PDF Pains

Subject: PDF Pains
From: "Bruce Cox" <brucedavidcox -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 15:57:48 -0800


I've scanned the archives on this one, but was unable to find evidence of anything that matches our current situation.

The documentation for one of our company's products is an HTML-based user guide comprised of about 120 files. We also offer the documentation in PDF format. We've been using Acrobat's Web Capture tool to generate the PDF from HTML. Although this method produces decent results, it is somewhat labor intensive.

Actually, creating the PDF is very easy. You simply specify the directory containing the files to capture, and Acrobat builds a single PDF, complete with bookmarks. It's the formatting that takes time. The bookmarks must be renamed and reorganized to create a hierarchical table of contents similar to the one in the HTML-based user guide.

All of this wouldn't be bad if we only had to do it a few times a year. The reality is that we make frequent minor updates. The Web Capture tool does have a "refresh" command for updating files. However, this rebuilds he PDF with updated versions of the HTML files without preserving the
painstakingly created bookmark structure.

To get around this, we have been deleting bookmarked pages, appending updated versions, and moving the bookmarks and associated pages back to the appropriate positions in the PDF. The only real drawback with this method is that the PDF slowly grows to an unacceptable size. It would seem that, even when bookmarks and pages are deleted from the PDF, information about these items is preserved in the PDF.

We have also investigated a number of third party solutions, including HTMLDOC, to no avail. Beyond some sort of custom solution, does anybody know of a way to make this process a little less painful? Thanks,

Bruce Cox

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