Sumatra concentrates on pdf viewing only but does that very well. Pdf documents are opened blazingly fast and the program does not require lots of computer memory or resources in general to operate. It is offered as an installer or portable version and it’s size of 1.1 Megabytes make it an ideal candidate for mobile usage.

We had some complaints about Sumatra which are still valid. It is for example not possible to mark and copy text from the documents. Not everyone might need that feature but those that do need to find another pdf viewer that comes with that option.

The main interface language of Sumatra (English) can be easily changed to several dozens others that are included in the download. The installer and portable version as well as the source code can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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Zilla JPG To PDF Converter is a software program for the Windows operating system that has been designed for this exact purpose. It can be used to convert multiple photos into a single pdf document. The process itself has been streamlined for ease of use. It actually takes less than a minute to configure the program to turn selected photos into a pdf document. The time it takes to create the pdf document itself depends largely on the amount and quality of the selected photos and the processing power of the computer system.

Only two steps are mandatory and a few additional ones option. The mandatory steps are to select photos or folders containing photos that should be included int the pdf document and to initiate the conversion by pressing the convert to pdf now button.

Optional steps include selecting a document title, author, creation date, subject, keywords, the output path and the compression quality.

The result is a pdf document that is made up of all the photos that have been selected during the selection process.

Zilla JPG To PDF Converter is an easy to use program that can create pdf documents showing selected photos in no time. The developer could improve it further by allowing layouts added to the pages that can contain text or other objects. An option to select several photos from one folder simultaneously is also missing as it is only possible to either select one photo or a folder full of photos in the application.

The software program is available at the developer’s website. It is there available for most Microsoft Windows operating systems including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

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Windows Vista and Windows 7 who have DEP enabled (that’s Data Execution Prevention) are protected from the exploit. Users who work with different operating systems are encouraged to disable JavaScript to protect against the specific known exploit. Adobe mentions that it is on the other hand possible to create an exploit that does not rely on JavaScript.

Adobe plans to resolve this issue as part of the upcoming Adobe Reader and Acrobat quarterly security update, scheduled for release on October 13. Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.1.3 customers with DEP enabled on Windows Vista will be protected from this exploit. Disabling JavaScript also mitigates against this specific exploit, although a variant that does not rely on JavaScript could be possible. In the meantime, Adobe is also in contact with Antivirus and Security vendors regarding the issue and recommends users keep their anti-virus definitions up to date.

Probably the best protection at this point is to uninstall Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat and install a third party pdf viewer like Foxit Reader, muPDF or STDU Viewer. Additional information are available at the Adobe website.

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If speed is the main issue the relatively new pdf file viewer MuPDF could be an option. MuPDF is a bare-bones pdf file viewer with a low memory footprint and the fastest pdf loading times that we have experienced until now. The pdf reader is a portable Open-Source cross-platform program for Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems.

Users can either execute the program which will open a small file browser to pick a PDF document or link the pdf file extension to the program so that it will be automatically the viewer of choice for pdf files.

MuPDF is perfect for users who want a portable resource friendly pdf reader. It comes with a few keyboard shortcuts to navigate documents more easily but lacks the functionality of Foxit Reader or Adobe Reader.

• L, R Rotate page in 90° increments
• +, – Zoom in and out
• W Shrink wrap window
• N, space Next page
• B, backspace Previous page
• Shift-N Skip 10 pages forward
• Shift-B Skip 10 pages backward
• M Mark page for snap back
• T Pop back to last mark
• 123G Go to page

Not everyone needs advanced functionality but some users might miss options to copy text, search for text or print a selection of the pdf file. MuPDF on the other hand is probably the best solution for users who want to view – and only view – pdf files on their computer system without having to download and install a software program. A Firefox add-on is provided by the developer as well to view pdf documents on the Internet.

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The Sun PDF Import Extension offers numerous features and, like all OpenOffice extensions, is simple to install. Let’s take a look at what it offers, how it is installed, and how it is used.

