Comparing PDFs: Limitations and Batch capability?

My team has been using Acrobat Professional to gather metrics on added and deleted words between PDFs. The function within Acrobat to compare between versions targets what I need but I find that for larger file & page sizes it takes considerable time to process and even crashes in some cases. We have used this on laptops and in multi-processor server environments.
Thus I have 2 questions, is there a limitation on what the algorithm can handle in terms of page and file size? Secondly, does the capability exist for a batch process to run through multiple compares of PDFs as opposed to loading one compare at a time?
Any insight would help greatly!
Many thanks,
tmcgraw

If you are really only into finding metrics for added and deleted words, and assuming the PDFs are structurally similar (originating from the same kind of PDF creation process) - why don't you save your PDFs as text (possibly using batch in Acrobat Pro) and then compare your texts? even if the text export is not perfect in some cases, it will be imperfect in a compatible way between your 'old' and your 'new' PDF, so the text based comparison will still work sufficiently well.
Just an idea...
Olaf Drümmer

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Comparing pdfs

How do you compare pdfs

Hi,
Adobe Acrobat has the feature to compare PDF files, and you can download Acrobat XI Pro Trial version (for 30 days free) from www.adobe.com or upgrade your subscription to Acrobat Plus. Please see more information about Acrobat Plus at https://www.acrobat.com/acrobatplus/en/home.html.
How to compare PDF files:
1. Open your PDF file in Acrobat
2. Select "Tools" from right pane
3. Select "Document Processing" panel
4. Select "Compare Documents"
Thank you.
Hisami

Does anyone know of an e-reader app for the iphone that has text to speech capability? I have a Kindle 3G that can read whole pdf documents and books but I cannot figure out how to do it on my iphone 4.

Does anyone know of an e-reader app for the iphone that has text to speech capability? I have a Kindle 3G that can read whole pdf documents and books but I cannot figure out how to do it on my iphone 4.
All of the apps I have found on the App store either do not have the text to speech capability or if they have it they will only read a page at a time or simply read the text you paste into their window. I really do not understand what is so difficult about having this feature as Kindle provides it--though Amazon does not make the feature available on its iPhone 4 app.
Please help.

thanks. yes i am aware of the VoiceOver feature but it is NOT the solution to my problem. as you said, it is a solution to a different set of issues. i want the text to speech ability because i there are books i need to read but do not have the time to sit down and read them and have become used to listening to them read to me either by a professional human reader or with the text to speech software on the Kindle.
I think Apple makes the best audio devices but i am really disappointed in this inexplainable shortcoming. if apple can give us siri they ought to be able to design a nice little button that i can push to turn on text to speech while i am in a document, book, magazine or webpage. clearly it is possible as apple has added the "reader" button in safari to have web pages dropped into the reader format.
thanks for your suggestion though, it is what everyone suggests but it does not address the issue.

How to get batch job o/p in PDF format and automatically saved to xyz loc

Hi Experts,
Our requirement is we want output of background job in PDF format and this PDF generated should be saved in some xyz path at OS level.
Why doing this?: Business don't want hard copy o/p of some batch jobs but only want to save this output in pdf format to some OS location for future use.
We could achieve above objective by archiving method (but for some reason we cant adopt it).
So guys please propose solution in detail regarding above problem "how to get o/p in PDF format and automatically get saved to xyz location"
System : 4.0B
OS : Windows NT
Database : Oracle
Thanks in advance

Hi guys,
Thanks guys for your invaluable advise.I asked abaper to use the above report for pdf conversion. But I have another problem that o/p of batch job should come in japanese language but when i check spool or hard copy o/p its not coming in readable form (seems something like machine language) . I dont what is the reason there must be some basis setting to get the batch job o/p in japanese language.
Please help me.
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Why do vector lines appear different in my Photoshop document compared to the PDF that was created using "Scripts Layer Comps to PDF"? And how do I get them to look the same?

