Posts Tagged ‘Clone’

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Adobe Acrobat and clones


2008
07.17

We are getting so many documents now in PDF, it would be easier just to paste a signature in. To do that we need Adobe Acrobat or one of its clones. There are an amazing number of editors since Adobe allows anyone to create a writer royalty free. “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software has a big list. (Even Office 2007 with some obscure add on can now write PDF).

* Adobe Acrobat Standard. This seems to be all hat you need. There is a “pro”:http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html version whcih adds AutoCAD, Visio and Project conversion, digitally signing PDFs, comparing difference and an even more expensive Pro Extended (what a name!) that lets you make PowerPoint slides additions and embed video into Word. It is $99 for the OEM version and $149 for retail. So amazingly expensive for a conversion product.
* “Acrobat.com”:http://acrobat.com. If you just want to do a simple conversion of Word or other documents into PDF, there is a free utility on the web. Only lets you do five conversions per signup though.
* “Freepdfconvert.com”:http://freepdfconvert.com. If you don’t have a Mac, then there are many free pdf converters on the web. Here is the top hit on Google.
* “Primopdf”:http://primopdf.com is the free converter that runs on your Windows machine.
* “NitroPDF”:http://nitropdf.com is a clone of Adobe Acrobat. It is $99 for the Pro and $49 for Express and there is a free thing called PrimoPDF that just creates. Actually on the Mac, you don’t really need that is Apple includes a PDF by printing. We need the Pro version because it allows editing and adding graphics (like signatures).

I’ve used these, there seem to be a host of google:”PDF Edit” around that are more reasonable priced as “TUAW”:http://www.tuaw.com/2007/03/31/feature-review-pdfclerk-vs-pdfpen/

* “PDFLab”:http://lifehacker.com/software/pdf/download-of-the-day-pdflab-154095.php is a freeware program that also reportedly lets you add images but most folks report it “doesn’t”:http://www.macupdate.com/reviews.php?id=15818 work. It also crashed for me on a one page document, so I think it probably hasn’t been updated for the most recent Acrobat file formats.
* “Skimapp”:http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/ is also open source and allows annotations (but now so does OS X Preview). It can add circles, lines, text, but doesn’t seem to allow adding images :-(
* “PDFpen”:http://smileonmymac.com/PDFpen. Does all the basics. The main issue is that it died on a 300 page document in the review and you can add in graphics for signatures and it’s files are much smaller. The signature plus the file is 168KB vs 1.5MB for PDF Clerk. For $95, you create fillable forms. I don’t really need this but could be useful for things like being a soccer registrar :-) On balance, since our PDFs are short, we’ll take PDFPen. Also, they have a deal where for $75, you get 5 licenses, which is pretty good!
* “PDFClerk”:http://www.sintraworks.com/ is $60 and is uglier but you can also place signatures on. It also lets you clip out a section of a PDF document (for creating an attachment to a memo) and handles renumbering. The good news though is that it doesn’t crash on big documents but it does bloat the files. I took a 50K one page PDF and added a 150K image that was the signature and the result is a 1.5MB PDF. Sigh.

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Font common to Mac and Windows


2008
05.28

“Ampsoft”:http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html explains what “browser safe fonts” are available. These are fonts that are both on Windows and the “Macintosh”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fonts_in_Mac_OS_X. “Codestyle.org”:http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-CombinedResults.shtml has a study of what fonts are available on how many computers. Also, if you love typography, check out “Typowiki”:http://typophile.com/typowiki.

You can also be a little more aggressive and assume that Microsoft Office is installed and so are its “fonts”:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837463. These add some good ones like Bell MT, Franklin Gothic Book, Gill Sans MT, Century Schoolbook

There are not a large number of them that are common. Of these, the one I miss the most is for the san serif family. Namely, “Optima”:http://typophile.com/node/15685? which was also designed by Zapf in 1958 and then updated to Optima nova in 2002. It is on 87.60% of all Macs but only 3.58% of all Windows machines according to “Codestyle.org”:http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-CombinedResultsFull.shtml

For serif fonts:

Palatino or Palatino Linotype. The clone is called Book Antiqua and is available on the Mac if you’ve installed Microsoft Mac Office. This was designed by Hermann Zapf in the 1940s. 97.1% of all Windows machines have it. There was widespread cloning of Palatino according to “Typowiki”:http://typophile.com/node/16864? and there has been a family, so first there was Palatino in the 1950s, then Palatino Linotype which used OpenType and then in 2003, Palatino nova

For sans serif fonts:

Lucida Sans Unicode or Lucida Grande. “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucida_Grande says it is a humanist sans-serif font by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. It is very similar to “Lucida Sans Unicode”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucida_Sans_Unicode also designed by Bigelow & Holmes in 1993. 93.48% of all Windows machines have it. 91.25% of Macs. It is a large font which could be an issue.

Trebuchet MS. This is in both Windows (95.29%) and Mac (92.7%). It was developed in 1996 as a machine readable sans serif face. “Trebuchet”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet_MS is the deffault font for Windows XP title bars. According to “Microsoft”:http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FID=2&FNAME=Trebuchet%20MS it was created along with Verdana and Georgia to be screen readable. Trebuchet is supposed to be energetic (whatever that means.

Verdana. Both Mac (94.12%) and Windows. (97.14%). “Wikipedia”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana says it is like Frutiger and designed to be readable at small sizes. According to “Microsoft”:http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FID=1&FNAME=Verdana it resembles Frutiger and also the typeface found in the London Underground. .

Tahoma. Both Windwos (96.09%) and Mac. “Designed”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahoma_(typeface) in 1994 for Windows 95, it is very similar to Verdana but is narrower and with a tighter spacing. It is the default screen font on Windows 2000/XP/2003 and also Facebook. With OS X v10.5, it is not bundled with Macintoshes