Supports

• The Sun extension includes the following features:
• Edit font attributs
• Retain font appearance
• Converts images and vector graphics
• Import of password-protected PDF files
• Import shapes with default styles
• Colors and bitmap support
• Levels remain true

Does not support

• Native PDF forms
• Proper paragraphs
• LaTeX PDF
• Complex vector graphics
• Table conversion
• EPS graphics
• RTL fonts

What should be apparent from the above lists is that the Sun PDF import extension supports primarily the more simple PDF documents. Once a document gets complex, this extension may or may not work.

Installation

The Sun extension works with all platforms of OpenOffice. So no matter if you are using OpenOffice on Linux, Solaris, Windows, or Mac you will be okay. To install this extension go to the project page and scroll down until you see all of the “Get It!” buttons. Here you will click on the button that corresponds with your platform. When you do this a dialogue box will open asking you what you want to do with the file. If you are offered to open the file with OpenOffice do so. If not just save the file. If you are able to go with the former option the OpenOffice extension installer will automatically open up. This is very much like installing an extension in Firefox. You simply have to OK the installation. Unlike Firefox, however, you do not have to restart OpenOffice.

Figure 1

If you had to save the file, never fear, all you have to do is open up OpenOffice  Writer, go to the Tools menu, and select Extensions manager. When the manager opens click the Add button, navigate to the directory you saved the extension file in, and click Open. Once the extension is installed you will see it listed in the manager (see Figure 1).

Usage

Figure 2

When you open up a PDF document OpenOffice will open the document in OpenOffice Draw. With your document opened in this application you will be able to edit the various elements of the document.

Figure 2 shows a PDF document (that was actually exported from a presentation document) opened in Draw (with the help of the Sun PDF Import Extension). In this image you can see a text element ready for editing. To edit a text element you simply double click the element to make your edits. If you right click an image you will see a menu that includes entries for various arrangments of the image, cropping, and converting. You can convert embedded images into different types of objects (Polygons, Contour, 3D, 3D Rotation File, or Metafile).

When you go to save your document, if you want to save the document as a PDF you have to use the Export to PDF and not Save As. If you want to save the document in one of the supported OpenOffice Draw formats you can use Save As.

Final thoughts

I do a lot of PDF documents. Some times I get requests to alter PDF documents and now, thanks to Sun and OpenOffice, I can take care of those requests. Granted I can not use this tool with more complex documents, but for more simple PDF files this tool is magic.

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Enter PDF to Excel and PDF to Word, two online services created by the same developer that convert pdf documents in microsoft word or microsoft excel documents. Both products are available online and simple to use. Three steps are required to convert the pdf document. The user needs to select a pdf document from the local computer system, pick a output format and enter an email address where the converted pdf document should be send to.

The test results have been impressive. Take a look at the screenshot of the first page of a pdf document and its Word conversion.

The conversion comes close to the original. Some parts might need some fine tuning but the overall look and feel of the pdf document has been carried over and probably more important than that the data in the tables looks exactly like that in the pdf document.

PDF to Excel (link) and PDF to Word (link) are two helpful online services for users who have to convert pdf documents into Word or Excel format.

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Impressive is a presentation software that provides the same presentation techniques that are known from PowerPoint with the difference that it can apply those to pdf documents and images. It offers links, overviews, page transition effects, highlights, spotlights and a sheet by sheet mode that can be controlled manually with the mouse buttons or automatically.

The portable software will extract a number of different files to the local computer system. Presentations can be started by dragging and dropping files onto the impressive.exe file in the program folder or by launching the tool from the command line. The basic command would be impressive file.pdf. More than a dozen command line parameters are available that can be used to control most aspects of the presentation software. Parameters exist to start the presentation in a custom resolution, a specific display ratio, to automatically flip pages after x seconds or to display a progress bar.

The primary application for this software is presentations. It can however be useful as a pdf reader as well especially for users who prefer to read page by page without scrolling.

There has not been any progress in development for the last six months which could mean that the project was temporarily or permanently halted. It does however work fine in its current stage but could use some usability additions like a graphical user interface to make things easier for the user.

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These pdf editors usually contain the means to modify the pdf metadata but there are cases where other means of editing might be more comfortable or appropriate. One scenario might be the need to edit the pdf metadata using a computer without the appropriate pdf editor, another speed.

Quick PDF Tools (via Life Rocks)is a free computer software that adds entries to the context menu of Windows Explorer. Those entries allow the user to modify pdf documents on the fly. They can be used to edit certain pdf metadata entries in a window right on the Windows desktop. It is possible to edit the title, author, keywords and subject metadata entries.

That is not all however as the software can also be used to add or remove open passwords, edit the initial view, merge selected pdf documents, convert selected images into pdf document format or to remove the bookmarks of the selected pdf documents.

Quick PDF Tools is a pdf editing software program compatible with both the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating system. The download of the program installer has a size of less than 1 Megabyte.

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Wikipedia has enabled the ‘Book’ extension to MediaWiki, the content management system it utilises. This adds a ‘add page’ link to every page, allowing users to compile a book. This book can then be sorted by the user into chapters. Afterwards, it can be shared with other Wikipedians. Currently, only logged-in users can utilise this tool.

Wikipedia has a built-in rendering engine which will grabs the pages, fetches the images and parses them before they are given to the user as a PDF or OpenDocument text. The user can also use PediaPress to have the book professionally bound and printed.

The ‘Book’ extension has a number of features for ‘expert’ users. For example, the user can elect to only include a certain version of an article. This could pose useful if the article being covered has reached ‘Featured’ or ‘Good’ quality, as they are sure information in the version which reached that standard is reliable and accurate.

Books can be made on any topic, or combinations of topics, on Wikipedia (or other projects with have enabled this extension, such as Wikibooks). There are some restrictions on what can be printed, as PediaPress are based in Germany so German law applies.

It is an amazing display of quite how big Wikipedia is. I made a book about the European Union, comprising about 45 articles, and when I sent it to PediaPress, it totalled a massive 2444 pages (3 volumes!). I shan’t be buying this, as it will cost me about €80! Prices for smaller books start at $8.90 for 100 pages. A fraction of this is donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. These books are black and white and measure 8″ x 5.5″ (about 20cmx14cm).

The books (from the preview I’ve seen) and the PDFs are well laid out. The PDFs are all selectable and are easy to navigate. It also contains links to the images’ pages. Amusingly, to maintain GFDL compatibility every editor to the article has to be mentioned! I, for example, are credited for writing a minute amount of the article on the Czech Republic.

I question how popular this will be though; as convenient as books may be, I would imagine institutions like schools would rather buy published textbooks than volunteer made ones.

It is worth emphasising that Wikibooks contains resources written as textbook entries, rather than articles. Perhaps that will be a practical application of PediaPress and this new move.

More information is available on the Wikpedia help page.

TechCrunch has also covered this story, but I simply found it through browsing Wikipedia!

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Lurene Grenier, a security researcher at Sourcefire, has published an unofficial patch for Adobe Reader 9 that is installed on a computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system. The patch comes with no guarantees and involves the replacement of a dll file in the Adobe Reader directory. Users should make sure to backup the dll before replacing it to be prepared for eventualities. Windows users with previous Adobe Reader versions will have to upgrade to Adobe Reader 9 before they can apply the patch.

There is another recommendation (by US-CERT)which is helpful for users of other operating systems or Windows users who do not like the idea of replacing a dll on the computer system:

• Disabling Javascript in Adobe Reader by going to Edit > Preferences > JavaScript and unchecking enable Acrobat JavaScript.
• Preventing IE from automatically displaying PDFs. This can be done via a Registry tweak described on the US-CERT notification.
• Disable rendering of PDFs within web pages. This can be done from the Edit-Preferences menu in Adobe Reader.

It is recommended to act swiftly to prevent that the vulnerability can get exploited on the computer system. Users of third party PDF software programs are not affected by the vulnerability.

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The feature list for Scribus will impress you.

• Supports most image file formats
• CMYK and ICC color management support
• Printing via level 3 postscript
• Transparency support
• Layer support
• Encryption support
• Interactive PDF support
• And much more…

Getting and Installing Scribus is simple. Fire up your Add/Remove utility, do a search for “scribus”, select the results, and apply the changes. Once Scribus is installed you will find it in either your Office or your Graphics menu (depending upon which desktop you use).

When you first fire up Scribus you will be greeted by a simple New Document “wizard”. This wizard allows you to choose from various layouts, page sizes, margins, etc. It’s not until you are actually working in a document that you can see the power of Scribus.

Scribus Working With Template

As you can see (in the image to the left) Scribus can create complex documents. The document you see is actually a single- layered document. This particular document is a template that can be downloaded from the Scribus web site. Personally I would have done this with multiple layers in order to simplify the creation of the document. Creating such a complex single-layered document also makes it hard to select and manipulate individual elements.

Layering is probably one of the key features of Scribus, and one you should definitely grow accustomed to. You treat layers in Scribus as you would in The GIMP, QuarkXPress, Publisher, or any quality print-ready tool.

Once you start playing around with Scribus you will discover useful feature after useful feature. There are features that you will certainly use more than others. The text editor tool, for example, is where you create and edit the text you place in text frames.

Scribus also has some good support paths including:

Wiki

IRC

Mailing list

Bug tracker

There is also a documentation page on the Scribus site. This page has quite a bit of information on using Scribus.

The Downside

The only downside Scribus has is that it can not import other proprietary formats. This was a choice that the Scribus team made because they felt like importing other formats would comprimise the integrity of the original document. In reality this is a smart move, because it won’t make Scribus look like it can not handle Adobe Pagemaker, QuarkXPress, or Microsoft Publisher formats. You can, however, import SVG, EPS/PS documents into Scribus.

Final Thoughts

I have used Scribus from everything to simple fliers, to complex marketing brochures, to books.  I am always amazed at the power of this tool as well as the versatility. If you are looking for an application to create impressive PDF documents, and you want to do so either on all platforms or on a budget, Scribus is the perfect application for the job. Scribus is the perfect solution to your desktop publishing needs.

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PDF Creator is compatible with most Windows operating systems including the beta of Windows 7. The application makes use of Ghostscript to provide the pdf functionality. The pdf software generator comes with a few additional features that makes it interesting. It can created PDF/A documents, create encrypted pdf documents and merge multiple documents into one pdf document.

PDF Creator can also create different file formats like PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS. Another interesting option is to install the PDF Creator application to run on terminal servers.

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PDF Database is a web search engine for document formats. It concentrates on pdf and doc formats but you will find other formats in the database as well. The developers state that they have 7.5 million documents indexed at the moment. The main interface consists of a search form on top that can search for all document types or only for pdf or doc documents.

Below that is a search cloud that displays the last 200 searches that have been entered in the search form. The results page will display all documents that match the search. The format, name, size and url will be shown. Results can be sorted by size or name.

All tags that have been used to define the document are listed below and will load a new results page when clicked on. All documents found can be downloaded or viewed directly. The view option seems to only work if Adobe Reader and its web plugin have been installed.

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One option that has become popular in recent months is to create pdf documents out of RSS News Feeds which solves the accessibility problem. Tabbloid is a relatively new Internet service that can turn RSS News Feeds into pdf documents and send those news digest right to the user’s inbox.

This is done by pasting RSS News Feed urls into the form on the main Tabbloid website. The service will check the feed, display a preview of the last news items that have been posted and ask the user to accept or reject it. If the user accepts the feed it gets added to the list of feeds that will be processed.

It is possible to add multiple feeds which would then all be used to fill the pdf document. Options exist to generate the pdf right at the website or set delivery options to receive the pdf document in the inbox. The possible intervals are hourly, daily or weekly.

The created pdf document of the RSS news feeds will look like pretty much like a newspaper. It will not contain images however, only the text and additional information like links. It is therefor easy to load the article on the website directly to post a comment or read it there to see pictures that have been posted.

The pdf documents do not contain advertisement and registration is not required to receive the magazine style RSS News Feeds. The email account has to be verified before the delivery starts.

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The PDF document will be imported into Draw and Impress to preserve the layout of the documents. This naturally means that Draw and Impress have to be installed to work with the PDF Import Extension. Plans are to concentrate on editing capabilities in the next development step concentrating on Writer. Just keep in mind that the current version of the PDF Import Extension supports layout and not editing.

PDF documents can be imported using the Open file dialog. Import takes relatively long but the results are surprisingly good for a beta. One interesting feature of the extension is the option to create hybrid documents that consists of a pdf and odf part. Users with Open Office installed will open the ODF version of the document while users without will load the pdf part.

Open Office users that work with PDF documents from time to timeshould pay close attention to the development of the PDF Import Extension.

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Splitting makes sense as well. Maybe only part of a pdf document is of relevance. Instead of keeping the complete pdf file a user could split the document and keep the important parts and delete the rest.

The Open-Source tool PDF SPlit and Merge has already been mentioned before in the split and merge pdf files article at Ghacks. Adolix Split Merge PDF is another free software that can be used to split and merge PDF files.

The software program uses a tabbed interface that provides access to a split and a merge tab. One PDF file can be added to the split tab which contains options to split the pdf file into files of x pages each or by selecting page ranges.

The merge tab looks pretty much alike with the difference that multiple pdf files can be added to it which are then merged in order.

Adolix Split and Merge can split and merge password protected pdf files. It is compatible to most Microsoft Windows operating systems and was tested on Windows XP Service Pack 3.

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PDF Image Extract was designed with ease of use in mind. The user can load multiple pdf documents at once which are then queued in the main program window. Information about each pdf document are provided in the lower pane.

The right contains settings for the output images. The range of pages that shall be processed can be selected as well as the output quality and format of the images.

A click on the start button processes all selected pdf documents. The images are saved into newly created directories in the pdf document root folders.

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DjVu needs only half the size than jpg images for photos of the same quality and displays photos of the same size in a higher better quality. Look at the comparison between jpg and djvu images, very interesting and a file format to look out for.

It’s one of the favorite formats for technical documentations and scientific documents. The viewer itself is a no thrills no frills viewer that can display the supported formats. It was designed with speed in mind, it opens pdf documents as fast, or even a bit faster, than Foxit Reader which is one of the fastest of its kind.

The main benefit of STDU Viewer is the support of the three mentioned formats and its speed. There is not really a reason to change from Foxit Reader to it if you only work with pdf documents on your system. If you use at least two of the formats it might be a viable alternative.

The official djvu website has a download section with additional clients for Windows, Mac and Linux plus an add-on for Microsoft Office.

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It’s a bit late but the software QQScan2Disc does that. Well, it actually does even more than that because it can convert the scanned papers into pdf format and burn them to DVD.

The requirements are an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) Scanner and a computer with Windows XP or Windows Vista. A list of supported scanners is available on the website of the program, they are: Plustek PS281, PS282/286, PL806/812, PL1200, PL1500, PL3000, PL7000/7500, PL2546, OB4600, D428, D600, A320/360 with an option to request the addition of other devices.

The user picks a scanner upon start and configures some of the settings like color mode, resolution, file format and page size. The write settings specify the CD or DVD drive that will be used to store the scanned papers which can be stored in original format, pdf format or both on the disk.

Everything is automatic after that point. The documents will be scanned automatically and burned to the disk in the formats that you have selected.

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The creator of the Windows Vista Codec package created a lite version of Adobe Reader that got rid of most of the stuff that bloated the PDF reader but was not used by most users anyway. The lite version does not load as fast as Foxit Reader for instance but makes up for it by still being the official Adobe product, something that a few users probably prefer.

Adobe Reader 9 Lite uses roughly 6 Megabytes of memory and 18 Megabytes of Swap space when running which is extremely well for that kind of applications. I can definitely recommend using Adobe Reader 9 Lite if you have no use for most Adobe Reader features. Foxit Reader and others are still excellent alternatives that come with an even lower memory footprint and faster load times.

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