HTML versions of the Guides

You can easily try it out. Try the Adobe website. They probably have such enabled PDFs for users to practice on.

Otherwise, email me, and I will send you as an attachment an enabled Writer Guide PDF.

Gary

Gary

>
>>>>> Therefore, I suggest that every OOo/LO PDF file be so converted by
>>>>> Adobe Acrobat Professional afterward, prior to release so that
>>>>> OOo/LO users will have that extra functionality.
>>>> What purpose do you want this functionality for?
>>>>
>>>>> ...
>>>>> It seems foolish not to so enable them for the Comment and Review
>>>>> function, considering its ease to do so with no added cost or real
>>>>> time and effort...
>>>> But for what purpose?
>>>>
>>>> Nino
>>> DUH! For any users wanting to add any highlighting and such--a thing
>>> typically done by millions of students and others over the past few decades
>>> on their printed material and books by (usually yellow-colored) magic
>>> markers. That highlighting functionality can also be done now electronically
>>> on PDFs (as it is commonly done on such converted PDFs) and even carried
>>> over to printed hard copy, if users so desire to print them out afterward.
>>>
>>> In addition to highlighting, editorial comments and the like by users could
>>> also be added directly to the PDF documents, among other capabilities.
>> The big hole in that idea is that Adobe Acrobat Professional is a
>> Windows/MAC-only application that costs $449 US per license. That
>> leaves out those of us who use Linux... and the team members that
>> cannot afford that rather high license cost.
>>
>> It may be a nice-to-have feature, but due to cost and OS restrictions,
>> it will probably remain a nice-to-have.
>>
>> C.
>>
> Does anyone know what pdf functionality LO exports have? I have never
> tested it myself, no interest until now.
>
> If they have the desire functionality then there is no reason to use
> Acrobat, just export from LO. Personally I do not highlight books or
> e-texts. For e-texts I use formatting to highlight important items for
> the reader. If something you can using formating in the original to draw
> the readers/users attention to it. If I need to edit a pdf file, I can
> use pdf Edit in Linux and I assume there are Windows/Mac equivalents.

I never mentioned that any reader of LO PDFs would need to use Acrobat.

Only one person at LO docs needs to employ Acrobat Professional--a
brain-dead, simple, less-than-a-minute task--to enable any future users
to employ Comment and Review on their PDFs.

It's really that difficult a concept. It imparts useful functionality,
even though you might not ever use it. Millions do... on their printed
documents, including books and memos.

Gary

--

Gary Schnabl
Southwest Detroit, two miles NORTH! of Canada--Windsor, that is...

Technical Editor forum <http://TechnicalEditor.LivernoisYard.com/phpBB3/>

You are missing the point - I do not need Acrobat to generate a pdf
file. You can do it easily in LO. The pdf will open in Reader with no
problems. I just did it, accepting the default settings since was not
sure what all the settings did. Actually this was the first time I had
seen these settings and I suspect they setting for Reader/Acrobat. I
would not be surprised it you picked the correct settings you would get
the behavior you wanted.

Thanks for the offer :slight_smile:

However, this will have to wait a bit because at the moment my brain is
too full that I can't think about even more things to busy myself with.

Nino

Having the Review and Comment functionality on a PDF (to be done with Adobe Reader) must be first imparted by Acrobat Pro to that file. Trust me...

Gary

GM (whose HQ is five miles from here...) sells vehicles that they build and equip some of them with options, some (most?) of which they do not manufacture themselves. Most buyers prefer having options being available (especially if they are thrown it at no extra cost), even though they may not use them, right away. OnStar is one of them that was used so much that GM bought the company that made it.

Gary

Hi,

Most places that have any kind of leaflet, posters or documentation to download
want to have some control over the way it looks.  Sadly there is not an adequate
Open Document Format so people use PDF.  Since PDF is so widely used it forces
everyone to use it.  I don't think we can make a stand against that right now.
We have to use PDF or else marginalise ourselves.

Most places that do have pdfs to download also have a button to the Adobe site
to download their latest reader (for free) in case people can't read pdfs even
though that is desperately unlikely.  I think we should have a similar button
but perhaps we could choose someone other than Adobe?

