Tag Archives: Adobe Acrobat

What is an Acrobat Plugin?

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What is an Acrobat Plugin?

An Adobe Acrobat plugin is a software component that can extend the functionality of the Adobe Acrobat reader/viewer application, a popular program for viewing, creating, and editing PDF documents. Plugins can add new features to Acrobat, such as the ability to create interactive forms, add watermarks, or perform advanced document processing tasks. Some plugins are developed by Adobe, while others are created by third parties. These plugins can be installed within the Acrobat application such as our TOCBuilder plugin are typically activated when a particular action or task is performed within the software.

Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin

Why do we need plugins?

To make Adobe Acrobat more flexible and applicable to a broader range of industries and organizations, the number of built-in features must be restricted to the wider community. This is because adding features that serve only a small portion of Acrobat’s user base would unnecessarily increase the application’s size. Consequently, plugins are required to add functionality as required by the user.

Can Acrobat plugins be used in the Adobe Reader?

Special support needs to be added to the plugin so that it can run under Adobe Reader. However the Reader plugin will require a special license and needs to go through an approval process with Adobe Systems Inc. – https://www.adobe.com/devnet/reader/ikla.html.

Are plugins specific to a particular version of Adobe Acrobat?

We have plug-ins that we developed for Acrobat 6 that still run without modification in Acrobat DC. However, if new features are used that are specific to a later version then it won’t work under later versions. If earlier versions used the Adobe Dialog Manager (ADM) then they won’t now work in current versions of Acrobat.
 

Update:

Probably the biggest change in this last year was the introduction of the 64bit version of Acrobat which has also meant the rebuilding of our Acrobat Plugins to support it.. This has basically meant a rebuild of all plug-ins so that they will run on both platforms. In this process we decided to remove a number of our products that are now decades old and concentrate on maintaining and improving a subset of the products.

Examples of Plugins

  • New security handlers that might be specific to a particular organisation. For example, we have developed security handlers that do not allow PDF files to be viewed outside a particular organisations offices. 
  • New annotations types. For example, we created a plugin that supported all of the British Standard Markups.
  • Flattening annotations and form fields into the main document. This ensured that they could not be changed or modified and that they would print as part of the document even if the printing of annotations was switched off.
  • Adding text and images to PDF files.
  • Creating a table of Contents for PDF files
  • Automating the creation of bookmarks based on the styles in a pdf file.
  • Adding fields for variable data printing
  • Hardware integration of Adobe Acrobat into whiteboards and interactive tables

Contact Info:

Michael Peters
mpeters@creativeaddonshub.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpmapsoft/
http://creativeaddonshub.com

Associated Links:

DiamondTouch Table and Adobe Acrobat Integration

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DiamondTouch Table and Adobe Acrobat Integration

The worlds first multi-user touch table and a plug-in developed by Mapsoft running under Adobe Acrobat. 

Transcript

(00:00) hello my name is adam bogue and this is the diamond touch table 

(00:04) it’s the first instill only multi-user touch 

(00:07) technology capable of supporting multiple simultaneous users 

(00:12) and it knows who’s who here let me show you how diamond touch is different than 

(00:16) other multi-touch displays that you might have seen before (00:22) so obviously this is a touch screen but the thing that makes it different 

(00:26) is that diamond touch is multi-user and i have a little demo that illustrates 

(00:30) what i mean by that so when i touch it’s blue and 

(00:35) when these guys touch do you see how each of us is a different color (00:40) no matter where you touch diamond touch knows who’s who (00:43) and the point here is we wanted to create a new type of computer interface (00:47) to support small group face-to-face collaboration 

(00:51) laptops tablets smartphones those were all designed for individual users 

(00:57) of course you can use these devices to connect to other individuals 

(01:01) but if you’re in the same place with other people and you’re trying to work 

(01:04) together you know these devices get in the way 

(01:07) that’s why people often print things out when they’re going to meet 

(01:11) the best a traditional computer can do is to let one person drive while 

(01:15) everybody else kind of looks over that person’s shoulders 

(01:18) and that’s no good with diamond touch everybody can be face to face 

(01:22) and everyone can drive at once so here’s my desktop my finger’s a mouse 

(01:30) here’s another big difference between diamond touch and other touch screens 

