I am working on finalizing an electronic version of a large PDF file (600 page NIME proceedings), and have had some problems optimizing the PDF file. This may not be so strange, since the file is an assembly of 130 individual PDF files all made by different people and using all sorts of programs and OS. Usually, PDFCompress works wonders when it comes to reducing PDF file sizes, but for the proceedings-file it choked at some of the fonts....
I just installed Adobe Reader on my new computer, only to discover that it hijacked the PDF preview window in TextMate when working on LaTeX documents. This also happened the last time I installed a new system, and I couldn’t remember what I did to change it back to using Preview as the default PDF viewer. After googling around, I remembered that TextMate is just using the regular browser settings when it comes to displaying PDF files....
After I began using PDFCompress for minimizing PDF files, the only reason I have had for using the full Adobe Acrobat has been to combine PDFs. Now I realize that since OS 10.5 this functionality has been built into Preview. I guess I should really start reading the release notes of OSes and applications a bit more carefully, since I managed to get to 10.6 before I found out about this feature....
I receive a lot of e-mails from students, and even though I always tell them to send me PDF files, they almost always send me the source files for their documents instead (.doc, .docx, .odt, .pages, …). This semester we have started with electronic submission of term papers at our department, and even though it said everywhere that PDF was the file format to submit, of course all sorts of other formats turned up....
I have been trying to create a booklet out of a standing A4 paper (the booklet size should be 105 x 297 mm), but this has proven to be much more difficult than I would have originally thought. It is a while since I have been doing things like this, and I still remember how easy it was to do such things back in the days when I used to use MS Publisher 1....
Marc Hedlund at O’Reilly summarizes the good things about PDF books: - They are searchable. They are portable. They can often be bought and downloaded immediately. I am still trying to decide what I think about this. In general I prefer to have all articles and reference literature available as PDFs in my digital library, currently organizing them using DevonThink Pro. As computer screens are finally getting bigger, brighter and with higher resolution (even the new MacBook is sporting 1200x800 pixels on the 13 inch screen), it is becoming increasingly more pleasant reading on screen....