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Subject:Re: Can't search the PDF file. (Happier day) From:Emily Berk <emily -at- armadillosoft -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 23 Oct 2003 07:12:53 -0700
Sorry for cross-post... Thought this might be useful for those on both lists... If you don't use FrameMaker, this will be of absolutely no interest to you.
Shlomo:
THANK YOU so much for providing these suggestions. (And thanks to the many others who made suggestions, sent condolences, etc. etc. The uniformly positive attention did make me feel better during a very difficult time.)
I have finally gotten a searchable PDF. I am not sure what exactly the critical step was, but here is what I did:
1. I downloaded this new driver, installed it and re-gened the .ps (using (Print to file and NEVER Print to PDF ...) and then re-distilled. (I had been pretty sure I was up to date on these, but after checking, it seems as if I was not.) This did not yield a searchable PDF.
2. I went and changed the distiller settings to make sure NO fonts were embedded. Then re-gened and re-distilled. This did not yield a searchable PDF.
3. I went into the .book file and re-gened each chapter individually. It turned out that only one chapter was non-searchable (the one from my friend from Korea). This made me feel a little better because it meant that I would only have to re-format about 20 pages if necessary.
4. I re-checked the Distiller settings. Made sure they were set to Acrobat 3.0 and portable and non-embedded fonts.
5. I re-gened the whole book again because I REALLY did not want to have to go from FM to text to FM and re-do all the graphics.
AND.... Now the book is entirely searchable.
It's possible that one or more of the above-listed steps could have been omitted, but I don't know which and I don't care. I am going to try to persuade my guys to use this new file, which is an obviously great improvement over the previous one. And, I will be using Word with these guys from now on.
Moral of the story for me (and other FM users): Before importing ANYONE's Word file into FM, from now on, I plan to export to HTML, run through DreamWeaver's strip-out-weird-word-stuff, save, re-import into Word, dump into FM. A highly multi-cultural approach (Adobe/Macromedia/M$). If I don't have DW handy, I'll have the privilege of tweaking the HTML by hand. Should add a good half hour or more to any document processed. Sigh.
Moral of the story for Adobe: It is the End-Time. Please understand that the marketplace is growing impatient with Microsoft's competitors, even when their products are "better" than Micro$oft's. Value means producing products that yield consistent results without surprises, without embarrassing those of us who champion you. Please pull it together soon. This line about "I would NEVER let an SME touch MY perfect docs." is simply not going to cut it when docs are NOT perfect, never have been, and never will be.
One sign that Adobe is listening will be when it takes out that Print to PDF Option on the File Menu. It hasn't worked for -- what -- five years or so now. All this does is make new FM users miserable until one of us old hands comes along and says "Listen, this is totally counter-intuitive, but remember to NEVER Print to PDF ..." They all look at us like we are crazy until at some point their output gets totally fried and then we ask again, "So, did you Print to PDF?" And they say, "Yes, I always do." And we say, "Listen, this is totally counter-intuitive, but remember how I told you to NEVER Print to PDF ..." WHY DOESN'T ADOBE JUST TAKE THIS OUT OF THEIR ^&*%$#$$#$ FILE MENU? (The answer is total disrespect for the time of their users.)
Well, anyway, it's time for a nice relaxing cup of coffee.
--Emily
At 08:52 AM 10/21/03 +0200, Shlomo Perets wrote:
>Emily,
>
>You wrote:
>
>>... The suggestions I've gotten have to do with not embedding any fonts when I distill the file.
>Embedding a font does not affect the Find/Search functions. I do recommend to embed and subset all fonts as a general setting -- and thus get a PDF that can be displayed/printed consistently using different computers.
>The MSTT.... fonts are a result of a font transformation related to the specific combination of printer driver and/or fonts and/or specific application version [other factors may also play a part].
>The "font corruption" takes place in the PS creation phase, so you will not able to find any of trace of the MSTT... fonts in your source FrameMaker files.
>You did not specify which version of FrameMaker is being used, what OS and PS driver, and which Acrobat version. It is very likely that you need to reinstall the AdobePS printer driver -- run the Universal Windows PostScript driver installer from Adobe (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1500)
>When prompted for a "printer model", point to the Distiller PPD
>(present in the Distiller/Xtras folder).
>>P.S. Just a report from the trenches. I am a real FM advocate and I choose to use it whenever I get the option. But these days, there is incredible push-back from SMEs who really cannot conveniently edit either FM files or PDFs. When a problem like today's occurs -- everyone but everyone marvels at how beautiful the doc looks, how flexible the indices etc. are. But everyone also points out that if I'd done the doc in Word, we wouldn't need a PDF and so the inability to search would not be a problem.
>I would definitely not feel comfortable in a situation where SMEs edit my source files (whether these are in Word or FrameMaker); PDFs cannot really be edited, only reviewed/annotated.
>FrameMaker is still the best tool, by far, for authoring technical documentation as well as for producing interactive PDFs. I believe that the PDF searchability problem you encountered can be solved relatively easily [and thus the story will get a happy end!]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Emily Berk ~
~ Looking for challenging, new projects ~
~ www.armadillosoft.com *** Armadillo Associates, Inc. ~
~ Internet and non-Internet application development, ~
~ project management, developer relations and ~
~ extremely-technical technical documentation that ~
~ developers find useful. ~
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