Confessions of a PDF Hater

There’s a lot of discussion about the ongoing spat between Microsoft and Adobe over whether Microsoft will be able to install PDF/Acrobat support in its next version of Office. This should be as straightforward as PDF support in OpenOffice — where you can choose to save (well, print, technically speaking) a file as an Acrobat … Read more

Social Acrobats

You’ve got social bookmark sharing, photo sharing, now you’ve got social Acrobat file sharing: Yummy! Personal PDF Library. Yeah, I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it might have its uses. I just can’t think of any right now. Oh, and it’s brought to you by the guys behind Print(fu), which will turn a PDF … Read more

Another Way To Clean Up Text

I’m a huge fan of Text Monkey, a small program which allows you to clean up text copied from elsewhere. It’s a godsend, but it’s not the only one out there. Text Cleanup does the same thing, but also cleans up Acrobat PDF files, particularly all the extra line breaks that Acrobat puts in, and restor[ing] … Read more

The PaperPort View

Further to my column in this week’s WSJ.com/AWSJ on PaperPort Pro and PaperMaster Pro, here are some e-mailed answers from Bob Anderson (ScanSoft Regional Director Asia Pacific and Japan) in response to my questions about PaperPort Pro: 1) What are the improvements in version 10 (PaperPort Professional 10) over previous versions? A) Faster and easier folder … Read more

Adobe Opens The Door A Crack?

Wired reports that the upcoming version of Adobe Acrobat Reader — the free version of its authoring software that lets folk read the resulting Portable Document Format, or PDF files — will let “users make comments or editing changes for the first time, if the original creator of the document uses Acrobat 7.0 and authorizes … Read more