Anyone who has browsed the World Wide Web knows that, as a communications medium, it is very different from conventional publications like print magazines, newspapers, and paper documents. Its purpose-to deliver information to a target audience-is the same, however.
Until recently, converting prepared documents-the ones painstakingly formatted with type, layout, and design-to be posted on the Web usually had been an unforgiving task. It required learning HyperText Markup Language (HTML) codes, a primitive process of editing text when you compare it to the graphical user interfaces (GUI) of today's Microsoft or WordPerfect word processors. Graphics had to be converted separately, if possible, to low-resolution and restrictive color palettes. Add low-network bandwidth requirements, audiences with low-resolution monitors, half a dozen or so different Web browsers, and you're left with a process that was often frustrating with results that were disappointing.
A new age and suite of document presentation applications has arrived, however. Software companies, mostly those involved in engineering applications for conventional media publishing, have developed digital document formats that allow formatted documents to be published electronically via the Internet or through non-network digital media such as CD-ROMs or ubiquitous floppy disks. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce you to digital document formats (DDFs) and quickly get you started with using them and incorporating their use into intranets.
PDF, or portable document format, is a document format that allows you to view complex documents using a simple viewer. In essence, a PDF document contains all the elements of that document in and of itself. If you create a document in Microsoft Word, for example, anyone else who has Microsoft Word can view that document. If that person has only Microsoft Works or WordPerfect, however, he or she would have a difficult time viewing the file.
Although in recent years, most good word processing applications such as Microsoft Word and WordPerfect have filters for each other and other popular formats, they are still not perfect. When a document is saved in Microsoft Word, some of the elements of that document are communicated or symbolized by Microsoft Word itself. The fonts, embedded images, columns and tabs, or other complex formatting procedures are saved in a special Microsoft language. This language can be understood by Microsoft Word, and sometimes can be translated by a Microsoft Word filter. To get a better idea of this example, try opening a Microsoft Word document in Notepad. You see a lot of special characters, and all the document's formatting is gone, as shown in Figure 23.1.
A PDF file, on the other hand, is self-contained. All the formatting, fonts, images, and every other part of the file are saved with the file, and you can view them by using a simple viewer.
The PDF file format uses only the printable subset of ASCII, which means that the formatting, images, or fonts that are used in your document are described to the reader in that language.
A PDF file can simulate a font even if it is not available on the viewer's machine. You therefore can use whatever font you want when you create the document, and anybody who has a reader can view the font almost exactly as it would appear if the reader had the font installed on his or her system.
PDF files use a sophisticated means of compression to reduce file size. This compression is great for an intranet because PDF files use less bandwidth when you transfer files.
PDFs have introduced a wide range of new features to electronic publishing, intranets in particular. With PDFs, you can do the following:
Anyone who needs to distribute documents to a large audience should find PDFs useful, especially if you have to publish documents electronically. The New York Times, for example, uses Adobe Acrobat's Portable Documents (PDF) to publish its Times Fax, a daily synopsis of the day's events. Before, Times Fax was available only through fax subscription but is now available through Acrobat on the Web. See for yourself at http://nytimesfax.com/altfax.html. The IRS has PDF tax forms that you can download, and numerous companies now are using PDFs to distribute product catalogs and literature. Interested in more examples? On its WWW site, Adobe maintains a page of other sites that use its PDF format. You can visit that site by pointing your browser to http://www.adobe.com/Acrobat/PDF sites.html.
Using PDFs is simple (as simple as sending a document to the printer) and in many cases more advantageous than converting formatted documents for the Web. They transform paper documents for electronic publishing and can be used with most publishing applications such as PageMaker, Quark Express, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Adobe Illustrator, and many more regardless of the operating system (that is, Macintosh, Windows, DOS, or UNIX). PDFs can be distributed through a range of applications, including the World Wide Web, e-mail, Lotus Notes, CD-ROM, corporate networks, and print-on-demand systems. PDFs eliminate many printing and distribution costs and are environmentally friendly, reducing trips to the photocopier and the offset printer.
Just as digital documents add features for distributing documents on the Web, they add features to intranets as well. With digital documents, you can post frequently used documents. Imagine, no more having to look for the employee handbook. The company newsletter is right there online. Want a second opinion on something? E-mail your proposal to Jim in advertising. Digital documents have the potential of making the office paperless.
Don't stop there. You can probably think of many valuable ways to use PDFs on an intranet. Here are some other examples:
Publishers have a variety of digital document formats from which to choose. Among the most widely used are PostScript (.PS), Adobe Acrobat (.PDF), and WordPerfect Envoy (.EVY).
The father of digital document formats, Adobe's PostScript has been around since 1985, when Apple Computer introduced the LaserWriter, the first PostScript laser printer. By definition, PostScript is an interpreted, stack-oriented language for describing, in a device-independent fashion, the way in which pages can be composed of characters, shapes, and digitized images in black and white, grayscale, or color. Documents created in PostScript therefore can be used by almost any computer platform or printer that supports the PostScript language. Concerning the text and graphics field, PostScript is now the most widely used printer controller in the industry. It gives computer users total control over text, graphics, color separations, and halftones.
Though PostScript has a wide-felt presence in the paper document publishing area, it lacks in the digital document market. Its files are usually very large, wasting bandwidth on the Internet. Sometimes, converting and viewing the documents require some technical knowledge about the language. Besides simple viewing and printing, PostScript lacks many features available in Adobe Acrobat and Envoy, such as document indexing, text searching, and markups. PostScript is, however, universally available, supporting Mac, Windows, OS/2, and UNIX platforms.
