Adobe Acrobat 4

Adobe Acrobat 4.05 on SCANT

The complete Adobe Acrobat is implemented on the SCANT PC of RZG in the Graphics room.. Acrobat enables the conversion of PostScript, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and HTML to PDF format. PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format and has been accepted as a quasi-standard in the commercial and scientific world. The Acrobat Reader is provided for all platforms, i.e. UNIX, Windows and also for Macs. Usually it is provided together with the PDF document by a link to the Adobe web site, where the newest release of the appropriate executable can be downloaded. RZG’s NetInstall facilities will provide this in the near future.

The active production of PDF documents in UNIX is restricted to the conversion of PostScript files to PDF by GhostScript (ps2pdf.html).

Conversion to PDF with Adobe Acrobat 4.05 in WindowsNT

The main functions of Acrobat are PDF Maker and Distiller, to use them, get an AFS token on SCANT (see Scannerpage of RZG) and you can start with:

• Conversion of Documents maintaining the original layout; access rights can be set to the whole document or parts of it.
• Out of Word, Excel und PowerPoint it is possible to save a document directly in PDF format (save as PDF...).
• Out of WindowsExplorer you can drag appropriate files directly to the Acrobat 4.0 buttom on the desktop of SCANT, for converting PS files use the Acrobat Distiller, either by drag and drop or by opening the PS file from Distiller.
• The PDF document can be optimized for printers or www use, see the online documentation.

Usage and further Manipulation of PDF Documents

In general you cannot edit a PDF file as it is possible from Word. Minor corrections and modifications can be done by opening a PDF file with Acrobat and clicking on the bottom T in the left menu column. Then you can cut, edit and insert text.

While keeping the original layout and above all the information in the document, a lot of additional features are offered:

• PDF forms with fill-in areas;
• HTML - Tags to get direct access to Web links;
• Marking and Commenting parts of the PDF text;
• Create new PDF documents by using (parts of) existing ones;
• Compare different updates of a document;
• Editing graphics, Plug-in security and more.

 Licensing

So far Acrobat has been implemented with a single-user single-system license on SCANT. Depending on the acceptance further licenses can be acquired.