(01:33) you know how windows only has one cursor well right now i have it 

(01:38) and if someone tries to take it from me they can’t have it until i let go and 

(01:44) then they can have it this is a subtle point but other touch 

(01:48) screens can’t do that other touch screens kind of freak out 

(01:51) when multiple people touch the cursor jumps around and you’d never 

(01:55) get anything done that’s why most tabletop touch screens 

(01:59) avoid the frustration by making it only work with special 

(02:03) applications specifically designed for their hardware 

(02:06) whereas diamond touch works with anything 

(02:14) that’s a double click my fist is a scroll wheel (02:19) yeah you got it now because most business software is 

(02:24) single user what we’ve been doing is to make other people’s software 

(02:28) multi-user aware and here’s an example diamond touch can be used by engineers 

(02:32) and architects for design review meetings 

(02:35) of course a long time ago these design review meetings 

(02:38) took place about a large piece of paper a blueprint or a schematic 

(02:43) and people were face to face now with everything done in cad 

(02:48) people are making their design review comments in the computer 

(02:51) one person at a time and it’s a lot less efficient 

(02:55) people don’t have the opportunity to be face to face 

(03:02) so this is a drawing of a building it’s a pdf 

(03:06) what we did is we made a plug-in tool for adobe acrobat that lets you 

(03:10) do some new things it makes it diamond touch or multi-user aware 

(03:14) first of all you can do the two-finger zoom this is a pan gesture 

(03:18) now if we’re doing commenting for design review 

(03:21) we can do it multi-user style so we have these tools here this is mine 

(03:26) and that’s yours when i draw here you can see that shows 

(03:31) up here in the comment pane with my name on it 

(03:34) now when you guys draw right so we can all be working at the same 

(03:39) time here i can highlight this text i can open up a tool like this 

(03:50) and automatically a keyboard pops up if you’re meeting with a client you can 

(04:02) capture the customer approval right here in the document with these 

(04:05) stamps and again because we know who’s who 

(04:07) we know who it was that approved the document and when 

(04:11) and when this is another example of something that you can only do 

(04:16) on the diamond touch table because it knows who’s who 

(04:19) not just multi-touch multi-user touch

Video Summary

The video features Adam Bogue introducing the Diamond Touch table, a unique multi-user touch technology that supports multiple simultaneous users and distinguishes between them. 

Unlike other multi-touch displays, Diamond Touch allows each user to interact with the screen in a distinct color, enabling a collaborative environment where multiple people can work together face-to-face without the barriers typically introduced by personal devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. 

The technology is designed to enhance group collaboration, making it ideal for settings where face-to-face interaction and simultaneous input from multiple users are beneficial, such as in design review meetings or collaborative projects. 

Diamond Touch also integrates with existing software, making it versatile and adaptable to various applications. The demonstration highlights features like multi-user commenting on a PDF document, showcasing how Diamond Touch can make software multi-user aware and facilitate more efficient and interactive meetings.

 

Contact:

Michael Peters
mpeters@creativeaddonshub.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpmapsoft/
https://creativeaddonshub.com

How Portable is PDF?

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Although PDF is an ISO standard, it also includes various other standards like PDF/A and PDF/X, intended to enhance its portability. Nonetheless, several factors can render it unportable. Adobe deliberately imposes some of these limitations to maintain control over the format and the functionality of their products, such as Adobe Acrobat, that interact with PDFs. Third parties impose additional limitations.

The question is how close PDF is to being truly portable across all devices and whether this portability is improving or worsening over time. Let’s examine the initial definition of PDF.

A definition of PDF

The early PDF specification versions have largely stayed the same in this section for PDF 1.7, PDF 2.0, and the ISO standard, outlining the PDF ‘ideal’.

