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> -----Original Message-----
> From: I. Ljaljicic
> Sent: 24 April 2003 20:33
>
> My approach to doing this has generally been to cut
> and paste everything i needed into a Microsoft Word
> document and just print that in a nice neat lil
> package of stuff i gotta do. It could be just that im
> ignorant of PDF files, but in my experience you cant
> cut and paste anything from a PDF file, and this is
> extremely annoying for me because I would rather not
> sit there and print a 400 page manual for 2 or 3 pages
> of stuff that I needed.
When you create a PDF, you can edit the security settings to prevent cutting
and pasting. I find this a bit paranoid and I never do this when I'm
creating PDFs myself.
I once received a call from a co-worker to ask "how do I copy and paste from
this PDF" (an external one). He found it hard to believe that it was not
possible for this particular file. For a moment I think he wondered how this
so-called technical writer was unable to do something so basic as
cut-and-paste :-o
Please, do not risk the reputation of your fellow whirlers in this way, and
avoid the "no content copying or extraction" option ;-) If you distrust your
readers so much, why are you showing them the document in the first place?
(And if they were that intent on plagiarism they could always print out and
scan).
However, you can print a few pages from a PDF without resorting to copy and
paste. Just select a page range from the print settings in Acrobat Reader or
your web browser.
We provide documents in both PDF and HTML format. I've never tried creating
HTML from PDF, but use the source files instead. Quadralay WebWorks is very
good at creating HTML pages from Framemaker files, although finding the
right formats to map FM to HTML elements has been a bit trial-and-error.
With Word files, there is of course the "Save as HTML" option (luckily, the
Word docs are usually small so I don't spend too much time tweaking).
Fiona Hurley,
Technical Writer,
Graham Technology plc,
India of Inchinnan,
Renfrewshire,
Scotland PA4 9LH.
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