pdf

GreenPrint offers free paper-saving software

A free flavor of GreenPrint software that enables people to waste less paper when printing became available Monday.

The new application, GreenPrint World, detects and highlights unwanted content, such as banner ads on a Web page, that tends to spill over onto extra pages. It also lets users delete images from the printed page and quickly create print-friendly PDF documents. The GreenPrint interface appears when users print from any program.

The software displays the amount of paper, money, and greenhouse gases users could be saving. GreenPrint estimates that regular usage may save up to $90 each year, the equivalent of … Read more

PDF Hammer lets you tweak PDFs sans software

Ever had a PDF file or two laying around that needed some minor tweaks, but you didn't wanna fork over the cash for a full version of Adobe Acrobat, or install some other PDF application such a rare task? Give PDF Hammer a look. The service lets you do simple page re-arrangement on PDFs of all sizes, and when you're finished it'll spit it out as one big, beautiful file. The service is pretty simple to use, and lets you upload multiple files without losing any rearranging or deleting progress you might have made. You can also … Read more

Sun releases cool PDF renderer/viewer

Sun has just released a cool Java library - called the SwingLabs PDF Renderer - which "can parse PDF files and draw them to the screen."

Write a PDF once and run it anywhere? Sounds like a good fit for Java! Combined with PDF writing libraries (like iText), you can do pretty much anything you want with PDFs.

Sounds like an exceptionally cool piece of code to drop into a content management system or other code that deals with documents in any way. LGPL and so compatible with a wide range of open-source licenses.

The other way to get a document format approved (PDF)

Dave McAllister over at Adobe is suggesting that the ballot for PDF for Draft International Standard ballots are in, and with 93% apparently in favor, things are looking good for ISO 32000 PDF. Reading through Dave's post, it's clear that this is a much better way to create a true "standard" than what happened with OOXML.

OOXML was a case study in bare-knuckled lobbying. PDF? Not at all.

Now this was a lot of effort to pull together. We did follow a "lobby-free" policy with this effort. We did answer concerns when we were asked to clarify. We did log a few air miles when invited to discuss this in public forums. And we also took the PDF specification 1.7, removed any product dependencies, and created a world class draft standard. ...… Read more

Episode 613: Don't believe the lies

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Yahoo, Adobe team on PDF ads

Yahoo and Adobe are bringing pay-per-click ads to Adobe's Portable Document Format so that publishers can serve up ads inside PDFs distributed on Web sites and over e-mail that are contextually relevant to the content.

The text advertisements appear in a panel to the right of the content in the PDF and are subject matter matched using keywords and analysis of associated concepts. The ads are dynamic, meaning different ads can pop up at different times and clicking on an ad takes you to the advertiser Web site.

Publishers upload their PDF content into Yahoo's ad serving system … Read more

Microsoft Word files to speak to the blind

Microsoft and open-source site SourceForge plan to offer a free plug-in early next year that will convert Office 2007 files to the Daisy format, which translates text to speech.

The free tool will add a "Save as Daisy" option within Word 2007 and 2003. Daisy, or Digital Accessible Information System, XML files can be "read" aloud by speech synthesizers, paired with audio narration, and used to create electronic Braille. Users can navigate open-standard Daisy documents quickly by jumping between page elements such as headers and indexes.

The Daisy Consortium of 70 nonprofits has aimed since 1996 … Read more

Get docs from pics with Qipit

Qipit is a free service for turning digital photos into sharable, online documents. It works with any photo taken with a digital camera, or from your mobile phone. Like ScanR (review), Qipit will store and host your photos, and let you rotate them to your heart's content. This works the best with shots of documents taken at an angle, and with whiteboards, business cards, etc. Once uploaded, Qipit will tweak the contrast of your shot, drawing out the text, and doing its best to correct perspective warp. Unlike ScanR however, you're not getting the archival goodness of optical … Read more

Adobe backs down on FedEx Kinko's print button

After Adobe Systems faced the wrath of numerous printing companies and organizations, the company has decided to remove a button that made it easy for Adobe Reader and Acrobat software users to print PDF files at FedEx Kinko's, a top executive said Wednesday.

Adobe is removing the button with a version 8.1.1 update to be released in about 10 weeks, said John Loiacono, head of the company's creative products division, on his blog.

"I know that there are a lot of folks who will be asking why we can't do it this afternoon. The … Read more