Why do vector lines appear different in my Photoshop document compared to the PDF that was created using "Scripts > Layer Comps to PDF"? And how do I get them to look the same?

BOILERPLATE TEXT:
If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand, such as your platform (Mac or Win), exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop and of Bridge, machine specs, what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far, what error message(s) you receive, if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them, etc., someone may be able to help you.
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

Compare PDFs in Batch Mode

I currently have Acrobat X Pro and I'm curious if it is possible to use a command prompt to compare 2 PDFs and have the output\report emailed or copied out somewhere for review? We're trying to automate some daily processes where compare PDFs from the prior day. Any suggestions are welcome if Acrobat Pro X is unable to accomplish this? Thanks!
Michael

This happens on Acrobat 8 Pro on Windows XP too - the text only compare in side by side mode correctly traps the redline differences but highlights non-changed text in a very strange fashion.
It appears to be a bug to me as when you open the comments list and click on the highlight it appears as with a type of 'Indeterminate' and the annotation 'Matching text on page 1 of other document'. When I click on the comment I get an Acrobat error dialog box with the text:
'There was an error processing an annotation or link. There was a problem reading this document (14).'
And I can't seem to delete the comments (presumably as Acrobat is failing to read the comments).
Very irritating. Worse, Acrobat 9 (Mac) has no way to preconfigure the compare so a 2.3MB compare in v8 is now 13+MB in v9 and every table edge (in a 150pp doc) is highlighted as different. Otherwise the v9 compare appears very good for on screen in v9 except it doesn't degrade very well to v8 and there is no side-by-side redline mode I can see.
Will be running v8 for a while yet.

Compare pdf's

I have created some code in c# to compare PDF's in Acrobat V9. I was wondering how to programmatically determine when the comparison is finished. If you run the comparison by interactively a progress bar is shows, perhaps I can access this. I would also like to know how to access the the summary page programmatically to determine if there are differences. We have hundreds of pdf's to compare that need to be compared before and after codes changes. Doing this interactively would be painful.
Some code snippets so it is understood how I am attacking the problem currently.
            PdOldDoc.Open(oldFile);
            PdOldDoc.OpenAVDoc("old");
            PdNewDoc.Open(newFile);
            PdNewDoc.OpenAVDoc("new");
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So there are no .Net ways to compare 2 files. I have 90% of the comparison working and seems strange that I can't silently compare 2 documents and create a 3rd document with the differences.
Through .Net and the Acrobat.dll I can:
1. open the old file
2. open the new file
3 open a compare dialog with the 2 file names populated
4. *Manually select my document comparison type and Manually select OK in the Compare dialog
5. Save the compared file through .Net
6. Close all my Acrobat windows through .Net.
Is there no way to complete step 4 via .Net and the acrobat.dll?
Would another much more $$$ option be to go to a LiveCycle module and pay 40K+ for a module to compare a batch PDFs?
Thanks for any insight you can provide.

Save as PDF, HTML and CHM file formats

Is FrameMaker capable of saving in all three of these formats: PDF, HTML and CHM file formats? Would InDesign be a better choice?

The first two, yes. For Compiled Help, the third, I'm sure you know that the files have to be compiled, so no, and I don't think the source files for compilation are a direct export either, unless you can follow an XML path. Although the popularity of CHM is way down from a number of years ago because HTML is more portable, but that's a different issue.
If I were you, I'd look at MIF2go, a Frame add on that does support export to all these formats, and a number of others.
InDesign doesn't do this either...
Just as a word of unasked for advice, choosing your authoring platform by what it can output is a back-asswords way to choose a tool. Find the tool that suits the way you create documents the best so you get more required features to create your stuff quicker and easier.
Both the tools you mention and most other modern ones do pretty open-ended output, either directly or through filters or conversion utilities... there are always ways to massage output to a different format. So output is certainly a consideration, but it's a relatively minor one.
As for input tools, you're comparing apples and oranges with FM and ID. FM excels at book style documents with multiple chapters or files that share common layout characteristics. InDesign excels at shorter documents that are usually design-driven, that require hands-on layout tweaking, and it can't do multiple file management.
Cheers,
Art