The goal of PDF is to enable users to exchange and view electronic documents easily and reliably, independent of the environment in which they were created or the environment in which they are viewed or printed. At the core of PDF is an advanced imaging model derived from the PostScript® page description language. This PDF Imaging Model enables the description of text and graphics in a device-independent and resolution-independent manner. To improve performance for interactive viewing, PDF defines a more structured format than that used by most PostScript language programs. Unlike Postscript, which is a programming language, PDF is based on a structured binary file format that is optimised for high performance in interactive viewing. PDF also includes objects, such as annotations and hypertext links, that are not part of the page content itself but are useful for interactive viewing and document interchange.

So the big question is how close is PDF today in reaching this “goal” envisioned by its designers?

Adobe Imposed Unportability

Adobe has made PDF an ISO standard. Yet, some argue Adobe still treats it like a proprietary format. This strategy may aim to keep users within Adobe’s ecosystem, favoring applications like Adobe Acrobat. Adobe employs several methods to achieve this.

  • Rights management and charging large fees to those companies that want to create there own DRM systems that allow files to be open in the free Adobe Reader. To most organisations these fees are often unaffordable.
  • Keeping XFA forms proprietary.
  • Introducing their own proprietary signing service.
  • Reader extensions to enable commenting on PDF files. Although with later versions of the Reader this has steadily become more relaxed.

Licensing and moving the goal posts.

Does anyone remember Business Tools or Acrobat Exchange (a cut down version of Adobe Acrobat)? 

Anybody who wants to produce a plug-in for the Adobe Reader must first receive Adobe’s approval. Essentially, even if a third party seeks broad acceptance for their functionality, Adobe retains the right to reject it. Recently, Adobe restricted access to the Reader (RMSDK) that developers could use to modify the Reader on mobile devices. Starting from Acrobat XI, Adobe removed the ability to save comments on WebDav, forcing companies to use Acrobat.com services instead.

There many other examples.

Opportunities for third parties to introduce Unportability

Although many third party developers will want to try and keep their PDF files as portable as possible, especially if they are creating tools to create PDF files, there will be others attempting to turn the PDF files into a proprietary format again.
Security handlers

Security handlers such as that produced by FileOpen Systems change the encryption in the PDF file according to encryption Algorithms known only to FileOpen. How many other security handlers are utilised is an unknown because this is information that is not published. For example, Mapsoft has created customised security handlers for several of our clients. These files are rendered useless outside the client environments and this is a deliberate action to ensure that these PDF file are not portable.

Custom Data

Data saved in PDF files from third party plugins and applications. Plugins often save information that is specific to them in the PDF file. Users or systems can embed custom annotations, preference data, and proprietary data formats into the file, apart from the security handlers mentioned above.

Custom Annotations

On numerous occasions my company has created custom annotations that become embedded in the PDF file. It is largely because the existing annotations don’t provide the functionality required by the customer. This functionality is normally provided by a custom plug-in for Adobe Acrobat. Custom annotations normally leave their appearances in the PDF file, allowing the PDF to be viewed even without the Annotation handler. This approach maintains the PDF files’ portability, enabling viewing while removing the ability to modify them.

Unintended Unportability

On many occasions we have received files from customers that appear to be sound only to find some glaring errors in the structure of the PDF file that is rendering it useless to any further processing or even viewing. 

The issue of corrupt fonts or incomplete font information is often a cause of problems. Rendering the file may be possible. We have seen instances where a PDF file will render on screen, but it can’t be printed. 

A PDF file may be ok to render and then when further processing takes place such as the editing of images or text there is a failure inside Acrobat. On some files the extraction of text outputs gibberish because there wasn’t enough information in the PDF file to translate the font encoding. Some font information it purely graphical and there is no way of reliably creating text from this information.

Mobile Use

One of the most problematic areas of portability is on mobile devices. You might think producing a PDF to work seamlessly on iOS or Android is straightforward. However, even Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mobile on these platforms doesn’t guarantee it.

