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Re: Acrobat as a review tool -- lacking in at least one area?

Our department recently switched over to Acrobat 4 as our distribution tool
for FM docs under review. As part of our process, we encouraged reviewers to 
use the annotation tools to cut in their edits, given Acrobat's ability to 
compile the annotations.

Imagine our surprise to find out that you can't print an annotated .pdf file
so that the notes' text is visible. The best you can do is to print the .pdf  
so that the notes show up as closed icons. Which makes it very difficult to 
use the annotations in any area but online. For instance, it's impossible to 
print a document with annotations to take to a document review meeting, or 
for someone to shove into a briefcase, or for a writer to go through a
document cutting in edits and marking them off as "done" on a hard copy. Or 
for a customer who receives final form PDFs to cut in and use their own 
"local" annotations in print.

This is, IMHO, either a serious bug in the design and implementation of this
version of Acrobat or the result of some really brain-dead thinking somewhere 
down the line.  Acrobat phone support personnel were surprised that you 
couldn't do this; it took them an interesting amount of time and testing to 
verify that the product was unable to print the annotations in place.

That said, the tool and procedure are working very nicely. Except for this
huge, glaring inability for the company that invented PostScript to manage 
what's a relatively small printing problem.


In Acrobat 4 (not sure if you can do this with Acrobat Reader, but you can using full Acrobat), just select Tools > Annotations > Summarize Annotations..

You get separate PDF with all the annotation notes listed.  It's not quite what you want, but you can use it.  For instance, you could load the PDF and print the annotation summary. Then you
can jump to pages with comments you need to see in context.  You may be able to jump from
one annotation to the next, you'd have to play with it a bit...

dave
--
Dave Truman  (drt@klgroup.com)        Phone:  +1 416 594-1026 x732
 Manager, Technical Publications              +1 800 663-4723
  KL Group Inc.                         Fax:  +1 416 594-1919
  260 King St. E., Toronto, Canada      Web:  http://www.klgroup.com
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