True most people are conditioned to look a pdf file. But one save LO
documents with a password which maintains version/document control. This
feature is (also in MSO) is rarely used, I think because most people are
not aware of it. The Acrobat Reader is a marketing tool for Adobe to
make pdf popular and improve sales of the Acrobat. There are currently
several free readers for Linux and Windows. Some are considered better
than Reader itself. Maybe instead of link to Adobe we have a link, if
possible, to a FOSS pdf reader. People can still read the pdf and we
promote some sister projects.

What some have done to get around needing Acrobat to prepare pdf's is
use a suite like LO that can export the document as a pdf. Any pdf
generated we need can be done in LO and we state that on the page. Any
time we revise the document we do it using LO. I have been aware of this
feature in OOo/SO for many years when MSO did not have it.

I dunno, I may be conditioned, but I tend to look on PDF as a pretty
generic, independent format these days. I realise that Adobe owns the
copyright on PDF, but I have a third-party reader on my Linux system,
and such readers are/have been available for every/almost every
computing platform. So I don't tend to take much account of the
"political" implications, I just see the convenience/simplicity
aspect... So I see PDF as one very practical final publication medium.

ODF's .odt is the format for storing work in progress, although it can
perfectly well be used for viewing documentation, provided that the
user has LibO or another ODF-compatible tool installed. It allows us
to do perfectly adequate version tracking and team collaboration. For
instance, if we could get ODF integrated more into Alfresco, we'd have
a pretty cool tool. That's something I'll be investigating/agitating
for.

Practically-speaking, I reckon we'd be a bit short-handed to produce
HTML publications, and I don't see a *screaming* need for it. But if
somone disagrees and wants to put the time in to do the work, then
please dig out and go ahead - I'm sure we'll give you whatever support
we can.

Gary is correct on this point.

As for doing that, Gary states elsewhere that it's a quick and easy
process for anyone who has Acrobat Pro. That is also correct.

I would put this in the bucket of "if Gary (or some other member of the
team who already has Acrobat Pro) wants to do this step for each of our
PDFs, then let them do it" -- except for the following reservations:

* If someone starts doing this, users will have an expectation that all
the LO user guide PDFs will have this functionality.

* If only 1 or 2 people are doing this, it puts them on the critical
path for publishing PDFs that meet the expectations mentioned above and
could cause a bottleneck, especially if the person were unavailable for
any reason.

BTW, I have Acrobat Pro, but I am not offering to do what Gary suggests
because it is on a (Windows) machine that I rarely turn on, so setting
the Review and Comment switch on a PDF is a much more time-consuming
effort which I might do only once a week, if that often.

--Jean

sure :wink:

But we are not GM, however. If we could take money and initiate a
project, this would be fine.

But all we can do is be so attractive that volunteers deliberately
spring in and do the necessary work.

So while GM has to pay regard mainly to the external market, we have to
sell our ideas even to our "internal" fellows. This works partly by
sparking enthusiasm in their hearts. But it works better by just doing
it oneself and giving the result back to the community (if it is
successfull, of course).

So finally, why don't you "just do it" yourself?

Nino

Duh! I did that--while I was making my lunch today: downloaded the Writer UG PDF from the LO site, enabled it with Acrobat, and test ran it with Adobe Reader. Time spent: Less than ten minutes, including time for posting emails, cooking, eating, a phone call, etc.

My point is some LO personnel should put aside any biases with regard to restrictive tendencies to avoid using proprietary software and the like. I realize that open-source exclusivity is nearly akin to be like a religion, for a few...

Late in my work career, I spent a few years teaching at both public and private K-12 schools in metro Detroit. Many of the brighter, college-oriented kids would, on their own, employ their magic markers for highlighting items in their books or other printed documents, much the same that we did decades earlier--both at school and afterward. Highlighting is actually very common; otherwise firms would not sell billions of Sharpies and the like.

But now, PDF editing/reviewing functionality can be effortlessly imparted to any and all PDFs, once enabled by a simple, one-time conversion by Acrobat for use for anybody with the ubiquitous Adobe Reader afterward.

