Sarasota PC Monitor
Adobe Acrobat 5
A Software Review
by Herb Goldstein
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.If you go back into your old testament, you will find that multilingual disparity and confusion was created as punishment by God upon the ancient Babylonians that were building the Tower of Babel. It was decreed as punishment upon them that they would all speak different languages to prevent them from communicating with each other, hence short-circuiting their building plans (Genesis 11: 1-9). Whether or not you believe the somewhat fantasied origin, it's unfortunately a plague from which we never recovered. To this very day our communications and understanding are hampered by the many different languages used throughout the world.
Modern day communicating through computers has become a universal entity which is unfortunately hobbled by the same plague. Much of what is computer created can't be communicated electronically to others unless they possess the software themselves in which the original document was produced.
It took the good folks at Adobe to come up with a unique solution to what God, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and other miscellaneous hath wrought. It's called Adobe Acrobat and it provides a universal format through which we can all communicate and get that doggone tower up and running!
If you take a document created in whatever software program (including text, graphics and whatever), Adobe Acrobat will obligingly reproduce it as a PDF (portable document format) file which anyone possessing Adobe Acrobat (doesn't everybody?) can easily read. The resultant .pdf file will be an exact duplicate of your original file (containing all of the original formatting including graphics and special characters), and allows you to look at it as though you were in the original program that created it.
Adobe Acrobat is an absolutely indispensable tool for me in working with the Monitor. I use it to exchange newsletters with other user groups, to provide either a single page or an entire issue to certain of the Monitor staff, and most importantly to supply it to the printer for actually producing our publication. It is a standard in business and industry and among home users.
Converting any file to PDF is a piece of cake. Many common programs like Microsoft Office, WordPerfect, Pagemaker and the like provide single click access to Acrobat. Although PDF files are transmitted in economically compressed format, you can further lighten the process by zipping them. You can e-mail your PDF or post it on the web. Multiple Acrobat users can individually or as a group conference the document, highlight sections, make changes or annotations, and attach sticky notes.
Acrobat comes in two distinct varieties. The basic one is free and downloadable from adobe.com. The full registerable version with all the bells and whistles sells for $249. The free version allows you to view and print PDF files and to fill in and submit PDF forms. Additionally, the pay version adds the following features:
- Secure documents to prevent changes, and add a password or encryption.
- Add sticky notes, highlighting, and other electronic comments and modifications.
- Use digital signatures to validate documents.
- Convert web pages with all their content complete including hyperlinks to PDF files for offline viewing and printing. Reliably archive, print, share and distribute web and PDF content.
- Convert any document to a PDF file
- Create interactive Adobe forms.
The implications for use of these features in business and industry is staggering. It truly turns communicating into a whole new ball game.
Acrobat 5 contains a number of new features over its predecessor that make upgrading desirable. It can be easily deployed and updated across a network. You can save PDF text as an RTF file and images as TIFF, JPEG, or PNG files. A variety of security features have been added to prevent printing or changing your PDF content, including password protection and encryption. Adding comments, highlights and annotations enhances corroborating.
Web deployment is a major enhancement. You can create and modify fill-in forms for web placement and verify and control information entered on those forms by tying them to a database. See also (4.) Above.
Customizable toolbars with a new bevy of useful buttons create a very useful interface in Version 5. A spell checking feature has been added as well.
All in all, for those to whom the features of this unique software serves a purpose, Adobe Acrobat 5 is not a luxury, it's a must-have. www.adobe.com :
Copyright 2003. This article is from the May 2003 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.