Re[2]: Electronic File Transfer

Subject: Re[2]: Electronic File Transfer
From: Joyce Flaherty <flahertj -at- SMTPGW -dot- LIEBERT -dot- COM>
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 22:38:40 EST

Text item: Text_1

In <9601288255 -dot- AA825526687 -at- ccmail -dot- ndc -dot- co -dot- il>, on 02/28/96 at 12:54 AM,
"Bar-Haim, Pam" <pbar-haim -at- ndc -dot- co -dot- il> said:

> My company is debating options for electronic file transfer
> that *do not* allow the recipient to change the file. We do
> want them to be able to view, read and search for key words
> in the documents.

For electronic file transfer, Acrobat is the ticket.

If you concern is filesize, viewer size/installation, ATM, or
usability, read on.

> One option we are considering is Adobe Acrobat, but we have
> been warned that it produces very large files. Can anyone
> offer pros and cons of using Acrobat? Comment on the file
> sizes? Does anyone know of a good alternative? Any information
> would be greatly appreciated!

- filesize
I don't consider file size a problem. The PDF is normally much
smaller than the original.

- viewer, size, installation
Neither do I consider the size of the royalty-free viewer
a problem. This is a single install for all PDFs. What are
we talking here?--1.5 Mg or so with DLLs.

- viewer, ATM
My experience with the ATM is that if you already have a version
running, acroread updates your version if necessary. If you do
not have a version running, it installs a mini version. Sometimes
I turn ATM off. This can be a problem if your user is not PC-
literate enough to interpret "This program requires ATM" or
whatever message, does not know he has a full-blown version of
ATM running, and does not know how to go to the ATM Control
Panel and turn it back on.

- usability
Someone explained in an earlier post that Acrobat is a remote
printing program, not unlike PostScript, except that it has a
viewer. If you choose Acrobat, then you also take a decision
to give the user a page-for-page representation of your hardcopy
document. You can hyperlink the document, but other packages
are better suited for this task. You can search the document,
but to what end? Acrobat is not suitable for putting
information online. It is suitable for putting documents
online that your user will print.

I use Acrobat, but I have a hybrid system. Acrobat has
its place. I use it to give our field engineers a copy of
the owner manuals that are shipped with the unit. Customers
frequently lose or can't find these manuals. The PDFs are
not considered proprietary and they are not on a portion of
the disk that we scrambled. The engineer can copy the PDF
to floppy and hand it to the customer. It's a nice service.

I also used Acrobat to put our ISO documentation online.
I used the old bookshelf metaphor, where each book is a
department. These documents are typically one to two
pages. Processes and procedures are numbered, so the database
falls out of the index quite nicely. Use Acrobat only when you
are absolutely sure that what you want to give your user is an
exact page-for-page representation of your file. Do not use
Acrobat to build an information database. It doesn't work.

hope this helps,
joyce flaherty
flahertj -at- smtpgw -dot- liebert -dot- com


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