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Subject:Re: Electronic Data Conversion From:Tim Altom <taltom -at- SIMPLYWRITTEN -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 26 Aug 1998 09:58:28 -0500
It depends a lot on what you want from the PDFs. If you want a lot of links
and bookmarks, you'll have to pay a premium to get them, because Word has no
conversion to PDF built-in. It'll also depend on graphics: how many you
have, what kind, and what kind of resolution you want. Graphics can end up
looking pretty grim, necessitating a lot of tweaking.
The scanned images are actually easy; you just run them through Capture.
Make sure your chosen company knows its head from a harpstring about
Acrobat. Lots of service bureaus buy Acrobat, load it, and become instant
experts. <sound of buzzer> nope, sorry. Many don't know how to optimize for
CD-ROM, for example. For another, do you want the files searchable, making
it necessary to use Catalog?
A good company can do it for you quickly, efficiently, and relatively
cheaply if you don't want links. The price is widely variable, though,
depending on the quality of the company and where it is. Just scooting
through basic PDF conversion that's easy to dump into Acrobat will take only
a few hundred dollars, because it's pretty much automated. Anything better
steps upwards until you could incure thousands of dollars for good, checked
PDF with plentiful links and a searchable index, all optimized for CD-ROM.
Tim Altom
Adobe Certified Expert, Acrobat
Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 http://www.simplywritten.com
Creators of the Clustar Method for task-based documentation
>We're looking into hiring a company to convert 16 to 20 volumes of paper
>manuals to .pdf.
>I'd like to hear from anyone who has gone through this process. What
>company did you use? Were you satisfied with the results? What costs can
I
>expect?
Tim Altom
Adobe Certified Expert, Acrobat
Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 http://www.simplywritten.com
Creators of the Clustar Method for task-based documentation
