You
may find answers here to some of the frequently asked questions about
PDFcommander™.
PDFcommander™ provides a secure working environment for the creation,
enhancement, storage and retrieval of both source files and PDFs.
The actual creation of a PDF is only a small part of what is required to
enable you to optimize the use of your PDFs.
As a database application, it's the ability to 'remember' everything that
sets PDFcommander™ apart from applications that simply generate PDFs.
PDFcommander™ can see each page in a PDF individually. This means you
can reorder pages from different source files before concatenation.
For instance, should you wish to create a PDF consisting of 5 MS Word pages
followed by 2 MS Excel pages followed by another 3 MS Word pages, you simply
create an MS Word document with 8 pages and an MS Excel worksheet with 2 pages.
You can then reorder the pages to suit before concatenation.
You can use PDFcommander™ in a simple casual way by printing through
any Windows application or dragging and dropping files, URLs, links or Internet
Favorites onto PDFcommander™.
Alternatively, through an easy to understand interface, you can take
advantage of PDFcommander™'s 'Enhancements' to present your information
in a highly professional manner .
Simple or sophisticated - PDFcommander™ does it all and remembers
everything for the next time!
If you are online when you start PDFcommander™, it will automatically
check for updates, download, install the updates when you exit
PDFcommander™ and notify you accordingly.
Imagine you want to create a PDF from various different file types.
You could use the search facility in Windows Explorer, but that would mean
you would be constantly searching for files.
PDFcommander™, through the use of
PDFfilefinder™,
extends the scope of projects by creating and maintaining lists of individual
file types suitable as source files.
From these searchable, filterable lists, source files can be added to a
project, edited, viewed as intended or as PDFs, etc.
When a source file is added to a project, a copy is saved with the project
so that should you delete the original, the copy in the PDFcommander™
project will be available.
The lists can also be used with other Windows applications - drag 'n drop
any number of image files onto Paint Shop Pro, for instance, and Paint Shop Pro
will open them in sequence.
PDFcommander™ maintains logs of all document activity within its
projects, so tracking changes is as simple as viewing the log.
Maintaining the lists is equally easy - select 'Update file lists on
Shutdown' from the settings dialog, and
PDFfilefinder™
will run every time PDFcommander™ is shut down.
Adobe(R)
Portable Document Format (PDF) is the open de facto standard for electronic
document distribution worldwide.
It's the most reliable, efficient and effective way to share information
electronically.
PDF is a universal file format that preserves all of the fonts, formatting,
colors, and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application and
platform used to create it.
PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed
exactly as intended by anyone with the free
Adobe Reader.
Strictly speaking, you can't.
PDFs were designed to be secure non-editable documents.
PDFcommander™ does offer ways of modifying or editing a PDF, if the
the PDF is not password protected.
You can separate the original PDF into individual pages.
The pages can then be replaced with new files, you can add or delete files,
and PDFprocessor will then create a new updated version.
You can extract the text in a PDF to a text file, and the graphics to jpeg
files.
Using a program such as MS Word, you can reconstruct a PDF from its
original content.
Whilst Adobe Reader cannot save the content of a filled form as a PDF,
PDFcommander can create a new PDF complete with all the data entered into the
filled form.
Assuming PDFcommander™ to be running, simply select the Postscript
Printer driver, print and your new data filled PDF will be created!
Whilst displaying pdfs in Internet Explorer is the default, you can select
Adobe Reader as the pdf viewer by clicking on the graphical checkbox in the
Settings toolbar or selecting through the main menu.
PDFcommander™ optimizes the use of both Internet Explorer and Adobe
Reader.
By initially opening a pdf in Internet Explorer, you have instant access to
the Internet to take advantage of the Internet features available in
PDFcommander™.
You can navigate between website and pdf on your hard disk by using the
history facility of Internet Explorer.
By using the address combo in Internet Explorer, you can open any pdfs
available on your system, (maximum 20 at any one time), and they will be opened
separately in Adobe Reader, whilst you continue to browse the Internet.
