jury is still out about which is tougher, however.)

This is Lori's fourth year on the STC council, and her second year as competition manager. She also volunteers for a local theater company (occasionally even appearing on stage!) and is a fledgling gardener, an avid reader, and a passionate cook.