Re: PDF Annotations

[Jay Smith <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Schlomo,

Thank you, as always, for your insights.  

However, I have been wondering about this subject from the OTHER DIRECTION. 
We have been using PDFs to email "galley proofs" to authors that have Acrobat
Exchange.  We have them insert Notes with editorial comments, picture caption
text, etc. and then email the PDF back for us to use their comments to make
the changes.

The problems are a) It is a pain to jump back and forth from the PDF Notes to
the FM document.  b) Exchange Notes are not very friendly in terms of line
breaks, etc.; when pasted back into FM, there is usually a hard return at the
end of every line.  

We cannot give our authors the FM document to work in directly because a) they
don't have FM, b) the cost and (mostly) the learning curve is to great, c)
they would muck around too much -- they are authors, not the usual
highly-trained technical writers that many FM'ers are used to working with.

Any thoughts?

-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: jay@jaysmith.com

The Press for History(tm), The Press for Education(tm), 
The Press for [Your Industry](tm), The Press for....(tm)
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  Minimum run one copy.

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Snow Camp, NC  27349  USA

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Fax: Int+US+336-376-6750




Shlomo Perets wrote:
> 
> Hello Michael,
> 
> At 09:40 AM 2/8/99 -0700, you wrote (to the Framers list):
> 
> > We will be converting a large WinHelp project to FrameMaker, and then to
> > PDF. This project has a zillion code examples that we have decided to
> > duplicate in the PDFs as annotations. We'll be using pdfmarks to include the
> > postscript information for the annotations in Frame. ...
> 
> If you need to insert many Acrobat notes/pop-ups, I recommend using my
> FrameMaker-to-Acrobat TimeSavers, which allow you insert the required
> items using regular hypertext markers. PostScript text frames, while
> useful for various needs, can be difficult to manage when you have many
> of them (in addition, they create a lot of "noise" on the page). Various
> PDFs demonstrating the use of TimeSavers features are included in the
> "showcase" section in my web page.
> 
> However, for the application you mention, you might consider using a
> different approach - where clicking the link will open the code example
> as an external file. The programmers can then copy and paste code fragments
> easily and conveniently. Moreover, based on the file extension and the
> application they choose to associate with it - their favorite editor
> can be opened automatically.  I was involved in a project where this
> approach was used successfully - sample files are also present in the
> "showcase" section of my web page. To accomplish this, you can use a
> FrameMaker hypertext marker with the following command:
> "message openfile file.ext"
> 
> (despite what the FM5.5 manual says, this command is carried over to
> Acrobat).
> 
> Such an approach will be much easier to implement and maintain.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Shlomo Perets
> 
> MicroType * http://www.microtype.com
> FrameMaker-to-Acrobat: TimeSavers / Advanced Techniques Course / Solutions
> 
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-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: jay@jaysmith.com

Jay Smith & Associates
P.O. Box 650
Snow Camp, NC  27349  USA

Phone: Int+US+336-376-9991
Toll-Free Phone in US & Canada:
	1-800-447-8267
Fax: Int+US+336-376-6750

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