You can drag 'n drop pdf files from PDFcommander™ onto either
Internet Explorer or Adobe Reader - should a pdf file be already displayed in
Internet Explorer, you need to drop the file onto either the address combo or
the statusbar.
Should you close Adobe Reader the pdf displayed in Internet Explorer will
momentarily disappear and then reappear - there is no need to click on the
'Refresh' icon in Internet Explorer.
The Internet Explorer interface can be removed or restored by clicking on
the 'History' button on the main toolbar or by selecting the 'History' option
on the View selection on the main menu.
Internet Explorer will continue to monitor URLs visited and files opened
irrespective of whether or not the interface is visible.
This
white paper
defines the situation for you.
Open the relevant projects by clicking on their names in the left hand pane
of the PDFcommander™ interface.
To move a file, select the required source file by depressing the left
mouse button, drag to the project name and release the left mouse button.
To copy a file, select the required source file by depressing the left
mouse button whilst ensuring the Ctrl key is pressed, drag to the project name
and release the left mouse button and Ctrl key .
All the files relating to the source file, ie pages, links, text files etc,
will also be copied or moved.
The term 'enhancement' covers bookmarks, page numbering, page cropping,
notes addition, image manipulation, watermarks, page borders, background
gradient fills, background images and background colour application.
If you are using a PDFcommander™ project, the enhancements for the
individual source files will be saved when the project is saved.
You can also apply the enhancements to another source file by saving the
enhancements file separately and using that file as opposed to the file that
PDFcommander™ will automatically generate for the source file.
The type of enhancements generated by PDFcommander™ will be
determined by the 'Enhancements profile' which you can edit by selecting the
option from the Settings menus.
Assumimg you have selected 'Enhance pdf' and 'Edit enhancements' in the
settings dialog, program execution will halt before the pdf is created.
You can then
-
Add page borders in varying widths, colours and positions.
-
Add notes, (64Kb max), in a scrollable window and select initially opened or
closed.
-
Add notes anywhere with text, color and font size and style of your choice.
-
Append bookmarks as web links
-
Automatically crop pages to image sizes
-
Automatically resize images in pages
-
Centre images in pages
-
Crop pages
-
Edit bookmarks' text, color and font style.
-
Edit page numbering text, color and font size and style.
-
Relocate images in pages
-
Resize images in pages
-
Select area of a image and replace existing image with selected area
-
Select areas of a page and create links to other pages
-
Select areas of a page and create web links
-
Select different images as backgrounds for pages
-
Select different coloured gradient fills as backgrounds for pages
-
Select different coloured backgrounds for pages
-
Select watermarks in any solid or outline colour for pages
You can remove any or all enhancements to a PDF in the dialog that follows
if you have checked the 'Edit enhancements' options on the menu or clicked on
the button on the toolbar.
For instance, should want to send a PDF to a client without notes, you can
remove all notes from the document through the dialog, and send the document.
Then you can enable notes within the document and send that version to
corporate headquarters.
Enhancement files are completely independant of the original document and
you can save and apply unlimited different versions of enhancements to any
source file.
The enhancements for individual pages will be available as before -
bookmarks, page numbering, date and time stamps will be recreated and may
require editing.
There are generally three pieces of information you require to access an
FTP server through PDFcommander™.
-
The URL of the FTP server
-
Your username
-
Your password
For ease of access, PDFcommander™ retains these details so once they
have been entered simply selecting the FTP server address from the combo box on
the toolbar will log you onto the site, and display all the folders and files
in Internet Explorer.
You can drag 'n drop files from Windows Explorer onto the FTP server and
vice versa. You can drag 'n drop files from the PDFcommander™ interface
onto the FTP server, but not vice versa.
So to share a PDFcommander™ project, you simply drag 'n drop the
project file, say Xyz.pp, from the PDFcommander™ project's folder in
Windows Explorer onto the FTP server in Internet Explorer and that will copy
the project to the new location.
