Re: Sending customers your doc files

[Dave Chisma & Gail Hodgson <chisma -at- C031 -dot- AONE -dot- NET -dot- AU>]

<snip>

Acrobat Reader is freeware from Adobe. You can get a license and
distribute it free on the CD with your PDF files. Whenever a customer
double-clicks on the filename to open the document, Reader will open the
file.

<end snip>

We put all of our technical manuals on CD in PDF format, along with:

- a readme.txt file in the CD's root directory to explain what's on the
CD, with some very quick instructions on how to install and use Acrobat
(and a suggestion to use the Acrobat on-line help, if required)

- a PDF table of contents for the CD, so users can click on a
comprehensive description of the manual to open the manual instead of
needing to find the right file name for the manual

- Acrobat Reader installation software for users who don't have it (if
Acrobat Reader is not installed on the PC, you can double-click all day
on a PDF file and it still won't open)


I noticed other questions about Acrobat the other day, I hope these
haven't been answered to death:

CROPPING PAGES: You can crop pages in Acrobat Exchange for a page, or a
whole manual,
very quickly.

PROTECTION: You can password-protect the PDF files against unauthorised
opening,
changing, selecting text or graphics, and printing.

INDEXING: You can use Acrobat Catalogue to make a full-text electronic
index of
every word in every manual in a collection.

BOOKMARKS AND INTERNAL LINKS: We use FrameMaker to write manuals. The
resulting PDF files come complete with bookmarks plus dynamic links to
each TOC item and cross-reference.

RE-CREATING EXTERNAL LINKS: If you create a whole new PDF file, I
believe you need to re-create all
the external links. If you're lucky, you might need to replace only a
page out of a
multi-page PDF file. If that's the case, try this when producing your
Postscript file:

1. print only the page(s) that need to be changed;
2. make a PDF file out of each one (called page 1, page 2, etc.);
3. open the old PDF file that you want to update (assuming it still
contains the original external links);
4. add the page(s) to their appropriate position in the old PDF file
(don't delete the old page(s) yet);
5. use the link tool to create a link, then go to the old page and use
the old link to jump to your external destination (assuming it's one you
want to keep);
6. repeat until you've used all of the links in the old page(s);
7. delete the old page(s).



Cheers, Dave Chisma
chisma -at- c031 -dot- aone -dot- net -dot- au

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