Gary

The number of PDFs in LO's library is very finite; plus, very few new PDFs are generated on a consistent basis. Converting them all could effortlessly be done in very short order.

Another thing that is really needed is accurate, well-written exposition for performing any Review and Comment (in this case, although that could also be done in other places), in addition to any other items that were not adequately covered (or, possibly covered in error...) in the existing user guides, to date.

For instance, I was redoing bits of the LO template. I altered the very first point--missing, in that case: for users of the templates to see to it that they already have the needed typeface (Liberation) installed so that its fonts are already installed before authoring or editing anything, lest the operating system might substitute another font for any missing font--thus altering the format in a manner that could be very difficult to detect. That point should have been made clear earlier, so I rewrote that part.

There are some other items that need redoing in the template. I will post what I have redone so far, so anybody could comment on my changes, make their own changes, among others.

Gary

Hi

I used LibO 3.3 to produce a PDF file on windows 7. Opening the PDF using Acrobat X on windows 7 and you are able to use both highlights and comments. The review parts also seem enabled.

Highlights and comments definitely save. It maybe that this is possible already without Acrobat Pro.

Regards

John

[applauds]

It's pretty after midnight local time here, so a last answer for
today...

> ... [Offering enhanced PDF Manuals]

> So finally, why don't you "just do it" yourself?

Duh! I did that--while I was making my lunch today: downloaded the
Writer UG PDF from the LO site, enabled it with Acrobat, and test ran
it with Adobe Reader. Time spent: Less than ten minutes, including
time for posting emails, cooking, eating, a phone call, etc.

No, I meant, why don't you offer the service yourself?

You did one conversion, ok - but for the service you need to
- explore legal issues
- set up a work flow
- "market" the enhanced version
- offer them on a appropriate website
- ensure at least as well es possible that the service will be continued
when you are ill, unwilling or whatever
...
(might be I'm overseeing parts, so pls bare with me)

So, there's much more work to do than to just prototypically show that
it's possible.

My point is some LO personnel should put aside any biases with regard
to restrictive tendencies to avoid using proprietary software and
the like. I realize that open-source exclusivity is nearly akin to
be like a religion, for a few...

But a major goal of Free + Open Source Software is to give people more
personal freedom. So why do you think they "should put aside biases" -
if they just "use" their freedom they are offered by FLOSS philosphy.
Here, they are allowed to use whatever tool they want, so - let them
enjoy doing so.

You might be right that indeed some people behave kind of rather
fundamentalistic. But - that's their choice. If you want them to behave
differently the only thing is to argue and "sell" them your ideas.

And indeed, that's what you are doing, so if nobody bites into the lure,
it might be the wrong moment, not enough persuasing arguments, the wrong
people, or I don't know what else.

Try again later?

Choose a different audience?

Do it yourself? (I mean the whole thing, not just showing that it works
in principle)

Late in my work career, I spent a few years teaching at both public
and private K-12 schools in metro Detroit. Many of the brighter,
college-oriented kids would, on their own, employ their magic
markers for highlighting items in their books or other printed
documents, much the same that we did decades earlier--both at school
and afterward. Highlighting is actually very common; otherwise firms
would not sell billions of Sharpies and the like.

Ok, so your experience predestinates you to speak in favor of offering
enhanced PDF, but still you have to persuade people here to follow your
argumentation.

But now, PDF editing/reviewing functionality can be effortlessly
imparted to any and all PDFs, once enabled by a simple, one-time
conversion by Acrobat for use for anybody with the ubiquitous Adobe
Reader afterward.

Yes, I see the point that it might be an - let's say - interesting
possibility.

But speaking fo myself personnaly, I'm contributing to this project here
just because I enjoy doing things I love and decide myself to do. So I
might have catched up with your idea and helping you to propagate it.

But alas, I haven't.

For whatever reason - I just haven't.

It's not attractive enough for me to put energy into it. Not even a
small amount (as testing the enhanced PDF).

This is absolutely not meant to offend you or to discredit your opinion
or intention - in no way.

But it is just not attractive enough for me to catch fire. At least not
at the moment.

And, obviously it did not attract many other people either.

