Customer Reviews

PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools

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I have a love-hate relationship with PDF files. They are incredibly useful tools that solve lots of problems. They are unmatched for when you need to get your document turned into paper at the local print shop; you no longer have to figure out what file formats they handle at the shop, or worry about Windows to Mac conversions. As a webmaster, I also know they are the fastest way to have a version of your web pages that you know can be printed out with no problems. And of course they excel at what they were first designed to be -- a platform-independent electronic document that can be easily shared and viewed by anybody with a computer.

As a webmaster, I also see how PDFs are misused -- as a way of whacking together a website on the cheap, taking some documents that weren't necessarily designed to be viewed online and quickly and cheaply stick them up, whether that makes for a good user experience or not.

PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools by Sid Steward illustrates both sides. These hacks include a number of highly useful ones that I immediately started to use daily. On the other hand, some of them also go to great lengths to get a PDF to do something that is probably better done in some other format -- such as HTML.

Let's concentrate first on how this book can help you. Like the other books in O'Reilly's Hacks series, it's divided up into sections. Here they are "Consuming PDF", "Managing a Collection", "Authoring and Self-Publishing: Hacking Outside the PDF", "Creating PDF and Other Editions", "Manipulating PDF Files", "Dynamic PDF", and "Scripting and Programming Acrobat". To get full value from this book, you have to be more than just a consumer of PDFs, using the Acrobat Reader or browser plug-ins. You'll need to be a producer too, most likely with the full Adobe Acrobat package (either Standard or Professional.)

Almost right away, I learned something in the Consuming PDF section that helped. Hacks 4 and 5 talk about Adobe plug-ins, where you find them, and how you can manage them to speed up Acrobat's start up process. Hack #5, on how to manage profiles, was the first of many hacks that relied on a script or add-in of some sort. In this case it was a batch file that you would use to call Acrobat.

If you create PDFs, you'll want to check out Hack 24, which explains the difference between smart, dumb, and clever documents. (This isn't some red state/blue state thing -- a document is smart if it uses tags to help define its content.). Hack 29 talks about how you can create either print-on-demand or e-books using Acrobat, if you want to get into the self-publishing business. And Hack 41 is a good explanation of the compatibility and incompatibility problems you get from moving between different versions of Acrobat. As a webmaster, I'm always looking for ways to save bandwidth, and Hack 60 shows how you can optimize, or refry, Acrobat files to make them smaller.

The final section of the book covers some fairly advanced topics, things that really do deserve to be called hacks. These include integrating tools like Perl, PHP or Java with Acrobat, controlling Acrobat with scripts, or using the Acrobat Software Development Kit.

On the other hand, there were a number of sections that made me think of the "If you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" saying. While you can create HTML front ends for PDFs, or use PDF forms for data collection, there's probably other solutions that may work better -- such as HTML front ends for HTML pages, or HTML forms. But the section at least shows the breadth of Acrobat's usefulness.

Even if you are someone, like me, that thinks Acrobat PDFs have a clearly defined but limited role, you will still find lots of tips in this book. If you are looking to maximize your investment in Adobe Acrobat, you'll find even more.

[...]

If only I had this book three months ago! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to really understand the PDF format and know exactly what can be done with this format. Like the many other excellent O'Reilly "hacks" series, this book provides 100 different tips and tricks that can be used in dealing with the PDF format. Some of these hacks involve creating your own PDFs through third-party tools, others include tips on modifying PDFs after they have been created.

PDF Hacks are divided into four main sections: consuming, managing, authoring, and manipulating PDFs. Some of the hacks are quite interesting and cover things you might not otherwise think of. Once interesting hack is #25, "Convey Your Document's Value with Good Design". This hack actually discusses different issues with fonts including various typography tips and alignment issues. This is certainly an issue I think of rarely, but this hack shows some of the reasons to really think through this issue. There are many such hacks which are quite enlightening.

My favorite part of the book was toward the end, where the author discusses the tool "pdftk", which can be used to freely modify PDF files. The author proceeds to show how this tool can be used to change text within exiting PDF files without significant work. While this hack might not be used by everyone, it illustrates the type of advanced tips this book provides.

Like I said at the beginning of this review, I just wish I had read this book three months ago. After reading this book, the reader will have a much better understanding of the PDF format, as well as having a knowledge of the tools that can be used to extend the PDF format beyond what you might have initially thought possible. If you want to understand the PDF format and what information on how to "hack" your PDFs, then you need a copy of this book!

Perhaps your experience with PDF is the same as mine. Mainly, to print files in this format. But Steward shows an entire neat little world of functionality hidden in PDF. While it may not have the obvious simplicity of HTML, the book shows many ways to make and edit such files.

