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Subject:PDF titles as seen in web searches From:Shlomo Perets <shlomo2 -at- microtype -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 10 Dec 2003 11:20:27 +0200
When searching for PDFs on the web, you may be surprised to see results
displayed with titles that have random-looking letters, such as oooooo,
aaaaa, ggggg, rrrrr, or even !#"%$.
A common reason for these strange-looking titles is missing
DocInfo/metadata fields. In their absence, web indexing mechanisms resort
to displaying the title using what seems to be the beginning of the content
-- which may have duplicate text strings (sometimes used by
applications/drivers to create a "bolded" version of the text), text-based
shadow effects, decorative dingbats, special symbols or form field
elements. Some font-related problems may also cause the underlying text to
be very different from the text displayed in the PDF page.
For links to examples of some absurd PDF titles as returned by Google
searches, see the current "Hmmm" at http://www.microtype.com (bottom of
home page).
If your authoring application supports the definition of document metadata
(Title, Subject, Author, Keywords etc) and carries this information to PDF
(as is the case with FrameMaker, InDesign, Word+PDFmaker, among others) --
you're lucky, as you can set this info once and it is retained in the
source document! If your authoring application does not support this, you
can still assign a meaningful title to your PDF manually in Acrobat, when
finalizing the PDF.
RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or download a trial at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l4
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