Maybe a little OT

[Art Todesco]

I realize this is a little OT, but I appeal to all your experiences. I
use Adobe Reader, as we all to, for lots of stuff. I have a bunch of
music in pdf files. Occasionally, I want to print one and use the print
function of Adobe. However, it seems to have a mind of its own as far
at margins. I've looked at a whole bunch of programs to crop or print,
but all seem deficient in one way or another. Anyone know of a good
program that would either allow cropping and re-saving or margin
adjustment during printing. Thanks.

 

[Ken1943]

I realize this is a little OT, but I appeal to all your experiences. I
use Adobe Reader, as we all to, for lots of stuff. I have a bunch of
music in pdf files. Occasionally, I want to print one and use the print
function of Adobe. However, it seems to have a mind of its own as far
at margins. I've looked at a whole bunch of programs to crop or print,
but all seem deficient in one way or another. Anyone know of a good
program that would either allow cropping and re-saving or margin
adjustment during printing. Thanks.

Isn't that and other properties set into what program created the pdf
file ?


KenW

 

[...winston]

Did you look in Program Files ?

e.g.
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression and its subfolders.


--
....winston
msft mvp mail


"Art Todesco" wrote in message
I realize this is a little OT, but I appeal to all your experiences. I
use Adobe Reader, as we all to, for lots of stuff. I have a bunch of
music in pdf files. Occasionally, I want to print one and use the print
function of Adobe. However, it seems to have a mind of its own as far
at margins. I've looked at a whole bunch of programs to crop or print,
but all seem deficient in one way or another. Anyone know of a good
program that would either allow cropping and re-saving or margin
adjustment during printing. Thanks.

 

[Paul]

I realize this is a little OT, but I appeal to all your experiences. I
use Adobe Reader, as we all to, for lots of stuff. I have a bunch of
music in pdf files. Occasionally, I want to print one and use the print
function of Adobe. However, it seems to have a mind of its own as far
at margins. I've looked at a whole bunch of programs to crop or print,
but all seem deficient in one way or another. Anyone know of a good
program that would either allow cropping and re-saving or margin
adjustment during printing. Thanks.

I thought I had a good print driver on my setup, but I don't
seem to have margin control, or scale control when I need it.

When printing from Acrobat, I can only manually set the scale to
more or less than 100%. I don't have an "autoscale" option. That
could be particularly problematic, when I used to receive A4 sized PDF specs,
and only had Letter paper to print on. Sometimes things like that,
either need to be autoscaled to fit the available paper, or,
need to have margins adjusted, so that if the printer can print
right to the edge, I can still get the whole document contents.
It's possible the print driver on my Macintosh could do it for me.

If you want to play around, both Photoshop and GIMP can read in a
PDF as an image bitmap. In GIMP, the program needs a "helper", as
the PDF or PostScript reading capability is not native. You install
a copy of GhostScript (free PostScript/PDF converter), and it's actually
doing the PDF to TIFF conversion or the like, for the GIMP. Then, GIMP
has the easier job, of just dealing with the image, rather than directly
with the PDF. In Photoshop, the reading capability could well be native,
and not as much of a nuisance to set up (install Ghostscript, edit a
preference to point to Ghostscript etc).

When the PDF page (one page at a time) is rasterized, the user gets to
set the raster resolution. To model printing, I might set that to about
300DPI or so. Usually the document isn't a high enough quality, to
justify rasterizing at 1200 DPI.

Now, I can take the bitmap image, and attempt to print it out again,
after scaling or pushing around the image on the page. The print
job could take a lot longer, but that's probably not an issue.

Instead of using GIMP as the sole step, you can also use GhostScript/GhostView
directly, to do things like turn a 100 page PDF, into 100 TIFF image files.
Then, using the batch capability in Photoshop, you could convert the pages
back to whatever you want. You'd still need a utility to append the pages,
if you wanted then all put back into a document format.

So, there are plenty of possibilities. You also have the option of
using a third-party PDF application, of which there'd be a ton of those
to play with. Be prepared to spend a day or two, trying stuff out.

Back in the good ole days, when PostScript (*.ps) files were all the
rage, I could also pop the PostScript intermediate print, into a text editor,
and manually hack a transformation matrix to fix scale or offset. But
those days are pretty well behind us now. The odds of a workflow
being able to use that, are pretty slim. Before I had other tools
to use, I had occasion to do stuff like that. Where hacking has
its limits, is when the scale or orientation of each page is different.
Fixing a 100 page document, a page at a time, isn't practical. Even
the batch capability on Photoshop, is odious. It might take me
a couple hours, to get a workflow tweaked just right. Only worth
it, for "museum pieces".

