February 06, 2005
PDF Possiblities
I like using PDF to package my research results. It's easy to deliver via email and I can use bookmarks and annotation tools without disfiguring the original. Using Adobe Acrobat I can combine search results from other resources on the web, and even incorporate scanned items. Now I just want the major online services to make things even easier for me.
Both Lexis and Westlaw have offered PDF as a download option for a while now. Westlaw even offers PDFs of cases as published in the hard copy reporters. But not all PDFs are created equal.
Westlaw already offers much more functionality than Lexis in their PDF downloads by providing live links in their results list, as well as links within PDF case downloads to other cases, keynote searches and footnotes.
These links are great for librarians, since we often want to provide results lists for our users to peruse. With the live links they can easily pick which articles/cases/items they would like to see in full-text by just clicking, then entering their user name/password. Lexis provides no such live links in PDF files or otherwise.
But wait, I want even more. How about the ability to download a group of documents, such as cases, in PDF format, with bookmarks automatically created using the case name or article title? PLEASE??
Considering how ubiquitious PDFs are, especially in the legal world, the more features in PDF downloads, the better!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)January 23, 2005
Adobe Acrobat 7.0
I recently saw a demo of Adobe Acrobat 7.0, and I'm happy to announce that it now creates bookmarks automatically based on the file name when you combine files. Yey! This new feature was high on my wish list, and will meet what I expect is a very common need.
In 6.0, if you wanted to append all of the citing cases to a brief or other document, you had no choice but to create each bookmark manually by finding the first page of each case, then adding the bookmark. With a large number of documents this process is tedious and time-consuming. But if you're using version 7.0, bookmarks for each case will be automatically created. If you've had the foresight to name your files well, your work will be done. If not, it's fairly easy to click on each bookmark, and rename them appropriately. That's much easier than starting from scratch!
I still can't see any option to print or otherwise save bookmarks, though! I guess we can't have everything.
By the way, the Lawyer's Guide to Adobe Acrobat is now out and available. I haven't read it yet, but it comes highly recommended from a number of reliable sources.
January 06, 2005
Malicious Bug Can Attack via PDF File
I guess it had to happen. A security hole was discovered in Adobe Acrobat Reader that could potentially "allow an attacker to execute malicious code on a user's system via a PDF file distributed via e-mail." The bug effects version 6.0.2, and possibly earlier versions of the Reader.
The problem can be avoided by installing an updated version of Adobe Reader, and it just so happens that version 7.0 is available. Among the enhancements in Adobe Reader 7.0 (note that it's no longer called "Adobe Acrobat Reader") are:
- faster loading time, something I'm sure we'll all appreciate.
- ability to fill in interactive forms
- commenting capability can be offered on documents created in Adobe Acrobat 7.0
- improved searching
If you'd rather stick with version 6, then at least update to 6.0.3 to avoid any unpleasantness.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)November 21, 2004
Adobe Acrobat 7.0 on its Way and Includes RSS
It seems like only yesterday that Adobe Acrobat 6.0 was released. In fact, it was shipped mid-2003. My, my, software ages quickly these days! Adobe announced last week that version 7.0 will be released by the end of the year. Both PlanetPDF and PDFZone have already reviewed the new functionality offered by 7.0.
Interesting...you'll be able to use Acrobat 7.0 to subscribe to RSS feeds using the "Tracker" tool. This I've got to see! But unfortunately the only mention I could find of this particular feature was in the first part of the Planet PDF Product Tour. It goes without saying that it will be a simple matter to convert those RSS feeds to PDF. It's unclear whether both Standard and Professional will include the Tracker tool.
Adobe continues to improves Acrobat collaborative features, especially in the 7.0 professional edition. According to PlanetPDF, Acrobat Professional 7.0 allows you to give users of the free Adobe Reader permission to use all the commenting and review tools that were previously only available to Acrobat Professional and Standard users, thereby greatly expanding the potential pool of collaborators.
The select tool options are clearer, which will be a nice improvement. The text options were previously a bit difficult to find.
Look for better integration with Outlook in both the Standard and Professional's versions. They both allow you to save multiple emails, with attachments, or even complete folders, to PDF.
Perhaps best of all, Adobe Acrobat 7.0 will load faster, thereby addressing a major complaint of Acrobat users.
But what about the simple stuff like printing bookmarks and creating bookmarks automatically when combining files?? Information on that level of detail is still unavailable. We probably won't know until we have 7.0 in hand and can try it out.
