CUSTOMIZING PDFs SURVEY
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CUSTOMIZING PDFs SURVEY |
Following are the responses to a question Dennis Hinkamp posed on May 2, 2003, regarding customizing PDFs.
ORIGINAL QUERY (5/2/03):
One of the results of down sizing is that those of who are left have to do a little bit of everything. I'm also trying to automate a few things that we used to have staff to do.
To that end I'm looking for a way to make some of our state publications customizable to our counties. I've read a little about the "forms" function of Adobe Acrobat 6.0, but is there a way to make an "editable area" that could be used to swap out a state logo for a county logo? ...in this or other software?
Dennis Hinkamp
Extension Communications
Utah State University
Ag. Science Rm 215
Logan, UT 84321
dennish@ext.usu.edu
435-797-1392
Cell 435-760-0926
FAX 435-797-3268
RESPONSES (5/8/03):
Thanks for the advice on how to customize PDFs, which I compiled below. It always helps to have a project to work on while you are practicing. Maybe I should just stick to editing and writing.
http://extension.usu.edu/vicepres/GnomeOutbreak.pdf
(requires broadband and RealAudioPlayer) http://extension.usu.edu/vicepres/news/gnomes5.rm
Dennis Hinkamp
There are a two or three ways to do this. There's an object select tool in Acrobat that can be used to wipe out a logo. (Save first, because sometimes the object tool will grab more than you intended, and sometimes there's a surprise in how much it deletes.) You can use the same tool to copy the new logo to the now-blank space by picking up the logo from another Acrobat document, then moving it into the desired spot if necessary.
I use the Stamp feature in Acrobat 5 to add our logo to publications.
This is a quick way to put it in a lot of places, and it's easy to vary
the size and location, but it takes some setup. (See p. 133 of Acrobat
Help.) You make a PDF of the piece of art, name it (for instance StandardLogo=Logo)
then insert the PDF page into a file of existing Acrobat stamps, like the
Standard file in Acrobat 5.0/Plugins/Annotations/Stamps/ENU. Then: To specify
a page name for a stamp:
1 Open your PDF document in Acrobat, and go to the page you want to
name.
2 Choose Tools > Forms > Page Templates, and enter a name for the stamp
page.This should be in the format <CategoryName><StampName>=<LocalizedName>.
The localized name is the same as the stamp label.
3 Click Add, and then click Yes.The name is now associated with that
page of the document.
4 To name another stamp page, go to the appropriate page in the PDF
document, and repeat steps 2 and 3.
You can pass this new version of Standard to other Acrobat users. You might want to save the file somewhere in addition to the Acrobat application folder, because if you ever need to reinstall Acrobat, the non-customized version of Standard will overwrite your version. PDFzone.com has a tip, "overlap two pages" which describes how to use form fields to do similar object changes. I've attached my version of Standard, which has three custom stamps, in case you want to look at them.
Cordially,
Amy Hartman
Electronic Document Librarian
Dept. of Ag. Communications
Kansas State University
307 Umberger Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
ahartman@oznet.ksu.edu
I have used Acrobat 5 with some limited success as far as editing goes. Text editing is limited. Graphic editing is more limited in 5.0. I ended up buying Enfocus Pit Stop Professional for editing PDFs Text and graphics. It is also a bit quirky, but will allow you to cut and paste graphics. It is a little pricey, but is the best thing I know of for editing PDF.
Bill Watson Texas A&M bs-watson@tamu.edu
If your county offices each have a copy of the Acrobat authoring software (which they could use, if they knew how, for all sorts of things besides your office's publications), they could delete your logo and/or add their own at the proper place, using the "Touchup Object" tool (looks like a selecting arrow, toward the right end of Acrobat's toolbar). You can use the tool to select a graphic, drag it to a new location, or delete it. You can also use the tool to select a graphic from a different PDF doc (for instance, a county doc with the county's logo) and paste it into the publication. Then they can save the altered doc and put it online, print it out, whatever.
You might want to a password on the editing function for the document and then give that password to your county contacts, just to make sure that unauthorized folks can't monkey with the publications.
The "forms" function does allow you to create easy-to-edit text areas in the document, but there's a catch: The user can only save the edited version if he/she is using the Acrobat authoring software (not the Acrobat Reader). You can fill in a form and print out the completed version using Reader, but you can't save the filled-out version as a PDF for later use.
Acrobat isn't cheap (about $300 a pop), but it's very useful and certainly is cheaper than the down-sized staff would have cost.
Jim Coats UC Davis wjcoats@ucdavis.edu
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