*******

You're better off just finding a good PDF utility (Foxit etc).
Try the "Viewer" section here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software

Paul

 

[Gary]

I realize this is a little OT, but I appeal to all your experiences. I
use Adobe Reader, as we all to, for lots of stuff. I have a bunch of
music in pdf files. Occasionally, I want to print one and use the print
function of Adobe. However, it seems to have a mind of its own as far
at margins. I've looked at a whole bunch of programs to crop or print,
but all seem deficient in one way or another. Anyone know of a good
program that would either allow cropping and re-saving or margin
adjustment during printing. Thanks.

LibreOffice will do the trick.
http://www.libreoffice.org/features/extensions/

 

[DanS]

I realize this is a little OT, but I appeal to all your
experiences. I use Adobe Reader, as we all to, for lots of
stuff. I have a bunch of music in pdf files.
Occasionally, I want to print one and use the print
function of Adobe. However, it seems to have a mind of its
own as far at margins. I've looked at a whole bunch of
programs to crop or print, but all seem deficient in one
way or another. Anyone know of a good program that would
either allow cropping and re-saving or margin adjustment
during printing. Thanks.

You're still using Adobe Reader?

I thought most dumped that huge, intrusive, buggy piece of
software in favor of smaller, more efficient PDF readers, like
Foxit reader.

 

[Art Todesco]

I use it and have never had any problems with it.

Some time ago I switched to Foxit and it was ok, but seemed to be taking
longer and longer to load, so I went back to Adobe. Maybe it was my old
computer/XP, but I don't know. Actually, I installed the latest Foxit
yesterday and was able to print the music with better margins than
Acrobat, but still didn't give the margin control that I would like.
Someone here suggested importing the pdf into Libreoffice and then
printing, but I haven't tried it yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow.

 

[Paul]

Some time ago I switched to Foxit and it was ok, but seemed to be taking
longer and longer to load, so I went back to Adobe. Maybe it was my old
computer/XP, but I don't know. Actually, I installed the latest Foxit
yesterday and was able to print the music with better margins than
Acrobat, but still didn't give the margin control that I would like.
Someone here suggested importing the pdf into Libreoffice and then
printing, but I haven't tried it yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow.

Interesting.

http://ask.libreoffice.org/question/2390/where-do-i-find-the-pdf-import-extension/

"Note that, in LibreOffice 3.3, many great extensions that were formerly
separate downloads have now been included in the package as standard features.

See Tools>>Extension Manager to check that it's installed.

PDF files opened in LO open in Draw."

So the PDF will apparently be imported into a drawing tool of some sort.
Should be fun, as long as you have control over the rasterization
resolution setting (300 DPI or a bit more perhaps, for a clean print).

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I use it and have never had any problems with it.

Same here, and on the several occasions when I tried Foxit, I didn't
like it as much as Adobe Reader.

Obviously, mileage varies...

 

[Char Jackson]

Same here, and on the several occasions when I tried Foxit, I didn't
like it as much as Adobe Reader.

Obviously, mileage varies...

+1

I dumped Adobe Reader awhile back, probably late last year, and
installed the then-current version of Foxit. Foxit loaded very
quickly, and was just as quick to show some problems. Scrolling
through pdf documents would sometimes cause a flashing or strobing
effect, especially if images were present, and other annoyances
started to make themselves known. I went back to Adobe Reader after a
few months and haven't looked back.

 

[DanS]

+1

I dumped Adobe Reader awhile back, probably late last year,
and installed the then-current version of Foxit. Foxit
loaded very quickly, and was just as quick to show some
problems. Scrolling through pdf documents would sometimes
cause a flashing or strobing effect, especially if images
were present, and other annoyances started to make
themselves known. I went back to Adobe Reader after a few
months and haven't looked back.

Interesting.

I must say, I d/l'd it a while ago and am for sure using an
older version.

Maybe it's just another case of newer version of good programs
making them not-so-good programs?

Adobe always seemed to want to install this, and install that,
and an update service, and something else, and it just seemed
far and above what's needed to view a document.

 

[Bob Henson]

+1

I dumped Adobe Reader awhile back, probably late last year, and
installed the then-current version of Foxit. Foxit loaded very
quickly, and was just as quick to show some problems. Scrolling
through pdf documents would sometimes cause a flashing or strobing
effect, especially if images were present, and other annoyances
started to make themselves known. I went back to Adobe Reader after a
few months and haven't looked back.

My other half has to use Adobe since some .pdf files from her work won't
open with any other .pdf reader. Like you, I couldn't get on with Foxit,
(wasn't that also the one where it deliberately corrupted saved files
unless you paid for the cash version?) and have used PDF-Exchange viewer
ever since. Another tiny but effective viewer is Sumatra. You might like
to try those if you want to get away from Adobe again.

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK


Diplomacy - the art of letting someone else have your own way.

 

[DanS]

My other half has to use Adobe since some .pdf files from
her work won't open with any other .pdf reader. Like you, I
couldn't get on with Foxit, (wasn't that also the one where
it deliberately corrupted saved files unless you paid for
the cash version?)

