Conditional styles in a PDF?

May 9, 2008 9:46 AM

Can I create a PDF that shows one footer when displayed on screen, but prints a (slightly) different one?

Several of my clients receive invoices in PDF format from me. For many years, I have included the line "Paper comes from trees. Do you really need to print me?" as the footer of all invoices. More than one client has commented favorably about it (and at least one has responded by printing fewer invoices -- both mine and other vendors')

I'd like it if printed copies of this said "Did you really need to print me?" or "Please recycle me when you're done.", but I'd like the on-screen message to remain the same.

(How) can I do this? I use Acrobat 8 Pro from CS3, on XP, to generate the PDFs. Most, but not all, of my clients read them with Adobe Reader, on XP and Vista, but I'd like it to work (or at least reasonably degrade) with the OS X PDF display tools as well.

posted by toxic to technology (3 comments total)

I hope not.

If a PDF form can have a "print this page" widget, you might make that widget also change the footer. But that wouldn't stop people from using their reader's "print" menu option.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:09 AM on May 9

If you print a PDF file that contains layers, only the content that is visible on-screen is printed. Acrobat Professional, however, lets you specify which layer is visible and printable.
---
show-state - initial state of the layer. Use value true if you want it to be visible (printable) and false if vise versa. Possible values:

* true - the layer is visible for both print and view (default)
* false - the layer is invisible for print and view
* view:[true|false];print:[true|false] - separate settings for view and print

So it appears that you can create a viewable but not printable layer as well as a printable but not viewable layer. How to actually do that in Acrobat, I have no idea.
posted by trevyn at 10:20 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]

Acrobat 8 will let you set up 2 watermarks, one for display and one for print. That's probably the easiest way. Menu Document/Watermark/Add.../appearance options...
posted by and for no one at 10:26 AM on May 9 [3 favorites]