From the main or right click menu, select 'Add/remove
PDFcommander™ task to/from Windows Scheduled Tasks'
The Wizard will guide you through the elemental steps involved and provides
a simple interface to the Advanced properties of the Windows Scheduled Task
manager.
A list of PDFcommander™ tasks will be presented to you and these
include running PDFfilefinder™ so that your file lists can be updated
when your PC might otherwise be idle.
A bookmark is a title for a page in a PDF.
They allow you to summarise the page's content in a tree like structure,
and aid navigation through your document.
You can also use bookmarks to add web links to a PDF. They are added at the
end of the tree structure.
If you click on 'Bookmarks' in the left hand pane of the Adobe Reader, you
can determine as to whether the PDF has bookmarks or not.
Navigate to the site of your choice and from the main menu 'File' option
select 'Capture complete site.'
It's not important which page you initially select as PDFcommander™,
through the use of
PDFsitecapture™,
will examine the selected site and place the opening page at the top of the
list.
If you selected 'Edit enhancements' in the settings dialog, you will able
to select the link text that will be used as a bookmark for the page. If there
is more than one link to an individual page, you will have a choice as to which
to use or alternatively you can enter your own.
The number of links on the site determines the number of pages and the
number of pages will increase again should a web page be larger that the PDF
page size.
Unchecking the page in the interface removes the page from the PDF.
All you need to do is drag and drop the URL from the Address bar in
Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator onto the PDFcommander™ interface
and PDFcommander™ will do the rest for you!
Alternatively drag and drop a link from the links bar or any of your
Internet Favorites.
Most browsers are incorrectly setup for the creation of PDFs, as by
default, they have headers, footers and margins.
PDFcommander™ removes these during the creation of the PDF and
restores them immediately after.
If you have the Web page Wizard enabled through the menu or toolbar, the
Wizard will guide through the process offering you a choice of single page,
filtered web pages on a website according to the search criteria you enter via
the Wizard, or complete websites.
If the Web page Wizard is not enabled, only the selected web page is
utilised.
The options are
-
Drag 'n drop the URL from the addressbar of your browser onto your
PDFcommander™ project.
When you build a project into a PDF, PDFcommander™ will access the
Internet and create a PDF from the current web page, thus ensuring you have the
latest version.
-
Drag 'n drop the URL from the addressbar of your browser onto the PDF files
grid in PDFcommander™
If you have 'Add to current project' enabled, the PDF will be automatically
added to your current project.
From the main menu 'File' option select 'Capture complete site.'
In the wizard that follows, you can select either the web site that is
Internet Explorer's current URL or alternatively select any number of web sites
from the list of web sites recently visited by Internet Explorer that is
produced by
URLtraka™.
If you selected 'Edit enhancements' in the settings dialog, you will able
to select the link text that will be used as a bookmark for the page. If there
is more than one link to an individual page, you will have a choice as to which
to use or alternatively you can enter your own.
The number of links on the site determines the number of pages and the
number of pages will increase again should a web page be larger that the PDF
page size.
Unchecking the page in the interface removes the page from the PDF.
Browse to a web page in either Internet Explorer or Netscape, and drag 'n
drop the URL from the addressbar of the browser onto a PDFcommander™
project.
Right click on the URL in the project and select 'Locate web links' -
PDFcommander™ will then find all the web links called by the URL, and
display their URLs and titles in a list.
Web pages that can be remotely queried by PDFcommander™ can be
identified by the red Query icon
- web pages that contains options or radio buttons can be identified by the
black Query icon,
, and require user input.
Select the URLs to be queried with left click, CTRL+left click or
SHIFT+left click. Right click and select 'Run Query' from the menu.
The wizard will then start and guide you through the rest of the process.
The results pages will be available to you as URLs and identified by the
page title.
Double clicking on the Internet Explorer icon,
, will take you to the web page. Right clicking on results URLs will offer you
the option to access the text contained in the page.
The text can then be copied to the clipboard or drag 'n dropped into any
Windows application.