An example I have come across recently is in the use of PDF forms. Now I am not talking about XFA forms which I believe is still a proprietary format but the standard forms that have been available for PDF since the 1.2 version of the standard. Before the 1.7 version of PDF became an ISO standard (ISO 32000), you could align the version of PDF with a specific version of Acrobat by adding the major and minor versions of PDF together. Therefore, we can deduce that the introduction of PDF 1.2 was for Acrobat 3, released in 1996.

In any PDF form it should be possible to provide some level of interactivity for users and it is in this area where forms viewed on mobiles are severely lacking in their support. In recent work for a client we needed to introduce some functionality into the form for the following:

  • Showing hiding fields based on responses to previous questions on the form.
  • Showing form outlines in red when an entry is required and removing this when the field has been filled.

I would argue that neither of the above expectations are unreasonable. However, the Adobe Reader for iOS or Android does not support them due to the simple fact that it supports a tiny JavaScript object model. I have yet to find a third-party viewer that actually documents what they support in this area.

ISO Standards

PDF is no longer just a standard format; it has fragmented into multiple standards. One could argue that if Adobe had maintained PDF as a proprietary format, it would have preserved its portability with Adobe solely in charge of the format.

However, Adobe introduced a new version of PDF with every new Acrobat release, from PDF 1.0 to PDF 1.7, corresponding with Acrobat versions 1 through 8. Had it remained proprietary, Adobe likely would have continued this practice.

I vividly recall a period when an early version of InDesign could only generate PDF files that Acrobat’s very specific version reliably viewed. I remember feeling horrified the day I discovered that our Acrobat plug-in (Mapsoft MaskIt) was creating PDF files that appeared as grey areas in Acrobat 7.0. It wasn’t until the release of 7.0.6 that they started working properly.

This revision eliminates passive constructions and makes the narrative more engaging and straightforward.

We also have versions of PDF for specific industries or purposes such as PDF/A and PDF/X.

Summary and Conclusion

PDF is one of the most portable file formats, yet it’s not without flaws. Its flat file nature ensures broad portability, but the upper layer of Annotations often introduces issues. PDFs are ubiquitous across industries and websites, with nearly everyone using a computer familiar with them. We hope for significant improvements in the coming years to enhance its portability. Now that PDF is an ISO standard it is the responsibility of the developer community to ensure that this happens. However, there will always be the commercial pressures to personalise PDF, to create yet another sub-standard, but perhaps that is the beauty of the format.

Contact information:

Michael Peters

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Automated Card Production Keeps Hallmark as the King of Cards

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A customised software solution from specialists Mapsoft results in a more streamlined and efficient production process for Hallmark, saving time, money and resources.

Hallmark, the UK’s leading greetings card publisher, has introduced a customised software solution which has automated the card design process – increasing efficiency, saving time and money, and streamlining the annual production of 2.2 billion cards.

hallmark cards

Mapsoft software specialists custom-designed a solution for Hallmark. This solution automates composing individual design layouts for about 8,000 cards onto templates before printing, streamlining production.

Card Create, a PDF server-based solution, has replaced Hallmark’s old paper-based, manual system. It enables automatic insertion of barcodes and pricing onto card templates.

Hallmark has deployed the solution at its Hambledon Studios produces wholesale cards. Its Card Create system streamlines design and production. This server-based solution cuts administration and reduces errors.

Hambledon Studios, with its wholesale nature and high-volume production, needed a solution capable of automatically inserting the necessary card information for designs that might include up to 200 individual permutations and variations. Card Create now ensures that graphic designers don’t waste valuable time sifting through thousands of variants of editorial content to link them with the appropriate barcodes and design information. Instead, they collate the information just once at the beginning of the design process, allowing for automatic insertion into individual cards.

The previous paper-based system consumed a lot of time and operated inefficiently, requiring up to five inputs of the same data during the design and production process. With five stages of inputting, the system also presented five potential occasions for errors, particularly when reproducing 8-digit barcodes – this significantly increased the margin for error, reducing business efficiency and, consequently, business margins.