That's not all, but I won't repeat all the features here. For more information see:
Planet PDF - Acrobat 7 Product Family Feature Matrix
Adobe Acrobat 7.0 - Planet PDF Product Tour
Adobe beefs up Acrobat Reader in version 7.0 (PDF Zone)
October 24, 2004
What Adobe Acrobat Can't Do
You can fill a very large book with all the amazing features offered by Adobe Acrobat 6. And many people have. Which is why it's often surprising and annoying what it CAN'T do.
Shaké Hagopian, the Legal Information & Research Officer in the CN Law Department, wrote to me asking if I knew how to cut and paste a list of bookmarks from a PDF file. Hmm, that seems pretty basic, there must be a way to do that. But no, apparently not. After we both researched this question on the web, Shaké confirmed with Adobe that there is no way to accomplish this simple task using the standard edition.
In the course of researching Shaké's question , I found a PDF for Lawyers article on how to print bookmarks using 5.0. Printing bookmarks, now that's another task that I would think would be useful. But the fix doesn't work in 6.0 standard edition, though perhaps the $99 plug-in would. But wait, didn't we just pay a fairly hefty sum for Adobe Acrobat Standard??
My most recent stumper involved combining multiple PDF files into one, 84 of them to be exact, all court filings. Combining the files is easy, but creating bookmarks to all 84 documents isn't my idea of a good time. What would make it easier? How about automatically creating bookmarks for each file, using the file name. Can Adobe Acrobat do that? Not as far as I can tell though it can do what seems to me to be a more difficult task of creating bookmarks from Word files. In the meantime, my email on the Adobe Acrobat support forum to confirm that this can't be done is languishing unanswered. And again, I was able to find a couple of utilities that can do the job, at an additional cost.
No wonder there are so many plug-ins available for Adobe Acrobat!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)September 20, 2004
Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 - A Problem Child?
There have been reports of problems with the new 6.0 Adobe Acrobat Reader. I first spotted a complaint from John Dvorak (PC Magazine, September 7, 2004) , but then, he's always complaining about something! I paid more attention when I recently saw comments on Web4Lib .
Note that the problem reported are with the Adobe Acrobat Reader, not the full Standard or Professional editions.
For some possible solutions, see Acrobat 6 Help from the University of Connecticut Libraries. Saving the file to your hard drive, then opening from there seems to be a fairly common solution. When I've seen similar problems, I've changed the setting for Adobe Acrobat to open in the browser window, and have it open in Adobe Acrobat instead. (To do that, go to preferences - Internet and de-select "Display PDF in brower." )
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)August 12, 2004
Secure your PDF Files
At the AALL exhibit hall, I picked up at some information about CISTI's document delivery service and their new Secure Desktop Delivery. In order to receive your orders electronically, you register with CISTI, download the SDD plugin, and you're good to go; they can then send your documents to you electronically as PDF files. But these aren't just any PDF files. Due to copyright concerns, CISTI delivers secure PDFs which limit the number of times you can print and view the document. It's fairly draconian...you're allowed to view and/or print the document once and only once.
Since Adobe Acrobat doesn't offer this kind of security, I wondered how this was done. So I dug around a bit, and found the solution that I believe they're using for their SDD, FileOpen Web Publisher. While I'm not suggesting that you use this kind of program in your firm to keep your attorneys in check in regards to copyright, it's an interesting product that could have a variety of uses.
Of course, limited viewing and printing of such files doesn't stop you from taking the one print-out you're allowed to your photocopier and making ten copies, or scanning the document to a plain-vanilla PDF file. But then, there's only so much they, or anybody, can do to limit distribution of copyrighted materials. It certainly is a good effort!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)July 27, 2004
Adobe Acrobat Follow-Up Question: Copyright
The "copyright" question came up after my Adobe Acrobat session at AALL. How do you keep people from distributing the PDF to everyone and their brother, possibly violating copyright law? After all, the same copyright issues apply to the electronic version as apply to the hard copy research results.
Many libraries use a rubber stamp for photocopied articles that says: "This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code)." (See "Copyright & Fair Use - Library Photocopying" from Stanford University.) You can do the same thing for your PDF file in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 using the stamp tool.
There are several standard stamps offered, such as DRAFT. Of course, the copyright notice is not a ready-made stamp, so you'll need to create a custom stamp. To do that, use your favorite image-editing program to create a graphic with the text that you'd like to use. The size should be about 2 inches by 1 1/2 inch. Then, in Acrobat 6.0, choose Tools - Commenting - Stamps - Create Custom Stamp, and follow the prompts. For more detailed instructions , see the Adobe Acrobat Help file. (The instructions vary for 5.0. You'll need to create the custom stamp as a PDF file. See page 133 of the manual for more information.)