You *really* believe that ?

You think purposely corrupting files is something a company
would do to get you to buy the "full" version?

 

[Art Todesco]

Interesting.

http://ask.libreoffice.org/question/2390/where-do-i-find-the-pdf-import-extension/


"Note that, in LibreOffice 3.3, many great extensions that were
formerly
separate downloads have now been included in the package as
standard features.

See Tools>>Extension Manager to check that it's installed.

PDF files opened in LO open in Draw."

So the PDF will apparently be imported into a drawing tool of some sort.
Should be fun, as long as you have control over the rasterization
resolution setting (300 DPI or a bit more perhaps, for a clean print).

Paul

I actually tried to install LibreOffice and I had some problems. I
don't think I know how to handle the torrent thing ... never did this
before. Also, another turn off was that, in LO's release notes, it says
that it doesn't play nice with OpenOffice, which I have and use.
Apparently LO uses the same file extensions and will take away their
assignment from OO. They say to avoid this, uninstall OO ... Duh! But
I don't want to. I was thinking of trying LO on another machine that
doesn't have OO, but have yet to do that.

 

[Paul]

I actually tried to install LibreOffice and I had some problems. I
don't think I know how to handle the torrent thing ... never did this
before. Also, another turn off was that, in LO's release notes, it says
that it doesn't play nice with OpenOffice, which I have and use.
Apparently LO uses the same file extensions and will take away their
assignment from OO. They say to avoid this, uninstall OO ... Duh! But
I don't want to. I was thinking of trying LO on another machine that
doesn't have OO, but have yet to do that.

When I clicked the button, it came from... A mirror site. So
you don't have to use Torrent, as there are regular links as well.
It uses mirrors, like Firefox downloads do. Or, like Linux distros use.

http://tdf.mirror.rafal.ca/libreoffice/stable/3.6.1/win/x86/LibO_3.6.1_Win_x86_install_multi.msi

Also, when I tested it, it seems to be doing a vector input of the PDF,
rather than converting to a bitmap the way Photoshop would do it. So
you can actually move the elements around on the page, and recompose
the page if you want.

It's still going to boil down to the print setup screen, and whether
scale and margins can be controlled. While you can select all the items
on a page and move them, that might not be a very precise process.

My problem was, I didn't have any printing device set up to test with.

Paul

 

[Bob Henson]

You *really* believe that ?

No, I *know* that - I tried it.

You think purposely corrupting files is something a company
would do to get you to buy the "full" version?

One of them ones that I tried certainly did - when you tried to save a
file it stamped their name or a series of spaces or the like into the
messages making them pretty well unusable thereafter.

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK


It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have
learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan

 

[DanS]

No, I *know* that - I tried it.


One of them ones that I tried certainly did - when you
tried to save a file it stamped their name or a series of
spaces or the like into the messages making them pretty
well unusable thereafter.

I don't, and I don't think anyone reading this would agree,
that that is the definition of a corrupt file.

 

[Paul]

I don't, and I don't think anyone reading this would agree,
that that is the definition of a corrupt file.

Some of that kind of software, uses a "watermark", to make
the saved file useless. It's to allow you to see what the
conversion would look like, but with something added to the
final result, so you wouldn't consider distributing the file.

The file isn't really "corrupted" in the canonical sense,
as the file structure is perfectly sound. The program
has just "added" some structures to the file, you'd
rather that they'd not done. Paying for the tool,
then produces output without the watermark.

Some watermarks are easy to remove (I've done it by hand,
for people at work). But a tool which uses watermarks,
to encourage you to buy the product, you can be assured
their watermark programming code, will be convoluted
on purpose.

The reason I'd bother removing a watermark in a document
(the "at-work" case), was a document where the watermark
was placed in the foreground, on top of the document
text, such that the document could not be read by the
recipient. Which is perfectly stupid. It's OK to put
a watermark in the background, so that we know the
doc is "private and confidential" or "secret" or whatever,
but putting such a mark, over top of the text, makes
the document useless for any practical purpose. That's
when I "sharpen up my tools" and remove it, surgically.

Paul

 

[Bob Henson]

I don't, and I don't think anyone reading this would agree,
that that is the definition of a corrupt file.

Perhaps not - but you would have to be a picky little twit to not
realise what I meant, or to deliberately misinterpret it. Have you
nothing better to do with your time?

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK


Be nice to your children - they pick the nursing home.

 

[DanS]

Perhaps not - but you would have to be a picky little twit
to not realise what I meant, or to deliberately
misinterpret it.

Or, you chose to redefine the term "corrupt file".

There's no "perhaps" about it.

Have you nothing better to do with your
time?

Finding out the actual truth to what you *said* versus what
you actually *meant* and being sure it is understood is a
waste of time?