For example, Steward shows how to have URLs link to specific points inside a PDF document. So if you are maintaining a website that has PDFs, you can do far better than most, by having links not just to the entire documents, but to pertinant locations within. A competitive advantage. The great majority of PDFs accessible on the web require you to view the entire document, for find what you're looking for. You should do better.

Steward also shows a logical inverse. How to embed standard URLs inside a PDF. Knowing both capabilities means a fuller integration of PDFs inside your website.

It also turns out that much of what the book discusses can be done with free editing tools, at least on linux/unix machines.

Good book for demystifying PDF.

As a Mac guy, I've found the "Save As PDF..." button on any Print dialog something I end up using a lot. I was hoping to find a few different (preferrably free) ways to do something similar with my Windows machine I use at work. Hack #39 solved the problem.

The rest of the Hacks were more of a PDF education for me than anything else. I appreciated the numerous explanations, such as Hack #43 Embed and Subset Fonts to your Advantage, which described the need (or not) of embedded fonts in a PDF. I also like the descriptions about how to make your PDFs smaller (Hack #40). I also found the section on publishing interesting.

I used to think the only thing anyone ever did was distribute and read PDFs. This book proved there was much more to PDFs than that.

This is a very comprehensive solutions catalog on all kinds of PDF related issues. Each trick is described with step-by-step instructions and contains pointers to relevant resources. The chapter listing categorizes the hacks - Consuming PDF, Managing a Collection, Authoring and Self-Publishing, Creating PDF and Other Editions, Manipulating PDF files, Dynamic PDF, Scripting and Programming Acrobat.

I embrace the beauty of PDF as an end user and applications developer, but do not use Adobe Acrobat. Many of the tricks mentioned in the book is about this product. A problem is that the TOC does not tell whether or not a trick is Adobe Acrobat specific. Some of the hacks are like sections extracted from an advanced Adobe Acrobat user guide. As this is not obvious from the TOC, the content of the hack can be quite different from what I expected.

Despite this problem, the book is still a very useful one-stop resource about PDF. I will recommend this book to all who need to use or work with PDF.

In short: I've written software that generates and manipulates PDF for several years now, and this book still had more than a few things to teach me.

Adobe Acrobat/Reader is a very complex piece of software, and like many Adobe products, mastery is more an art than a science. Right from the start, this book provides clearly written tips that make master the beast somewhat more manageable. For those who actually write and manipulate PDFs, the later sections will make your life easier at some point, I can say with some certainty.

Well worth it for anyone who has a PDF-intensive workflow.

Also, you can search for "PDFTK", one of the tools discussed in the book, to find the author's site. There are sample hacks you can read in full to get a better idea of the type of content. And there's of course "Look Inside".

Normally when I read a Hacks book, I'm already familiar with the core technology and I'm looking for little tricks. In this case, PDF Hacks by Sid Steward showed me far more about PDF technology than I knew existed.

Chapter List: Consuming PDF, Managing a Collection; Authoring and Self-Publishing: Hacking Outside the PDF; Creating PDF and Other Editions; Manipulating PDF Files; Dynamic PDF; Scripting and Programming Acrobat; Index

I'm probably like many others when it comes to PDF files. I read them with Adobe Reader, and that's about it. I don't use Adobe Acrobat, so my main experience in creating PDF files is to print to PDF using the software from www.pdf995.com. I didn't have a clue there was a much to PDF files as there is. I learned how to speed up the processing of starting Adobe Reader by removing unnecessary plugins (Hack #4). I learned how to use some open source software to manipulate PDF files nearly on par with running the full Acrobat program. I found you can even program games using the PDF scripting language! Very cool stuff...

As usual, O'Reilly has come up with another outstanding Hacks title. This one is worth reading in order to enhance your PDF skills.

I've been waiting for this book for a while, and it has been well worth the wait. The coverage of PDFs from the client side to publication side is fantastic. He gives tips on how to tune your PDFs, both from the technical perspective and from the design perspective. Other hacks show how to migrate your content out of PDF into various forms. Still other hacks show how take data from unusual sources (like raw XML) and turn it into PDF. He even covers XSL-FO in the most concise effective form I have seen.

I really enjoyed this book. It's well written and uses graphics effectively. Almost all of the hacks (save the first introductory few) are both valuable and unique. In addition he teaches you techniques that can extend beyond the basic nature of the hack.

I highly recommend this book for anyone using PDF to publish content. In addition I recommend the book for those looking to self-publish, or those looking for information on how to migrate their content to different content media (web, PDF, palm, etc.)

This book has a lot of great, helpful information, but be aware that it stops at Acrobat 6. I don't think any of the reviews here mentioned that.

This book is a god-send for those of us who have to struggle with the often frustrating world of PDF documents on our computers. I was completely confused until I dug into this manual, which is relatively easy for a novice to understand. It has been a great help to me in find answers to problems I had with using PDF on a daily basis. I would highly recommend it.