|
 |
|
|
|
Seamless File Transfers Across Platformsby Paige Turner Although software vendors frequently promise compatibility we, the every day users, know different. If you create a document in WordPerfect, save it as an ASCII file and bring it into Word for Windows all your formatting will be gone. Create a document in WordPerfect for Windows and bring it into WordPerfect for DOS and you have lost some formatting. How about reading those files on a Mac or UNIX system? All your beautiful fonts, columns, and tabs are going to be trashed. Every day users know this is a real problem and don't believe vendor's claims of compatibility. Adobe's Acrobat goes a long way toward fixing these problems, making seamless file transfers across multiple computing platforms a real possibility. I always felt that ASCII was the way to transfer data to other users if they didn't happen to have the same software I was using. I didn't think about it much. It was a lot of hassle but I accepted the situation as being part of computing. At Spring COMDEX in Atlanta 2 years ago I saw a demonstration of Acrobat at an editor's luncheon that convinced me that Acrobat was the most important product among the thousands shown at COMDEX. It works surprisingly well and the next release promises some improvements that will make Acrobat a "must have" program for any corporation doing business in more than one location or using more than one computing platform. Forget about ASCII. Now you can give data to other computer users, even people with Macs or UNIX boxes and they can view that data just the way you prepared it—fancy fonts, columns, clip art and all. And they can cut and paste that data into their own documents or add notes and links to the document you gave them. Acrobat is going to change the way we work. Simply put here's how to use Acrobat : -install Acrobat Exchange on your PC or Mac (UNIX box with the next release), -prepare a spreadsheet, report, graphic, CAD drawing or combination of all three, -select PDF Writer as your printer instead of your normal HPIII or whatever, -print, -the file will automatically print to the disk or directory you tell it to, -if your document has complicated graphics or EPS graphics you may need to use Distiller to print it, -take that file on a disk and put it into another computer, -open Acrobat Exchange or Reader and view or print the file The file will look and print exactly the same on both computers whether they are Macs or PCs (DOS and UNIX compatibility will be available in the next release) and whether they have the same fonts loaded or the same word processor or whatever. Graphics look and print the same. Colors look and print the same and fonts look and print the same. It works quickly, easily, neatly and the resulting .PDF file is almost always much smaller than the original. You can cut and paste text and graphics from your .PDF files from Acrobat to other Windows or Mac programs. I was hoping to be able to forget about ASCII altogether but cutting and pasting with Acrobat works with text only and results in ASCII imports without formatting. Guess you just can't have everything. As Acrobat evolves expect to be able to preserve all fonts and formatting when you cut and paste. Remember, this is all very easy to use. Printing to a .PDF file is as easy as printing to your InkJet or laserprinter. Viewing the files with Reader or Exchange is as simple as clicking on the program icon to start the viewer and clicking on the file name after Browsing to find it. This is a piece of cake to use! It always amazes me how pretty and nice the files look and how easily and quickly I can zoom in to read or move from page to page. This program looks great! OK, nice toy but what am I going to do with such a thing? What's all the excitement? I keep thinking of new uses for Acrobat in an engineering company I consult for. They have 18 offices all over the US and a couple overseas. They use every word processor and computer type known to man. They need to share documents and files every day. Here's a couple of ways they could use Acrobat: -Resume database—The company maintains a file of resumes for each employee at each office to include in proposals. When someone new is hired or someone's qualifications change (these things happen almost every day) the resumes need to be updated. The resumes are maintained on a VAX system and in file folders in each office. It's difficult to get them to look the same when you print them because different offices are updating them at different times and although there is an effort to try to use the same format for each resume, they are created with different word processors and pass through the VAX before being printed at each office. If each office saved the resumes in Acrobat's .PDF format, the .PDF files could be uploaded to the VAX and used or printed as needed without losing special formatting. -Company phone book—the company phone book could be maintained at the main office in California and sent out in .PDF format on disk to each office from time to time or uploaded to the VAX and accessed as needed. This would be a paper saver and would allow them to keep a more up to date phone list. Each individual employee could have access to an up to date phone list without having to keep an out of date printed copy hanging around. A lot of different documents could be handled this way: customer lists, catalogues, &c.; -Large document transfers—the company frequently creates 300 to 800 page reports which need to be archived and shared with other offices. Multiple copies can be made and FEDEXed to 18 offices or they could be uploaded as a .PDF file to the VAX which would allow each office to print them out with all the figures, tables and complicated formatting intact. They could even mail a floppy disk to each office. If you prepare a complicated report in WordPerfect and print it on a HPIII it looks much different than the same report printed on a HP Series II. Page breaks change. Figures and tables move. Imagine the problems transporting large CAD or CorelDRAW! illustrations that are a part of these reports. Huge amounts of money are now being spent at the printers and at FEDEX. With Acrobat each office could print out these reports exactly as they were created on a PC or Mac on whichever printer happens to be hooked up or not print them out at all! Share them over a network or on floppies instead. A lot of corporate uses can be imagined. I'm a user group newsletter editor and here's a way user groups are considering using Acrobat: Electronic magazines and newsletters—many user groups exchange newsletters each month mailing to as many as 150 other groups. I get quite a few each month and really enjoy reading them. Often I see articles I would like to reprint in the PC Register but the idea of retyping them stops me cold. Sure, I can scan and OCR them but if editors would upload their newsletters to GlobalNet (a user group BBS) or send them on floppies each month in .PDF format I could browse through them on-line and cut and paste the articles I want with the greatest of ease. We'd all save postage and printing costs as well. Acrobat has some pretty sophisticated search abilities and allows files to be annotated with the familiar yellow "sticky" notes. This search ability makes browsing a database like the resume database described above quite practical. The thick engineering reports could be indexed and searched later—a time consuming task normally that the company simply can't afford to perform. I haven't really explored all the searching and linking possibilities and I suspect I am passing over this feature a little too quickly. I keep imagining new possibilities. Time and experience will tell which ideas are practical and which are not. Is this the paperless office we've been hearing about for so long? Not at all. As with most advances in computer technology this isn't really going to save much paper but it will make managing and sharing paper output much easier and cheaper. Why Acrobat? There are several competing products available that do similar things. Some of them work quite well. Interleaf's WorldView, Farallon's Replica, Binar Graphics' AnyView, Folio, Envoy, Common Ground, there's even one called Page Turner :-). Why choose Acrobat over all these others? I've tried WorldView and seen Replica in use. Replica is almost as feature rich as Acrobat but creates larger files. WorldView is more confusing and hard to figure out. CommonGround and Envoy both work very well. But the main reason to use Adobe's Acrobat product is Adobe's superior market position. Adobe is mounting an intense promotional campaign to make Acrobat's .PDF file format an industry standard. The lack of industry standards is what makes a product like Acrobat necessary in the first place! Adobe has been quite successful in creating industry standards (Postscript, Adobe Type Manager, Type 1 fonts) and I think it's usually wise to go with the industry standard. Corel, Aldus, and other software publishers will be incorporating Acrobat into their products. This is a product that will be very important in the near future and I'm putting my money on the company with the most clout, the most vision and the best product: Adobe. |
| Suits | Ponytails | Propheads | Contact WDJ | Discuss | Web Audio | Search |
Jupitermedia Corporation has two divisions: Jupiterimages and JupiterOnlineMedia
Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints, Permissions, Privacy Policy.
Advertise | Newsletters | Tech Jobs | Shopping | E-mail Offers