When it was first introduced, Acrobat, also by Adobe Systems, was hyped as the first step toward the paperless office and the most important document-imaging technology since PostScript. It is truly a much newer solution, and Adobe boasts its features as ideal for intranets. It's easy to see why. As a digital document format, Acrobat includes text and graphic linking, searching, and indexing. You don't find these features available in PostScript. Because of its PostScript heritage, however, you can use Acrobat to do everything PostScript can do, including converting PostScript to Acrobat.
The Adobe Acrobat family actually consists of three products designed to bring electronic document solutions to a wide range of users:
Adobe's PDF format allows intranet users to pass documents back and forth between Adobe Acrobat software, regardless of computer, operating system, font, or application software. Documents can be passed onto another computer without losing their formatting information. PDF, therefore, is an ideal way to transfer highly visual documents over the Web.
Why use PDF instead of PostScript? Size is a big concern; PostScript files are significantly larger than the same files saved as PDFs. Also, the Web browser market is leading electronically formatted documents in the direction of PDFs. Netscape, creators of Netscape Navigator, the Web browser that holds nearly 85 percent of the total browser market share, has made an agreement with Adobe to include a built-in PDF viewer in upcoming releases of Navigator. You therefore will no longer have to install Adobe's PDF viewer plug-in to view PDF documents. You will still have to install viewers for every other type of digital document format.
Digital document format systems usually consist of three basic components: an encoder, an editor, and a player. The encoder is the software that actually creates the portable file. Encoders come in two forms: utilities that emulate a printer driver to capture and convert print output, and stand-alone programs that convert more complicated PostScript documents.
For this tutorial, you use Adobe Acrobat. For more information on obtaining a copy of Acrobat, consult your local software dealer or visit Adobe's Acrobat Web site at http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/main.html.
After you install the Acrobat software, the next task is to create the document for use on your intranet. You have a lot of flexibility here: you can create a simple static document, such as a business letter, or an entire business presentation to share with another user or group of users. You are limited only to the capabilities of your authoring software (PageMaker, PowerPoint, Quark, Word, and so on) and your imagination. In most cases, the process is the same: you create or scan documents to output from your authoring software to Acrobat's PDF Writer or Distiller.
As an example, consider a company profile created in PageMaker. This file contains important information that is useful to fellow employees or a potential customer. Converting this document to a PDF is almost as easy as printing it. Simply select the PDF Writer prior to printing (the print setup in Windows and the Chooser option on a Macintosh).
From here, fine-tune your PDF settings by selecting the fonts used in the original document, as shown in Figure 23.2, and graphic compression settings, as shown in Figure 23.3. Embedding the fonts into the PDF is especially important, as doing so ensures that the layout of the PDF does not change when viewed by a user who does not have the same fonts that are used in the document installed in his or her computer. The graphic compression settings allow you to shrink the memory requirements of your PDF, but you should be careful. If you choose a compression setting that is too low, this setting may sacrifice graphic quality.
Figure 23.2: Embedding fonts into your PDF document.
Figure 23.3: Selecting the appropriate graphic compression for your PDF document..
Next, select the view PDF file. Making this selection automatically opens the Acrobat viewer after the PDF is created. View the file to make sure that the PDF was created error free.
Finally, choose Print from the PDF Writer menu. You are prompted to enter a filename for the PDF and to select the directory in which you want to create the PDF. Your file is then converted to a PDF. This process may take a few minutes.
Viewing a PDF file is even easier than creating PDF documents.
Assume that you're browsing your intranet's Web site with Netscape, and you come across this year's year-end report, which hasn't hit the printer yet. Simply click the link to download the PDF. As long as the Acrobat software is correctly installed, the viewer automatically opens the downloaded PDF.
You can view the file by placing the PDF you created on your intranet
and downloading it, or by opening it locally from the viewer.
After the viewer loads the document, you can browse, search, or
print the document.
| Note |
Netscape and Adobe struck a deal to embed PDF viewer capabilities in all new versions of Netscape. Look for this capability in all upcoming versions of Netscape. If you don't use Netscape, don't worry. The viewer will continue to be available to you from Adobe's Web site at http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/readstep.html. |
You can distribute PDFs in many ways. If you're online, you can put them on the company's Web or FTP servers. If your target audience is outside the Web, you can transport them on a floppy disk or CD-ROM. Or you can add a personal touch by sending a PDF through e-mail.
Some other PDFs work in many of the same ways that Adobe Acrobat
does. One such alternative is WordPerfect Envoy. Although it's
identical in many ways to Adobe Acrobat, the differences between
the two products are best explained by their origins. Acrobat
originated as an outgrowth of Adobe's PostScript printing language.
PostScript was designed for printing pages one at a time on printers.
By contrast, Envoy was designed to address the problems of electronic
document distribution, specifically online viewing, flexible navigation,
efficient searching, annotation, printing, and transmission. Many
of Envoy's features are showing up in Adobe's new Acrobat "Amber"
PDF format, the next generation of Acrobat software.
| M&J uses the PDF format very rarely. Their main production person who creates mar-keting materials and brochures works in the Philadelphia office. When new materials are created, they are posted to the intranet in PDF format so that they can be reviewed by partners and interested parties who are either in the two other offices or on the road. Because most of the decision-makers work in the Philadelphia office, however, walk-ing the files down the hall is typically much easier and more efficient. |
| The SGAA uses the PDF file format fairly often. Whenever new marketing materials for the association are created, they are placed on the intranet in PDF format. Advertisements, new membership documents, and even the annual report are distributed to key association members in this manner. This format allows for a quick and easy method for review, especially if approval is needed to publish the documents. |
The Web is a great medium to publish information; however, if the material you want published comes from formatted documents, PDFs may be a better alternative. Creating them is as easy as printing, and you can distribute them via almost any form of digital media. But don't take my word for it; get online and see what PDFs can do for you!