Rethinking
The Academy:Rethinking
The Academy:Acrobat Exchange and Distiller, which are used to create Acrobat .pdf (Portable Document Format) files, are not very useful for generating electronic documents since .pdf is print bound in its conception. To create a .pdf file, one generates the original document in any application - common applications include WordPerfect, PageMaker, QuarkExpress, or other word processors or desktop publication programs.
Then - if one is using Acrobat Exchange - one prints the file to a virtual printer which writes the .pdf files. This has implications for what kind and format of documents translate well to .pdf format. These files will continue to be divided into "pages" which will still have an "order" and otherwise demonstrate a print mentality. In fact, one of the most common uses for .pdf files is to e-mail files that will then be printed out at a remote site without any loss of format. (Adobe Distiller converts postscript files to .pdf, a variation of the same process.)
Worse, rewriting the original document (say for a change of date or correction of a typo) means recreating the .pdf file. If one does so, the web links that were present in the original document will still be shown with link typographic conventions (that is, they will be underlined and displayed in blue), but the functional link, the URL or other resource underneath the link, will be lost.
Thus, a document with a hundred links and a single character correction will require the author to reinsert the hundred links, and that reinsertion will have to occur any time any change, no matter how slight, is made to the original document.
Last Modified: August 2, 1996
Copyright © 1996 by Keith Dorwick
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