Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with pdfs

Problems saving web pages to PDF in Firefox

game warden to the events rhino — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:51:21 -0800

When I try to print certain web pages to PDF in Firefox, chunks of text go missing. Why? I suspect this one will be speedily answered, but I've searched and searched to no avail. I've been trying to use Firefox's Save to PDF feature to preserve web content locally on my hard drive, but when I try this with certain blog posts, only part of the post makes it through to the PDF file, often with the layout completely screwed up. I don't need a perfect representation of the web page (though that'd be nice) but I do need all the text. Here's a random example of a blog post where the text of the post itself is missing when I save to PDF. Sorry if this is obvious. I assume frames or something like that may be to blame? Thanks for any suggestions.

Graphic designers: what's the mysterious missing link between a home-made PDF and a universally-printable ad image?

BostonTerrier — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:52:05 -0800

Graphic designers: what's the mysterious missing link between a home-made PDF and a universally-printable ad image? I'm a professional dog walker. Once or twice a year I like to place a full-page ad in a community theatre program/playbill. I use a font I like which I've purchased from Adobe, and I hire a professional photographer to "shoot" the pooches who are modeling for that particular ad.
I set the page up using a template provided by Apple iWorks Pages (like Word, only not retarded.) I slap the photo in there, create my clever text, and credit my photographer in the ad.
Last year I set it all up, saved it to a PDF, then sent the PDF to the people who sent the rest of the program information to the printers. I neglected to ask to see a proof. In case you can't smell what's coming; my special font didn't "read" (it looked like typewriting), the spacing of the body copy was wacky, and the whole thing looked horrid.
I asked some designy friends how this could be, when a PDF is itself a photo of the image of the ad. Right? They answered that if the printer didn't have that actual font, it wouldn't "read," regardless.
This year I set up my ad, put it on a disk, and took it into a professional image/design shop. I asked them to set it up in such a way that the dumbest printing shop would make it come out infallibly. I don't know what magic wand they waved over it, but my ad printed exactly as designed by me. Total happiness ensues, and the design shop won a fervent new client.
What did they do that I can't do? I'm using a Mac Mini running Leopard 10.5.7, if that matters. I don't have Photoshop, InDesign, Quark, or Publisher, nor do I wish to buy or learn any of these, just for designing an ad twice a year. I'd rather be a client!
I searched some former, tangentially-related posts, but none really named the thing that the design shop did.

Is there software that can organize and search PDFs based on their subjects?

Anonymous — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:56:01 -0800

How do you make journal article PDFs searchable by keywords, controlled vocabulary subject headings, as well as authors and titles? I'm working for a team of researchers that would like to share their personal files of journal articles and reports with each other. They are primarily stored as pdfs, but there are also some Word documents. They use Windows machines and the core group shares a network drive. They would like a more organized system to allow more precise searching and useful sorting. I've looked at various bibliographic management software programs, but I'm hoping for something that will be able to grab metadata (like pre-defined subject headings) from a massive quantity of pdfs (and not imported citations) and not sure if they do that, or if the pdfs have that information embedded in them. I've also considered document management systems, but wonder if it might be overkill. We also have limited IT support. Although if I could find one that generates RSS feeds for the different researchers, based on the subjects of new articles added, that would be amazing, and also something they would very much like. Automatically generated hierarchical folders would be nice, unless I could convince them that search tools make that unnecessary. Will Owl, Alfresco, KnowledgeTree, OpenKM, or Sharepoint work? How difficult is it to implement these systems? Is it better to just stick to bibliographic software like Zotero, Aigaion, or Connotea? Which one of these would be ideal?

Posting anonymously since I'd rather be discreet for my employer's sake.

Looking for some color in a black and white world

Mael Oui — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:33:30 -0800

It seems that I have completely run out of black ink, but I have a new color cartridge in my HP All-in-one printer (F2120). I want to print out pdfs of crossword puzzles that I've downloaded from the internet. The pdfs only utilize black ink. I want to print them out in a color (red, green, blue.. I don't care), so that the puzzle and clues all appear in the same (non-black) color. I'm using Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional for Win2k. Is there any easy way to do this? Is it even possible? Have I provided enough info?

linking pdfs

Diachronic — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:39:41 -0800

I am compiling a dvd with 40 volumes of a journal (in PDF format) on it for distribution to members of my state archaeological association. I have a master introduction with table of contents and hyperlinks to the individual PDF files. I am having trouble making the links work. What's the best way to do this? I tried using an html file for the intro. This works OK with firefox but other browsers don't open the pdfs.

I saved the intro as a pdf, and that worked fine on my computer (though it appended the linked pdf to the open one and forces me to open numerous files at once, or quit and reopen the TOC), but when a friend tried it all that happened was that the pdf was downloaded to the desktop.

Not trying to do anything fancy, but it would be nice to be able to link from the TOC to the individual files without going to the directory and opening individual files...

Thanks for your help.

How to organize scientific article pdfs?

