Acrobat plug-in for building TOCs?

[David Neeley]

DonaLuisa asked about an Acrobat plug-in to build TOCs for compound docs.

Is it necessary to get the database output *only* as .pdf images of
data tables, or could the data be retrieved as simple tables and
imported into your authoring application?

Conceptually, that would seem a far cleaner way to go...simplifying
your issues greatly and reducing the manipulations you currently go to
just to handle the combination.

In my opinion, before adding on to a tool chain it can be beneficial
to look at the entire process with the question "Is the way we are
presently doing this still the most efficient method?"

Surprisingly often, we become enmeshed in a habit stemming from what
was originally a hack without any re-examination of the process
itself.

David




From: "DonaLuisa" <donaluisa_nwr at comcast.net>
To: "'TECHWR-L'" <techwr-l at lists.techwr-l.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:56:00 -0700
Subject: Acrobat plug-in for building TOCs?
I'm looking for a plug-in I can install for Adobe Acrobat 7.0 (we're
probably heading towards 8.0 soon), that can build a table of contents.
I would welcome your recommendation! Where I work, we use UNIX/Metaframe
and PC Windows XP.

Periodically, we generate reports with front matter (title page, TOC)
and narrative created using MS Word 2003. The remainder of the document
is PDF file (aka the "Back" PDF file) containing graphic images of data
tables generated from an analytical database. Each table has a title.
Sometimes two tables display on one page, or a long table displays
across multiple pages. ...