Your query definitions are automatically saved when you save your project,
so to run the query again, simply open the project and select 'Run saved query'
from the right click or main menu.
To take advantage of
PDFdatacapture™
, which can automate the process and extract and filter the data into a
variety of database formats,
contact us
for obligation free further information.
For ease of use, PDFcommander™ Site Search is modelled on Google
Advanced Search, but is specific to the URL dragged and dropped onto the
relevant Wizard.
With PDFcommander™ Site Search, you can search for webpages:-
-
That contain ALL the search terms you type in
-
That contain the exact phrase you type in
-
That contain at least one of the words you type in
-
That do NOT contain any of the words you type in
Your search can be selected from any or all of the above options in
combination.
The occurrences can be
-
anywhere in the page
-
in the title of the page
-
in the text of the page
-
in the URL of the page
-
in links to the page
The resultant PDF will contain only the pages found in PDFcommander™
Site Search.
PDFcommander™ Site Search is much slower than Google Advanced Search,
but is far more accurate.
Only links found in the website's home page are processed.
To access, select 'Create PDF from webpages' from either the main or right
click menus and follow the Wizard's instructions and select the appropriate
search method.
With Google Advanced Search, you can search for webpages:-
-
That contain ALL the search terms you type in
-
That contain the exact phrase you type in
-
That contain at least one of the words you type in
-
That do NOT contain any of the words you type in
Your search can be selected from any or all of the above options in
combination.
The occurrences can be
-
anywhere in the page
-
in the title of the page
-
in the text of the page
-
in the URL of the page
-
in links to the page
The resultant PDF will contain only the pages found in Advanced Search,
which may be specific to the URL dragged and dropped onto the relevant Wizard,
or pages from anywhere on the web.
To access, select 'Create PDF from webpages' from either the main or right
click menus and follow the Wizard's instructions and select the appropriate
search method.
PDFcommander™ will advise you how many webpages were found matching
your search criteria.
Having decided how many you wish to utilise, (maximum 900 with Google®
Advanced Search), the URLs and, if found by PDFcommander™ Site Search,
page titles, become available on screen.
Select a URL and from the right click or main menu, select 'View as Context
View'
This will isolate and display only those paragraphs in the webpage
containing the search words and/or phrase which will be emboldened for ease of
identification.
This enables you to determine the relevance of a webpage without having to
read the entire page before incorporating it into your PDF.
Should you wish to view the entire webpage, from the right click or main
menu, select 'View as Webpage'
PDFcommander™ will advise you how many webpages were found matching
your search criteria.
Having decided how many you wish to utilise, (maximum 900 with Google®
Advanced Search), the URLs and, if found by PDFcommander™ Site Search,
page titles, become available on screen.
Select as many URLs as you wish to include in the Aggregated Context View
using CTRL+left click or SHIFT+left click and from the right click or main
menu, select 'View as Aggregated Context View'
This will isolate and display only those paragraphs in the selected
webpages containing the search words and/or phrase which will be emboldened for
ease of identification.
This enables you to determine the relevance of any number of webpages
without having to read the entire pages individually before incorporating them
into your PDF.
The URL and page title for each page is included above the page's
individual Context View and clicking on the link will take you to the page.
Should you wish to view the entire individual webpage, from the right click
or main menu, select 'View as Webpage'
Text contained in non graphical type source files, PDFs and web pages can
be extracted as data and inserted into fields in database tables.
From the main menu 'File' option select 'Extract as data.'
In the wizard that follows, you can select the files from which you want to
extract data and the location and export format in which the data should be
saved.
The data can then be utilised by any other database management system.
For instance,
PDFdatacapture™
used in combination with
URLtraka™
will extract data from an entire web site.
PDFcommander™ offers a limited set of data querying options - to
realise the full potential of
PDFdatacapture™,
contact us
for obligation free further information.
Open an existing or create a new project.
Add and/or select the files you want to concatenate by checking the box
alongside the file on the left of the list.