JustWandering — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:21:16 -0800

Scientists: What's the best and simplest way to organize, annotate, and take notes from scientific journal articles on a PC? I'm starting a new project and ready for a new system that doesn't require four programs or being unable to find something when I can't remember the title or author. How do you organize your references, pdfs, and notes? I used to print articles out, take notes in a physical notebook, and use EndNote for general bibliography and light searching uses. However, I found that I often couldn't find again what I wanted. Connecting required information with reference with notes with actual hard-or-digital copy of the article required multiple programs and notebooks, time, and frustration. Help me find something better?

What I want is a system that will allow me to:
1) use tags rather than folders to organize and search articles by subject matter.
2) allow easy searching/browsing by author, journal, date published, etc. (so, something that will easily extract and store the PubMed details of each item).
3) (ideally) allow me to search, annotate, take notes on, and read articles all in one place or with minimal fussing with multiple programs.

The Papers program for Macs looks awesome and just what I'm looking for, but I'm on a PC. Is there any similar program for PC users? Lacking that, how do you store your articles, keep notes on what you've read, and make it easy to find what you're looking for later?

Printer so sloooow!

gilsonal — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:50:54 -0800

Why is my printer spooling so slowly? Recently ( I dont know how recently) I've noticed that instead of printing page after page, there is a pause of a few seconds between each page of the pdf's i'm printing off. it takes forever, and i'd like to fix it. help! The printer is a year old Lexmark E232. I've had no previous problems with it. I use Foxit 1.3 for reading pdfs and I've tried updating my printer driver. Any ideas on helping my computer/printer speed things up? I have several hundred pages to print on a regular basis, and a three second pause between pages is annoying and time consuming! Thanks!

Optimizing Images for OS X

valkane — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 11:00:53 -0800

How should I format pdfs for best viewing in OS X's screen saver slide show? I'm converting full broadsheet pdfs of a newspaper (12" x 20" at 266 dpi) into jpgs (or png's or tiff's) to be displayed on a Mac. No matter what screen resolution or image size I use, the type pixelates out when it gets displayed in the slide show screen saver.

Does anyone know of an optimum format &/or formula to use for the slide show default settings? Also, I want to keep the "ken burns effect" pans and scans of the newspaper pages (if possible).

Mac Classis Acrobat Distiller/PDF ERROR 5751, how to fix?

ParisParamus — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:21:46 -0800

Acrobat Distiller/PDF Panic (Mac Classic 9.2) I can take Word files, and create .PS files, and then distill them into PDFs, but when I try to do it all in one step, ERROR 5751. Since the Web is of no help, is there someone here who can help?

Please look over my game manual and suggest edits, changes to organization, etc

kavasa — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:53:19 -0800

Document design people!
Some months ago, I completed the first fairly rough draft of a (unofficial) gigantic manual for a half-life mod called Natural Selection. My manual sucks! I need help! (+) 1. If you're in the know about these sorts of things, you will spot several factual errors in the manual. I know, I'll be fixing them soonish. This has been, however, a 19 credit semester and I had no time.

2. ADOBE ACROBAT SUCKS. Or if it doesn't, I have no idea how to make it do what I want. The bookmarks aren't very cool at all, and anchors seem to go to the nearest page rather than exact lines. Or something. Basically I'd like to have stuff where people could click on a mysterious word, or maybe a little icon next to a mysterious word, and transport them to the relevant section of the glossary and back again. So either PDF tips + tricks with Acrobat 6.0 would be handy, or suggestions for an alternate format.

3. Organization. How's mine? How could it be better? This ties into the format.

4. Graphic design. This thing is ugly. How do I fix the ugly? I am clueless, and have access to an old copy of Photoshop 5.0 through work.

Thanks in advance!

Easy Book Scanning

geoff. — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 12:06:29 -0800

Book scanning. I don't like carrying around several pounds of college textbooks with me when I have a perfectly good laptop. I want to create really nice scans of my books, preferably in PDF so I can search through them and bookmark them. I don't want to rip open the bindings. Google looks like they have the ability to make nice scans. There are countless articles on robotic book scanning, and places to send in your books for PDF conversion. I need to be able to do this at home. Buying a scanner and using that is too laborious (scan, preview, adjust, save, flip page, start over, convert to PDF). I don't need anything fancy that flips pages for me or anything. I'd like to be able to just flip the pages and press a button to get a good scan that I won't have to fool with. There must be a system that does this for <$1000. I have a PC, but can obtain a Mac if need be.

Is there a script put a directory full of jpgs into one single pdf?

Grod — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 19:11:55 -0800

PDF question. I have a directory full of jpgs, each is a scanned page of a book and each is numbered sequentially (001.jpg, 002.jpg, 003.jpg ...). I want to convert it to a single document. I don't want to open the first image and then import and append each successive page. Is there a script to do this? I have both acrobat and ghostscript. Any pdf gurus here?

How can I convert PDF files into PPT on XP?

signal — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 09:45:14 -0800

How can I convert PDF files into PPT on XP? Freeware is always appreciated.