PDF Markup and Filter Application

I am struggling to describe what I am looking for in a few short words.
Summary
I am looking for a tool or application that will allow me to manually review a PDF document and, as I review the document, highlight sections of the documents and tag that highlighted area. Once complete I would be able to review/process/filter the document based on the tagging, only showing me the highlighted sections.
Longer Explanation
We are an engineering company and we frequently receive extensive (100's of pages) specification documents (in pdf). The document might, for example reference light fixture and lighting requirements throughout the document. As I review the document, I would like to highlight the specific text and assign that section a tag, say - "lighting". In the end I might ultimately have 25, 50 100, sections tagged as "lighting", and numerous other tags with similar counts. I would then like to be able to choose "lighting" and see only those highlighted sections of text (not the entire document), in one consolidated view/document.
Does such a feature/tool exist in Reader or in Acrobat?
Is there a industry standard terms for such a feature/tool?
Does anyone know of a 3rd party application that might have this capability?
Tim

Not really. While Adobe Acrobat does have limited annotation filtering capabilities what you are stating would take a custom Acrobat plug-in created by a third party developer. It's not like this hasn't been done before either. The Accounting market had a need and some third party developers created two sets of tools called Tic, Tie & Calculate and CCH’s ProSystem fx PDFlyer .
Perhaps a third party developer has already done this or perhaps you would like to do your own. A word of warning if you investigate the latter. Acrobat plug-ins are written in C/C++ and usually take time to write and develop.

Adobe PDF installed and set as default printer causes incorrect pagination in Excel

I have come across an interesting bug. When Adobe PDF is installed and set as the default printer, Excel produces incorrect and inconsistent pagination--in my case one of the sheets is printed to two pages wide rather than three it should be (when Adobe PDF is not installed), resulting in 9 printed pages instead of 11. I have created a test case to reproduce it.
The sample file is located here: goo.gl/ZBiWj
The test case is here: goo.gl/6KbrO
Instructions are given on how to reproduce the error. The same error occurs when printing the sample file to Adobe PDF as a printer. Any ideas on how to resolve this?

Actually, the problem isn't really Acrobat or the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance at all. The problem is that Microsoft Excel as well as other Microsoft Office applications adjust their printed output based on the characteristics of whatever is chosen as the current printer. This has been an issue since the earliest days of Windows.
Each printer driver instance contains information about the specific printer including but not limited to page size, duplex capability, paper types, page orientation, output trays, imageable area (i.e., page size less unprintable margin areas), and device resolution. Based upon what Excel finds as values for a number of these characteristics, Excel will format the page differently. Excel is particularly sensitive to not only page size, but also imageable area and device resolution. Imageable area is important because Excel is attempting to avoid printing at all on parts of the page that your printer cannot possibly image; this is typically about one quarter inch around for most laser printers, a bit less for inkjet printers unless you have a printer that claims edge-to-edge print capability.
The Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance has imageable areas that exactly match page size for all available page sizes. Thus, Excel formats on the basis that it can print all the way to edge of the page unless you set margins otherwise. It also defaults to 1200dpi. Change the device resolution to another setting via printer properties and you will likely see relayout. These same issues occur with Word and to some degree with PowerPoint.
There is absolutely nothing that Adobe can do about this. The same problem is exhibited if you have access to multiple different printer models with different characteristics on your computer and you change from one to another, even if you don't have any Adobe software loaded on your system. Users have complained to Microsoft for years about this issue, but they typically have not considered this an important issue to tackle (ribbon user interfaces are obviously much more important).
Sorry, but not anything we can really do to help you here other than to advise you to always compose your Microsoft documents with the current printer being the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance, create a PDF file, and then print that from Reader/Acrobat to your real target printer. Alternatively, if you are very careful to setup the print characteristics of a spreadsheet to have large enough margins and headers/footers outside what would be the target devices non-printing area, you might get a bit better device independence - but don't count on it.
- Dov

How can I create a link to a pdf file and show it in the same webpage or in a new tab

It is no problem to create a link. But the formats are limited and - unbelievable - the pdf format is not supported??!
Where are the parameter (_blank or _self) to show it for example in the same webpage or in a new tab??!