Thanks to Shawn Swearingen from Faegre & Benson LLP for asking the question and getting me started thinking about using the stamp tool for the copyright notice.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)July 17, 2004
AALL Presentation - Adobe Acrobat 6.0
I'm back from the American Association of Law Libraries Conference (AALL) in Boston! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will be posting on several new products and announcements from the exhibit hall. I want to thank everyone who attended my session, "Reaching the Global Patron: Packaging Your Research with Adobe Acrobat 6.0," on Wednesday. It was one of the last sessions of the conference, and I was pleased to see there were still many hardy souls out there who were attending programs up to the very end.
As promised, I've posted my Powerpoint and the handout which includes the Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Quick Reference Guide.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)June 13, 2004
Which Version of Adobe Acrobat Do You Have?
I'll be giving a presentation in July at the American Association on Law Libraries conference about Adobe Acrobat, similar to what I did last year at Internet Librarian. But I'm in a quandary regarding which version to show, 5.0 or 6.0. So do me a favor, take this month's LawLibTech poll and let me know what version, if any, you have on your desktop. You'll find the poll on the right-hand side of the front page.
Confused about the differences between Adobe Acrobat's free reader and the software? Then take a look at Dennis Kennedy's Frequently Asked Questions on Adobe Acrobat and PDF for Lawyers.
June 27, 2004 - Thanks to those who answered the survey! The results are...
Because there are a significant number of people using 6.0, I plan to use it in my presentation, and refer 5.0 users to my materials from Internet Librarian.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)May 22, 2004
Putting PDF and Adobe Acrobat into Your Tech Toolbox
Sometimes I blog because I have something to say on a topic, sometimes because I find a useful piece of information that I want to pass along, and sometimes I use this blog as a personal knowledgebase so I can find pertinent articles, blog entries or web pages at a later date. Just so you know, this entry falls into the third category.
Dennis Kennedy recently wrote an an article on PDF for Law Practice Today that contains a nice concise list of web resources relating to the use of PDF that I want to be able to find again in the future!
[via PDF for Lawyers]
May 02, 2004
OCR Tutorial for Adobe Acrobat
There are two types of PDF files. One type is a scanned image of a document, simply a picture of it, if you will. You can read the text when viewing it, but the computer can't. The other type contains text that is readable by the computer. These kinds of files are typically created from text files, such as a Word document, rather than scanned. In this case, the text is captured along with the image.
If you're viewing a PDF file such as a court document, and don't know which kind of file it is, use the find feature to locate a word that you know is there to see if Adobe Acrobat can recognize it. If not, you're looking at an image.
What if you have an image-only file and need to search the document, or otherwise want the computer to recognize the text contained in the image? Perhaps you'd like to extract the citations using Checkcite or Westcheck. In order to do that, you need to OCR the document. Lucky for you Dave Fishel has written two tutorials to help you out, OCR Tutorial for Acrobat 4 and 5 and OCR Tutorial for Acrobat 6. I'm sure glad PDF for Lawyers is back!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)November 19, 2003
Cool Tools for Web Development
Darlene Fichter's Internet Librarian presentation on tools for web development listed a variety of handy and useful utilities. I've already told you about ieSpell.
Also included were a couple of interesting PDF tools.
FastPDF is web-based service that lets you convert Microsoft Word documents to PDF. Converting a document less than 12 pages in length is free, but the PDF version will include a watermark advertising FastPDF.
PDF Explorer is a PDF file management software and image extraction tool. It allows you to easily gather and add all your pdf files to a database file that displays an overview of filename, title, subject and author. You can then search through all the files, view them, batch rename them and more.
Darlene discussed many more utilities such as:
Mouseover Generator
FavIcon
Bookmarklet - List all Links
Colour Picker and Tester
Just to name a few. Her full presentation is available at http://library.usask.ca/%7Efichter/talks03/il/13
The presentations from Internet Librarian are available on the Infotoday web site.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)November 06, 2003
Internet Librarian 2003 - Adobe Acrobat Presentation
I just got back from Internet Librarian 2003 in beautiful Monterey. It was a great conference. More details will follow. In the meantime, here's a link to my presentation and handout on Delivering Research Results Electronically using Adobe Acrobat.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