If required, reorder the files using the vertical navigation buttons on the
right of the form. The topmost file in the list will be the first page and the
others will follow in sequence.
Select 'Concatenate files' from the 'Source' option on the menu and you're
done!
Yes - the options are
-
Indent/unindent the selected page
-
Indent/unindent the next n pages
-
Indent/unindent the rest of the document
Yes - enhancement files can be created and saved independantly of source
files.
They can then be applied to any source file of your choice.
Very little - all you do is mark the area of text or graphic on a page with
the left mouse.
Right click on the selected area and choose either 'Delete link', 'Create
link', or 'Edit link' from the menu.
Select either a page no from the spinner or enter a URL in the textbox and
save the link.
Select 'File' followed by 'New...' on the main menu
The file types for which PDFcommander™ will launch the Windows
associated application are :-
-
Compuserve Graphics Interchange - *.gif
-
JPEG - JFIF Compliant - *.jpg, *.jpeg
-
MS Excel - *.xls
-
MS Paintbrush - *.pcx
-
MS Powerpoint - *.ppt
-
MS Word - *.doc
-
MS Write - *.wri
-
Portable Bitmap - *.pbm
-
Portable Pixelmap - *.ppm
-
Rich Text Format - *.rtf
-
Tagged Image File - *.tif, *.tiff
-
Text files - *.txt
-
Windows Bitmap - *.bmp
-
Windows DIB - *.dib
-
Windows Icon - *.ico
-
Windows Metafile - *.wmf
PDFcommander™ will disable any menu option for which there is no
associated Windows application.
Create a text page containing the various references and add it to the
project.
Reorder the project files before concatenation so that the page is near the
top of the list.
In the 'Create links' dialog, with the left mouse button held down simply
select an area around the relevant reference and right click on the area.
Select 'Create Link', select the relevant page number from the spinner, and
repeat as necessary.
There are various ways of interfacing with PDFcommander™, including
previewing report output from an application.
As a simple example, for those who want to output reports as PDFs, the
creation of a single line text file will enable you to create a file name for
the PDF without user intervention.
Should you wish to preview the PDF, simply place the word 'Preview' in the
first line of the text file. The resultant PDF will entitled 'Preview.pdf' and
will be discarded after viewing.
If you add a subsequent line with the valid name of an enhancement file,
the enhancement file will automatically be applied and the PDF will be created
without user intervention but complete with enhancements
On the right hand side of the main form, you will find a toolbar containing
a single button.
The tool tip text will indicate the address to be
'http://www.tek-tips.com'. Bookmark the actual forum in Windows Explorer and
from the 'Favorites' folder, drag ' n drop the URL onto that button in the
toolbar.
PDFcommander™ will save the forum address and automatically log you
into the forum at Tek-Tips.
If you selected 'Enhance pdf' in the settings dialog, your bookmarks will
be automatically generated.
You can also create a tree like structure for your book marks, and edit any
entry.
Select 'Enhance pdf' in the settings dialog and your page numbering will be
automatically generated.
You can edit the page numbering should you wish.
Sselect 'Enhance pdf' in the settings dialog and your date and time stamps
will be automatically generated.
You can edit the date and time stamps should you wish.
You can add notes to any page of a PDF if you select 'Enhance pdf' and
'Edit enhancements' in the settings dialog,
The notes can be either open or closed on entering the specific page. To
add or remove notes, right click on the file in the 'Pages' tab.
Yes - you can either enter notes by hand in the editbox provided or select
a text file (*.txt), 64Kb max.
The text file will be saved as notes when you save your project.
If your image file size is greater than the selected page size of your PDF,
you will only see as much of the image as the page size allows.
By automatically resizing the image, you will see the entire image on the
page - by automatically cropping the image, you will remove the white space
around the image.
Watermarks are derived from text you enter in a textbox. run from bottom
left of a page to top right, can be in any colour with a choice of font and
font style, and be either solid or as an outline.