Hallmark needed a PDF-based solution which would remove this margin for error, reduce the level of manual input required, and standardise and automate the high-volume production at Hambledon Studios. Vanessa Redshaw, Digital Technology Manager at Hallmark said: “As a registered Adobe business partner, Mapsoft had the experience and expertise to create a solution tailor-made to meet our specific business needs.

“Card Create has now become a standard and indeed essential element of the card production process. It has successfully reduced not only the margin for error, but also the amount of administration required. Our Repro Graphics Operators are now free to do what they do best – Repro!

“We hope to extend the solution to other business divisions within Hallmark, to further streamline and automate the production process, increasing efficiency and equipping Hallmark for the future.”

Contact:
Michael Peters
mpeters@creativeaddonshub.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpmapsoft/
creativeaddonshub.com

Helping Keep British Trains on Track

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Software developer and Adobe Business partner, Mapsoft Computer Services, Limited, has created a unique Adobe Acrobat-based custom development solution for Network Rail  in the United Kingdom.

The Problem

“When you’re driving a train at 125 miles per hour, the last thing you want to do is hunt through a big thick book covering the whole country, searching for information about track conditions on your specific route. You need to be able to quickly access the latest updates on what’s happening on your particular piece of line,” says Michael Peters, technical director of Mapsoft Computer Services, Limited.

That was the challenge behind Mapsoft’s creation of WONView, a custom software development solution for Network Rail (formerly Railtrack) in the United Kingdom. Before Mapsoft’s involvement four years ago, each train operating company (TOC) was issued a complete set of Weekly Operating Notices (WONs) detailing conditions of every mile of track in the country. The train operating company in turn furnished this document to each train operator. The train operator then had to sift through this enormous document, while simultaneously operating the train to determine current track conditions on his/her specific route.

Adobe Acrobat and WONVIEW

Using Adobe Acrobat, Mapsoft created its WONView software for Network Rail to generate a weekly Adobe PDF file for every Network Rail area. Collectively, these files contain all information regarding all maintenance, line closures, signaling problems, speed restrictions, etc., throughout the UK. The WONView system then searches each file and extracts specific information for a given route, creating separate books for each train operating company. 

The drivers now receive printouts of their own unique books for quick reference in their cabs. The train operating companies can also easily access specific files to review repair work and other maintenance information in their respective areas.

PDF and Adobe Acrobat - the Industry Standards

“A primary reason we used Adobe Acrobat is because Network Rail information is safety critical,” says Peters. “Adobe PDF can be password protected to maintain the original document’s integrity. Specific information can be extracted from a secure file and reconfigured into a new secure file, ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to the data.” As the reports are published weekly, Network Rail also needed a way to distribute the WONs rapidly. “Adobe PDF files are compact, which makes them easy to upload and download quickly.” Peters continues. “And, Adobe PDF retains all fonts, formatting, images, and layout intact. So the WONs maintain railway document standards, and the files print out exactly as intended across the TOC’s broad range of hardware and software.”

Who are Mapsoft

Mapsoft Computer Services, Limited, formed in 1991, is an Adobe Business Partner. Mapsoft is one of the most experienced providers of software development and consulting for Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. We are also OEM licensees of Adobes PDF Library.

Contact:

Michael Peters
mpeters@creativeaddonshub.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpmapsoft/
http://creativeaddonshub.com

Bringing Proofreading Into The 21st Century

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It is undeniable that during the last century there have been many technological breakthroughs, and millions of people worldwide now use Microsoft Windows and exchange documents using the Portable Document Format (PDF) developed by Adobe Systems, Inc. Whilst these technologies provide solutions for many business challenges, many still remain. For the publishing industry, although the majority of pre-press work has been converted to digital processes over the last decade or so, a major gap in this pre-press digital chain remains: a method of marking and communicating proof corrections electronically (proofreading) with pdf as being the most common file format.

Thus there was a distinct need in the publishing industry, which has not yet been addressed: to improve the proofreading pdf process by providing a user-friendly but comprehensive method of electronic proof mark-up.

