acrobat beta testing,acrobat pre-release program,adobe beta

Many of our customers in the Life Science industry have a real interest in planning ahead for new technology purchases.

Since PDF has become the de facto format for regulatory filings, use of Adobe Acrobat is nearly ubiquitous across the pharmaceutical and medical device industry.

It is advantageous to know as much as you can about new software that will arrive in the months ahead. With that knowledge, you can plan your budget, anticipate training needs and investigate how the new product will fit into your existing infrastructure.

What new features will be in the next version of Acrobat?

I can't tell you here, but you may be able to find out yourself by signing up for Adobe's Pre-release Program.

What is the Pre-release Program?

The goal of Adobe's Pre-release Program is to:

… solicit early feedback on new features and bugs in order to produce a unique and a bug free product that can deliver maximum results.

We need you to test the software in your environment and let us know about any bugs or issues you find along the way. That helps us build a better product.

A benefit for you is that issues that affect your use of the product are reported, logged and hopefully fixed before we ship the new version of Acrobat. Of course, along the way you'll get to see the whole breadth of new features in the product.

Confidentiality Agreement

Before participating in the program, Adobe will ask you to complete a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Before our official announcement, we need you to keep the information you learn about the new product confidential.

Do I really have to test the software?

In a word, yes. We would like folks to spend a few hours per week testing the product and reporting bugs and issues.

What does Adobe offer besides access to early testing versions?

Once accepted into the Pre-release Program, you will have access to recorded eSeminars, program notes and an online forum.

Our Product Managers are active participants in forum and are interested in what you have to say. This is your opportunity to have voice your opinion.

Pre-release Software: Caution!

Pre-release software, or Beta software as it is sometimes called, is by definition incomplete and unstable.

Pre-release software can seriously mess up your computer! Do not load pre-release software on a machine that is critical to your day-to-day work.

You'll want to test in a "safe" environment you can afford to lose:

• Use an extra PC which you can reload with the OS if needed. An external hard drive and cloning software makes reloading less burdensome.
  • Norton Ghost and Drive Image are popular for the PC
  • Carbon Copy Cloner is free product or the Mac
• Run the pre-release software in a "virtual machine" environment:
  • Safely run a unique Windows installation on your PC using VMWare or Microsoft's free Virtual PC.
  • Mac users can emulate Windows on their Intel Macs using Parallels.
  • Mac users may soon be able to virtualize Mac OSX Leopard on according to the Macintosh News Network.

Final Thoughts

As an Adobe employee, I'm sometimes privy to the new things that we have planned for Acrobat.

I can't tell you details or when future versions might be announced, but I'm really excited about the new features that will benefit legal professionals.

When you join the Pre-release Program, it allows Adobe to build a better, more stable product and it brings you into a special, close relationship with Adobe.

Posted by Rick Borstein at 02:22 AM | Permalink

Text to PDF Conversion,Acrobat Batch Processing,Batch Sequences

Not long ago, I heard from a large pharmaceutical company working on a new drug submission. As part of the process of testing the new compound, they had written over one thousand Visual Basic programs to process and organize data.

In communication with FDA staff, they learned that they would be required to submit the computer code for these programs for review by the agency.

As you might guess, the prospect of opening the code for each program individually in a word processor and converting to PDF was not appealing.

Was there a way to automate the process that would also allow control over fonts, layout and the version of PDF needed for submission?

Yes, this is possible using Acrobat 8 Professional.

Read on to learn about Batch Conversion of Text Files to PDF.

Changing Conversion Settings

Before converting files, you will need to change the default text conversion settings used by Acrobat such as:

• Font
• Font Embedding
• Page Margins

Acrobat uses its HTML conversion engine to convert text files.

Follow these steps to customize the conversion of text files:

Follow the steps below:

1. Go to File—>Create PDF—>From Web Page
   
2. Click the Settings button
   
   
3. Scroll down and select "Plain Text" in the list. Then, click the Settings button.
   
   
4. On the General tab, Click the Fonts and Encoding tab and make the following changes:
   
   
   1. Click the Change button to change the typeface to Courier.
   2. Change the Text Font to 10 points
   3. Check "Embed Platform Fonts When Possible"
      
5. Optional: Click the General Tab and set reflow options for the text.
   
   Program code often has long lines which do not break at margins automatically. You may wish to experiment with the options in this section to have the text line wrap. You may also limit the number of lines per page.
   
   
6. Click OK to return to the Web Page Conversion Settings window.
7. Click the Page Layout tab.
8. Set the Page Margins
   
   Note that the FDA's PDF Specifications require a minimal left margin of .75" and .375" for the remaining margins. However, you may wish to use greater margins to accommodate headers and footers.

Preserving Conversion Settings

You must convert at least one file using the "Create PDF from Web Page" screen for the settings to stick.

1. Click the Browse button to locate a text file.
   
   
2. Click the Create button and Acrobat will create a PDF from your program code or other text file.

Carefully review the newly created file and follow the steps above to make any changes necessary.

Creating a Batch Sequence

An Acrobat Batch Sequence allows you to specify a number of operations to be made to a file. The following section describes how to build a very simple sequence.

Organizing and Getting Ready : The steps below presume that you will put all of the text files you wish to convert into a single folder. The Batch Sequence you build will allow Acrobat to convert any documents found within the folder, even if they are located in sub-folders.

The following also presumes that you will place all of the

To create a Batch Process to convert many text files, follow these steps:

1. Choose Advanced—>Document Processing—>Batch Processing
2. Click the New Sequence button. Name the sequence and click OK.
3. The Edit Batch Sequence window will appear.
   
   1. Set Run Commands on "Selected Folder" . Then click the Browse button and locate the folder containing your source text files
      
      Optional: You may also set an output location if you do not wish to save the PDFs in the same location as your source text files.
      
      
   2. Click Output Options
      
      
4. The Output Options window appears:
   
   1. Enable the PDF Optimizer
   2. Click the Settings button
5. The PDF Optimizer window appears:
   
   1. Choose Make Compatible with "Acrobat 5.0 or later"
   2. Click the Save button and give the PDF Optimizer settings a name.
6. Click OK twice.

Running the Batch Text Conversion Sequence

To run the batch sequence, follow the steps below.

1. Choose Advanced—>Document Processing—>Batch Processing
2. The Batch Sequence Window appears
   
   1. Choose a sequence from the list on the right
   2. Click the Run Sequence Button

Further Considerations

Batch Sequences may also be used to create Headers and Footers that number pages, add watermarks and much more.

After creating a batch sequence, click the Select Commands button.

You can then choose from many different commands (on the left) and add them to the list on the right.

Posted by Rick Borstein at 02:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)