Now (if you did not receive tens of private mails speaking in favor of
your idea) I'd say, well - did not work this time, with this audience,
with these arguments - so let's try later. Or a slightly different idea.
Or with new arguments. Or what else.

But it's up to you, how you decide. That's freedom :slight_smile:

Nino
definitely falling asleep in a few moments :wink:

You need not do anything for Commenting and Analysis as long as you are employing Acrobat Pro--any version going back to either 6 or 7.

However, in order to enable a vanilla PDF for other users employing Adobe Reader, open the desired PDF and go to the Comments menu (Comments > Enable for Commenting and Analysis in Adobe Reader--its new nomenclature). You will be prompted to overwrite the PDF or to employ Save as for creating a new PDF. That is all that is needed to convert the PDFs...

BTW, you too can easily convert the LO PDFs. So, now there are at least three of us who can. There are probably lots of others, too.

Gary

John,

Hi

I used LibO 3.3 to produce a PDF file on windows 7. Opening the PDF using
Acrobat X on windows 7 and you are able to use both highlights and comments.
The review parts also seem enabled.

Highlights and comments definitely save. It maybe that this is possible
already without Acrobat Pro.

Regards

John

From: Jean Hollis Weber
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2011 10:08 PM
To: documentation@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-documentation] HTML versions of the Guides

> Having the Review and Comment functionality on a PDF (to be done with
> Adobe Reader) must be first imparted by Acrobat Pro to that file. Trust
> me...

Gary is correct on this point.

As for doing that, Gary states elsewhere that it's a quick and easy
process for anyone who has Acrobat Pro. That is also correct.

I would put this in the bucket of "if Gary (or some other member of the
team who already has Acrobat Pro) wants to do this step for each of our
PDFs, then let them do it" -- except for the following reservations:

* If someone starts doing this, users will have an expectation that all
the LO user guide PDFs will have this functionality.

* If only 1 or 2 people are doing this, it puts them on the critical
path for publishing PDFs that meet the expectations mentioned above and
could cause a bottleneck, especially if the person were unavailable for
any reason.

BTW, I have Acrobat Pro, but I am not offering to do what Gary suggests
because it is on a (Windows) machine that I rarely turn on, so setting
the Review and Comment switch on a PDF is a much more time-consuming
effort which I might do only once a week, if that often.

--Jean

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deleted

Did use any settings other than default ones when saved the pdf? If so,
please advise because this may be a good tip to tell people. If you can
produce a pdf file with virtually all the functionality a user would
need why would you use Adobe not save the money? I would use the less
expensive option that is available.

Saving a vanilla PDF with Acrobat Pro will not impart any Commenting and Analysis functionality until after that function is first enabled through the Comment menu in Acrobat Pro. Then, saving such an enabled PDF will make that PDF able to be commented, etc. on by a user with Adobe Reader.

Gary

We are essentially saying the same thing. For necessary files where the ODF cannot be read due to the inability of having LibreOffice installed to read ODF files then falling back on .pdf's is fine. If there is a need to create a quick and dirty ODF reader, then we should put this to the dev's as a project -- a "LibreOffice Reader". We should not be advocating the use of any other format unless we really have to. If our documents are so important for a user to want to read, then they should download our product to read our wonderful manuals.

I expect to see PDF readers on certain platforms long before I see an ODF reader (iPhone, Android, Kindle, etc), yet I may use those devices to read my documents when I am away from my computer.

Would love to have a copy of LO that works on my portable platforms, but I really do not expect it any time soon. Would be nice, however.... I would rate that as a much lower priority that some other issues in the software (like say a better macro recorder).

Otherwise, we relegate the ODF (and LibreOffice) to a secondary position -- there will always be individuals inside our group who will clamour for a .pdf version to add "universality" to our product line. This is completely counter-productive. The request for .pdf will never cease and all of our documentation will be in ODF/PDF versions with no real reason to fully adopt the ODF format by any user.

Well, off hand, I can download the ODF file, generate the PDF, but then I must move it through my computer before I move it on to the devices that do not support ODF. I need to also make certain that you provide all the fonts that I require and install those. I used to have that problem with PDFs generated by my employer. They used some strange font that my computer did not have. I had to install the font before I could view the document. Need to teach them how to embed the font into a PDF file.