The options are
-
Watermark all pages with the same watermark
-
Watermark the selected page
-
Watermark the next n pages with the same watermark
-
Watermark the rest of the document with the same watermark
Page sizes are initially set in the Settings dialog.
However they can also be set through the 'Edit Enhancements' dialog as
follows.
-
Size all pages to the selected size
-
Size the selected page to the selected size
-
Size the next n pages to the selected size
-
Size the rest of the document's pages with the selected size
Gradient fills are background image files that combine two colours in such
a way that the one colour 'fades' into the other.
PDFcommander™ enables you to create your own gradient fills in three
different styles using any two of 1,677,216 different colours!
The style options are
-
Gradient fill left to right
-
Gradient fill bottom to top
-
Gradient fill bottom left to top right
The page options are
-
Background fill all pages with the same gradient fill
-
Background fill the selected page with the same fill
-
Background fill the next n pages with the same gradient fill
-
Background fill the rest of the document with the same gradient fill
If you have the necessary software you can create your own gradient fills.
The size of the fill needs to be the same as the page size selected in the
PDF, and the file is selectable through the relevant PDFcommander™
dialog.
Background image files are similar to gradient fills in that they 'sit'
behind the contents of a page.
The options are
-
Background fill all pages with the same background image file
-
Background fill the selected page with the background image file
-
Background fill the next n pages with the same background image file
-
Background fill the rest of the document with the same background image file
Virtually any - the PDFcommander™ selection dialog is restricted to
suitable file types.
If automatic resizing is selected, should the dimensions of an image be
greater than the selected page size, the image will be scaled down to fit the
page dimensions.
If automatic centering is selected, the image will be positioned in the
centre of the page in the PDF.
If automatic image page cropping is selected, the image will be positioned
in the centre of the page in the PDF and the page size will be reduced to be
the same as the image size.
For instance, photos from digital cameras are normally in landscape format
and so leave white space above and below the image if the page is not cropped.
Alternatively, if you turn image page cropping off, you can retain the
white space and add notes in the white space to identify the images.
The 'Edit Enhancements' dialog allows you to select an area of an image
with the left mouse.
If you then right click on the selected area and choose 'Use selected area
as image', and then OK, the selected area will replace the original image.
You can the either click on the 'AutoCentre' button on the toolbar to
centre the image, or you can drag the image to a new position or move it with
the spinners.
Any one of 1,677,216
The options are
-
Background colour all pages with the same colour
-
Background colour the selected page
-
Background colour the next n pages with the same colour
-
Background colour the rest of the document with the same colour
You can add borders in varying widths, colurs and styles to any page of a
PDF if you select 'Enhance pdf' and 'Edit enhancements' in the settings dialog,
The options are
-
Border all pages with the same border
-
Border the selected page
-
Border the next n pages with the same border
-
Border the rest of the document with the same border
Ghostscript is the name of a set of software that provides:
-
An interpreter for the PostScript (TM) language, with the ability to convert
PostScript language files to many raster formats, view them on displays, and
print them on printers that don't have PostScript language capability built in;
-
An interpreter for Portable Document Format (PDF) files, with the same
abilities;
-
The ability to convert PostScript language files to PDF (with some
limitations) and vice versa; and
-
A set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library) that implement the graphics
capabilities that appear as primitive operations in the PostScript language.
For further information read the Ghostscript documentation
Baffled? - don't worry, PDFcommander™ takes care of all that.
All you need to do is ensure you have the latest version of Ghostscript
installed on your PC.
Drag 'n drop is the simplest and also the best. You can drag 'n drop an
unlimited number fo files onto PDFcommander™ for automatic PDF creation -
wrong file types are simply ignored.
File selection is the second best option and you can select multiple files
with Shift+Left Click and Ctrl+Left Click. You can also drag 'n drop from the
dialog.
With both these options, PDFcommander™ can track all the details of
the source file(s) from which your PDF(s) was created, which is not possible
should you create a PDF through the Postscript driver.
Printing from a Windows application means you can only print one file at a
time. You may have to change the printer driver and you will have to locate
files, open them, print and finally close the files.
Assuming the Windows application supports OLE drag 'n drop, you can drag 'n
drop multiple files onto the application which will open the files
sequentially.
Alternatively you can move files by dragging and dropping them from
PDFcommander™ onto Windows Explorer, or copy files by holding down the
CTRL key whilst dragging.
Consider the creation of a PDF as the final and largely irreversible step
in document production.
Equally consider a PDFcommander™ project as being the depository for
the files required to create the PDF. A project may contain one file or
hundreds of files.
When possible, try and place only editable documents in the project.
All the original source files, excluding PDFs, will be available for
editing with their Windows associated editor.
Any source file can be previewed as a PDF and modified if necessary.
You can save a project and its project folders in any of three locations
-
Any local drive, providing it is not removable.
-
Any network drive
-
On an FTP server
PDFcommander™ acts as an FTP client developed specifically to enable
the sharing of projects and project files over the Internet.
Whenever you save a PDFcommander™ project, a Project Restore point is
automatically created.
Open the required project, select Project Restore from either the main or
right mouse click menu, and the Wizard will guide you through the simple steps
of selecting the archived project which can be identified by its date and time.
Should you wish to examine the list of source files in any project before
using Project Restore, click on the logfile icon on the toolbar or use either
main or right mouse click menu options.
The list of files and their attributes will be listed in the logfile.
Reliability.
The file types included have been rigorously tested to ensure their
conversion to a PDF without user intervention is successful.
The types also comprise the majority of file types that are used to create
PDFs.
Select 'Always use Postscript printer driver' from the 'Settings' option of
the menu.
When PDFcommander™ starts, it will automatically select the
Postscript printer driver, and the button with the green printer icon on the
main toolbar will be checked, as will the 'Use Postscript printer driver' from
the 'File' option of the menu.
Should you change printers in another application, and want to reselect the
Postscript printer driver, simply click on PDFcommander™, check the
printer icon on the main toolbar or select 'Use Postscript printer driver' from
the 'File' option of the menu.
PDFcommander™ constantly monitors printer activity - passing the
mouse over the button will indicate which printer driver is currently selected.
When PDFcommander™ closes it will return the Windows printer driver
to the printer driver that was in use before PDFcommander™ ran.
The PDFcommander™ wizard enables you to
-
Change the properties of the resultant PDF
-
Select as to whether you want the PDF to be emailed.
-
Add enhancements
-
Determine start page.
-
Determine view options.
For example, if you wanted to create a one-off PDF with Letter page size
and email it to your New York office, but your default page size is A4, you can
create this document and send it without changing the PDF driver settings for
the whole project.
PDFtextfinder will locate text in searchable source files and report the
number of instances found and in which files.
Printing a web page may cause background colours to dissapear by virtue of
the way Internet Explorer 'sees' the page.
By default, Internet Explorer does not include background images and
colours when a page is printed.
To ensure they are included, go to the Internet Explorer menu and click on
'Tools' > 'Internet Options...' > 'Advanced' and check 'Print background
colors and images'.
If you select 'Print Preview...' from the 'File' option of the menu in
Windows Explorer, you can preview the document before printing it to a PDF.
You may also find the width of the pages to be cropped - if so, adjust the
margins through the 'Page Setup...' option. The papersize should match that
selected in PDFcommmander.
The Acrobat Reader is the means, including through Internet Explorer, by
which PDFcommander™ views a PDF - no Acrobat Reader, no means of viewing
a PDF!
PDFcommander™ uses the Acrobat Reader to view PDFs, and you can use
it concurrently with PDFcommander™.
If the Acrobat Reader is in use when decide to shut down
PDFcommander™, you will be aked if you would like PDFcommander™ to
close the Acrobat Reader.
If all you want to do is create a PDF, then it's not necessary to create a
project.
Should you wish to perform other tasks, such as concatenation or save and
apply enhancement files, then you require a project to contain the files which
will make up the project.