In the UK, publishing contributes over £22,000,000,000 to the economy. But before a work can be published it is usually checked by both the author and a professional proofreader to ensure that is accurate and contains no spelling or grammatical errors. This applies to every type of publication, from fiction through to company reports. Until now the proofreading process has been slow and inefficient for all concerned, with paper copies of the proofs being shipped from author to proofreader to publisher to typesetter, often at some distance from each other, and today possibly in different continents. It is also an iterative process, with each round of correction being checked for accuracy, often generating yet another round of correction, with its attendant piles of paper.

However, electronic methods of communication are not very efficient either. The only viable solutions are server-based applications. The pre-press digital chain was simply missing a link to speed up the process and benefit everyone. Until now.

To complicate matters further, a new version of the BSI (British Standard Institution) standard on proof correction was issued last year, which most of the available server-based applications do not support.

The problem was to incorporate all the necessary symbols and conventions used by professional proofreaders into one powerful tool. At the same time the tool had to be accessible and easily available for users, such as authors, who use it very occasionally, perhaps even on a one-off basis. Because PDFs are universal in the publishing industry and because Acrobat Reader is free for anyone to acquire and use, developing a tool as an add-on to Acrobat Reader seemed an obvious solution.

The solution

Barbara Horn, a freelance editorial director, and Kenneth Cowan, a production consultant recognised this gap, and were the right people to address this need. After a meeting in May 2005 of the International Organisation of Standards’ (ISO) Graphic Technology Committee, they decided to start developing an innovative product to offer electronic proofreading tools.

Cowan said: “Once the proofreading marks had been revised for global usage, it was clear to Barbara and me that the natural next step was to think about how they could be reproduced on screen”.


So, the next step was to contact John Hodgson, a publishing system designer.

“Kenneth asked me if proofing on screen could be done”, Hodgson said: “My initial reaction was ‘No way’ But then I went away, thought about it, and developed a prototype”.

This prototype was presented at an ISO conference on graphic technology in Sao Paolo in September 2005.

The breakthrough was on its way, and quickly gathered momentum when Adobe accepted the project as an official plug-in to the Adobe Reader.

However, the project would have been incomplete if it had not been for Mapsoft Computer Services, a leading Adobe Solution Network (ASN) partner. In late September 2005, after the ISO conference, John Hodgson contacted Michael Peters, the Managing Director of Mapsoft, to discuss all of the details.

“I didn’t have doubts at all that it could be done,” Peters said. “We discussed it to decide future stategy. However the technical side has to be left to us once we had decided on the specification.”

The solution was now well on its way, with Mapsoft and Paperlessproofs Ltd driving the solution forward together. And so Paperlessproofs was born. The communication between companies was perfect as:

“Everything has been very straightforward with Mapsoft. All our development requests were efficiently and effectively implemented.” Hodgson said.

The success of this relationship was based on a simple business formula: customers and their needs were put first. Peters said:

“We were satisfied with our results. But more importantly, so was the customer.”

Finally, Mapsoft delivered a completely innovative product. Development took approximately six months. The plug-in has been very well received and early feedback from customers is very encouraging.

 

Core business benefits

1) Cost savings on paper proofs and delivery costs.
2) Time savings by not using post/couriers: can knock up to two weeks off a production schedule.
3) Reduced costs from typesetters i.e. proofs are more legible.
4) Improved accuracy: no handwriting or ambigious marks to decipher.

Publisher’s benefits

1) Security against loss in transit
2)No need to copy marked proofs before sending on to next stage
Collation of proofs
3) Comparing authors proofs with proofreaders proofs and making one proof with both sets of corrections easier
4) Easy and intuitive interface of proofreading
5) No commitment to expensive
6) Software: pay only for the proofs used

About Mapsoft

Mapsoft is a leading software developer and technical authoring consultancy for Adobe Acrobat, PageMaker and InDesign plug-in product extensions. Founded in 1991, Mapsoft is an Adobe business partner and delivers customised plug-in products worldwide, with clients including Lloyd’s of London, Hallmark Cards, Network Rail and Xerox.

For further details, do not hesitate to contact me:
Michael Peters
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpmapsoft/
mpeters@creativeaddonshub.com

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