PDF is media. It is not a web document. Your end users must have plug-ins and helper apps installed on their device to see PDFs in browsers. Depending on their settings, the PDF file may or may not launch in the browser window. On my system, PDF files download and launch inside Acrobat Professional; not my browser.
The safest approach is to provide a screenshot on your page with a direct link to the PDF file so people can handle it as they wish. See example: http://www.adobe.com/manufacturing/3dpdfsamples/3dsolutions/
Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics | Print | Media Specialists
http://alt-web.com/

Compare pdf:s in Acrobat X

I have recently updated to Acrobat X (on Win 7 X64) from Acrobat 7 (on Win XP) and can no longer compare pdf:s as I used to do.
Comparison of pdf:s created in Word still compare as expected and generate a good report with marked differences. However, the pdf-comparison I need most is of pdf-files created from XML-files and the creation is made in Documentum. When comparing that type of pdf the compare report does not include any marks on the differences.
Anyone who has any experience of a similar problem, or better yet, anyone who has a solution to the problem?

No. Starting with Acrobat 9 it is no longer possible to open multiple PDF files in the same window.

How to make a pdf editable and save for print

Hi,
I just joined Adobe Cloud and it's been a while since I have used acrobat. I have made a brochure that I need a couple of things to be editable on. See below. I need the two areas highlighted in red to be editable for different locales/people. My questions are:
A) I assume Acrobat is the way to do this. I also have FormsCentral if that works better. Can someone tell me how to make these two fields editable?
B) What program do they edit with? Acrobat Reader?
C) How do they save and output it for print?
Thank you,
John

This is not about what Acrobat can or can't do - and you just said they won't have it anyway. It's about the limitations of PDF. A proper solution is to develop (at some expense) a server side PDF generator that takes the user's input and makes them a custom PDF. I don't know if you can just subscribe to a service to do this. If you aren't going to have them use Acrobat, form fields are your only option. Be sure they (and you) understand the limitations and that they must use Reader (not one of the many other PDF viewers). Be sure you understand about reader enabling: many versions of Reader CANNOT SAVE filled in files unless they are specially prepared.
So back to your original question: how do you make the fields editable: with the Forms function in Acrobat. You may have better luck in the Acrobat Forms forum.

Changing the pdf profile of batch create multiple files in Acrobat?

Is it possible to load another pdf profile for batch create multiple files from Acrobat? I am batching indesign pages and I need to use a high resolution pdf profile with printer marks
The default seems to be low res rgb. Any idea if this can be done?

it is a custom Pdf Profile but basically an X1a with a few tweeks, When I try a watch folder with distiller it just errors out all the files.
Batch Processing using the "Create PDF, Batch Create Multiple Files " in Acrobat works but does not let me choose a pdf profile.
C

NEW! Import Fillable PDF Form and Collect Responses

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You can also use popular tools like Adobe Acrobat X Pro or Adobe InDesign to create PDF forms that work with FormsCentral.
To import a PDF form go to the “My Forms” tab, click the More button on the toolbar and select “Import PDF Form.” Note: FormsCentral does not support PDF forms created using the LiveCycle Designer (XML-based forms).
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Please send us your feedback.
Randy

I followed this process to import my PDF form. The link I have on my web page is displaying an error from FormsCentral. The link works but the web page is confusing to customers. The message is:
An error has occurred.
The form does not exist. Please re-enter the web address as the link may be misspelled.
When I saved the submission-enabled PDF, I could only save it to my computer. I then had to upload it to the web site server and created a link on my web page to point to that URL.
How can I get rid of the Adobe FormsCentral message on the web page?

Comparing PDFs: Limitations and Batch capability?

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