In the same way as when you start MS Word, you need an empty file to act as
a container for your document.
If you select 'Enhance pdf' and 'Edit enhancements' in the settings dialog,
the options are -
-
None - the document is displayed without bookmarks and thumbnails
-
Bookmarks. - the document is displayed with bookmarks.
-
Thumbnails - the document is displayed with thumbnails.
If you select 'Enhance pdf' and 'Edit enhancements' in the settings dialog,
the options are -
-
Hide the toolbar
-
Hide the menu bar
-
Hide the interface
-
Fit to the window
-
Centre in the window
The page layout options are -
-
Single page
-
One column
-
Two columns on left
-
Two columns on right
You can deposit files in one project folder whilst you are working on
another project.
When you then open that project, you have the choice of adding those files
to your project and overwriting older files in the project with the same name.
PDFcommander™ needs to know the name and location of the project
folder so that any PDFs created whilst the project is open are saved to the
project folder.
If the suggested path\folder isn't suitable, you can choose any other name
and location providing it can be written to - PDFcommander™ will verify
the drive when the project is being set up.
It is advisable not to use removeable media for the path\filename of a
project.
When a PDFcommander™ project is opened, the files in the project are
compared with the files in the project folder. If the project folder has been
deleted, PDFcommander™ will advise you of that and create a new folder
with the original name.
The source files will then be extracted into the new folder - what you will
have lost are any other files saved into the folder since the last time the
project was saved.
Although you may have image files of different types in your project,
PDFcommander™ will create a PDF of those image files for temporary
viewing.
Select the images to be viewed and select 'Preview images in PDF' from
either the right click or main menu.
Each image file will be identified within the PDF.
Cropping enables you remove white space around text and/or graphics by
creating smaller page sizes.
The options are
-
Crop all pages to the same size
-
Crop the selected page
-
Crop the next n pages to the same size
-
Crop the rest of the pages to the same size
The Windows graphics editor associated with the image file that you would
like to annotate, may or may not support annotation, so the easist way is to
add notes to the page in the PDF containing the image.
The notes can be edited or removed and are not permanently attached to the
image file.
If you are wanting to create a book or download material from the net and
are going to concatenate the files, an incremental name makes it easier to
identify the various chapters or parts of the publication.
You can add or remove multiple images in differing image formats in a
single PDF page by selecting 'Add image' or 'Remove Image' from the menu in the
'Edit Enhancements' dialog.
Yes - you can check 'Start PDFcommander™ minimised' option in the
settings dialog
There are 10 paper sizes conforming to the U.S. standard, 27 paper sizes
conforming to the ISO standard, and 7 paper sizes conforming to the JIS
standard.
Additionally you can create custom sizes with a maximum dimension 4008
points and minimum dimension 73 points
PDFcommander™ examines your system on startup, and the messages
indicate the status of the examination.
If you select 'My Network Places' from the View option on the menu or click
on the icon on the main toolbar, you can examine your system.
You can map drives or remove shares through the right click menu, and open
folders and FTP servers.
On startup PDFcommander™ checks the list of all the PDFs you have
created.
If the original source file has been updated, the
!
symbol indicates that the PDF created was not created from the current source
file.
To update an individual PDF or all PDFs not created from their source
files, right click on the list or selct the appropriate option from the main
menu.
Once updated the
!
symbol will be replaced by the normal PDF icon.
Html files stored on a local drive may or may not be complete.
If web pages are saved to a local drive from Internet Explorer, a support
folder is created which contains images files etc contained in the web page.
Such folders and their contents are susceptible to being deleted.
To ensure an .htm or .html file is complete, use the 'File > Save As...
> Web Archive, single file (*.mht)' option in Internet Explorer. All the
images will be embedded in the .mht file.
If the PDFcommander™ printer is missing PDFcommander™ will
automatically reinstall it.
If the PDFcommander™ printer's properties have been changed,
PDFcommander™ will automatically reset the printer to is original
configuration.
Either way there is no need to reinstall PDFcommander™!