Worse, corporate adoption of our product will be hard to get if they will never see the benefits of using our products if they only read it through .pdf formats for their convenience. It is difficult to issue accolades to a product that second guesses itself to its intended user base. If pdf's are so necessary, then people should be looking for a .pdf office suite as everyone extolls its virtues.

Most of the clients that I see, and even where I work, most of the users are not given sufficient permissions that they are able to install new software on their computers. In most cases, documents that I generate using ODF must be converted to another form for delivery. The only place you will likely have traction when you say "download this to look at my documents" is when you generate a document of sufficient interest that the average user is willing to do so.

I don't think Adobe would ever suggest to anyone else to use a different format for people to read their manuals, they would of course tell all to download their reader and to then read their wonderful manuals.

Easy to shoot holes in most of my concerns as they relates to say LO documentation, however, because the person who desires LO documentation likely has LO installed. So, acrobat documentation as a PDF makes sense. Better not use fonts that the user will not have, however. Consider that in Gnome 3 they removed the minimize button because the average user will be confused by it "where did my program go". Off hand, I would say that if that is true, then it is not reasonable to expect a user to install much of anything (I must be tired and cranky).

When I am using a computer that is not my own (say at work, at a library, visiting a neighbor or family) and I want to look up something in the documentation.... Asking to install a large piece of software is frequently not an option. I know people that still use dial-up.

We should do the same, as we do have the better format of the two. The use of .dpf's should be done in a very strategic way and not in a universally applied fashion.

All of my opinions.

Cheers

Marc

It is not possible to embed fonts in an ODF document, but I can in a PDF document. Then again, last time I tried to create a PDF/A-1a using LO, the generated PDF was not usable (it caused my PDF reader to crash). Last time I tried this with OOo, it worked fine.

LO has some bugs in this regard. Last couple of PDFA-1a that I tried crashed the reader every time.

Every generated PDF should probably be tested.

Andrew

> We are essentially saying the same thing. For necessary files where
> the ODF cannot be read due to the inability of having LibreOffice
> installed to read ODF files then falling back on .pdf's is fine. If
> there is a need to create a quick and dirty ODF reader, then we should
> put this to the dev's as a project -- a "LibreOffice Reader". We
> should not be advocating the use of any other format unless we really
> have to. If our documents are so important for a user to want to read,
> then they should download our product to read our wonderful manuals.

I expect to see PDF readers on certain platforms long before I see an
ODF reader (iPhone, Android, Kindle, etc), yet I may use those devices
to read my documents when I am away from my computer.

Would love to have a copy of LO that works on my portable platforms, but
I really do not expect it any time soon. Would be nice, however.... I
would rate that as a much lower priority that some other issues in the
software (like say a better macro recorder).

>
> Otherwise, we relegate the ODF (and LibreOffice) to a secondary
> position -- there will always be individuals inside our group who will
> clamour for a .pdf version to add "universality" to our product line.
> This is completely counter-productive. The request for .pdf will never
> cease and all of our documentation will be in ODF/PDF versions with no
> real reason to fully adopt the ODF format by any user.

Well, off hand, I can download the ODF file, generate the PDF, but then
I must move it through my computer before I move it on to the devices
that do not support ODF. I need to also make certain that you provide
all the fonts that I require and install those. I used to have that
problem with PDFs generated by my employer. They used some strange font
that my computer did not have. I had to install the font before I could
view the document. Need to teach them how to embed the font into a PDF
file.

I may be wrong, but I believe MSO 2010 and 2007? are able to open ODF files except for possibly Base

Hi :slight_smile:
MS Office 2007 & 2010 can open the older ODF format but tend to struggle a bit
with the newer one. I don't think Base forms and Reports are compatible but i
haven't tried it so i don't know. There is apparently an add-on to make MS
Office 2003 be able to read the old ODF format too but i don't know how stable
or what versions of MSO it works on.

Tools - Options - "Load/Save" - General
then about halfway up change the drop-downs default from
"1.2 Extended (recommended)"
to
"1.0/1.1"
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: