Any PDF Experts?

[Steve Schlumpf]

I am in the process of developing a newsletter for our turning club using MS Word. I will be using Adobe Acrobat 7 Standard version to create the final copy of the newsletter but am not proficient by any means with the program. The challenge is that I would like to have the ability to click on a thumbnail, open another window and display a detailed photo much like we do here on SMC.

I have been through the help file and about the only thing I can think that might work is to use links. If so, do you then add the large format photo as an attachment to the PDF?

Honestly, I’m not even sure that a PDF can do this but hope someone may have figured it out while developing their newsletter.

Appreciate any and all assistance!

[Mike Henderson]

It's not exactly clear to me what you want to do. Are you saying that after you convert the word doc to pdf, you want to have a thumbnail in the pdf that when you click on it, it opens up a large picture?

If so, I'm afraid I don't know how to do that. Acrobat generally just converts whatever's in the word doc to a "common" format that everyone can open. You could put a link in your word doc (which would be carried over to the pdf) which would link to a picture on a web site. When someone clicked on that link, it would bring up their browser which would display the picture. You'd have to host those pictures somewhere. One of the common photo sites would work for that.

Mike

[Steve Schlumpf]

Are you saying that after you convert the word doc to pdf, you want to have a thumbnail in the pdf that when you click on it, it opens up a large picture?

Yes!

I have opened PDF files that have had embedded videos and thought possibly there was a way to enlarge a photo also. I know you can have a link point to another portion of the PDF, that's why I was wondering if you then attached the larger format photos to the document? Hope this makes sense.

[Doug Shepard]

...
I know you can have a link point to another portion of the PDF, that's why I was wondering if you then attached the larger format photos to the document? ...

I dont have any software that will create PDFs other than the "Save as PDF" option in OpenOffice. But if you've got Adobe PDF authoring software, see if the way it creates those PDF internal links is just with good ole html somehow. If it is, and you can hack on it, you could probably use "View Source" on an SMC thread and figure out how to monkey with the PDF html to make it work somewhat like the thumbnail/full pic SMC behaviour.

[Eric DeSilva]

I don't think they are typically embedded, I've always seen ones that basically end up double clicking to launch a web url.

[Thomas Bank]

I have the full version of Acrobat 8. You can have links to other pages so that you click on the chapter title in the table of contents and it will jump you to that chapter. You could do something like that with the thumbnail as a link to a page at the back with a larger image.

I know that they are adding video and all the bells and whistles - haven't had a chance to see all they've added in the latest version - V9. But my feeling is that they are trying to be too many things. To me, PDF is a cross platform electronic version of the printed page. I want to be able to send something from my Mac at home that looks exactly the same on my PC at work running XP or to my aunt still running Win95 or...

Getting all gee-whiz bang with everything and you're really talking multi-media and should be looking at something other than a PDF.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Thanks everyone!

Thomas - I have been able to figure out how to link to a larger photo on another page and, worse case, that will work. I was hoping to be able to do all this in a PDF for the very reason you listed - so that the Newsletter would look the same to all the club members. It's no big deal really, was just hoping for something nice and simple.

[Thomas Bank]

Wasn't trying to bust on you. More that I think Adobe is trying to do too much with PDF as each new version comes out.

PDF stands for "portable document format" - and initially it was envisioned as an electronic representation of a printed document. As you throw in all the multi-media stuff it gets away from that. I actually had someone come to me about printing out a PDF and was dismayed that things didn't happen when you "clicked on" the printed version...

Ok, that is a whole different rant on how disassociated people have become from technology...

[Steve Schlumpf]

Wasn't trying to bust on you. More that I think Adobe is trying to do too much with PDF as each new version comes out.

Thomas - no problem here with anything you said! I agree with your view on the PDF thing going nuts but feel a lot of that is the result of many government departments/institutions requesting additional features. Course, we all know that gets out of hand real quick.