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PDF, A De-Facto Standard No More

While you’re all excited about the upcoming holidays and can’t think of anything else but that gift list to get through, you can add one more thing to get excited about.

The de facto standard of information interchange, aka the PDF, just got one step closer to being adopted as a standardized format. Last week, the PDF 1.7 specification gained the approval votes it needed from ISO committee voting members as it reached the Enquiry “Close of voting” stage in the standardization process.

Before this certification happens though, the comments included with the votes need to be addressed before the format gets its official ISO standard tag—ISO 32000 (lovely name, no?). Even with those last few hurdles, the PDF’s standardization process is looking good.

Jim King, PDF architect and Senior Principle Scientist at Adobe Systems Inc. will serve as technical editor for the international working group meeting in January where the submitted 205 comments will be resolved.

On his blog he states, “If the group can address all the comments to the satisfaction of all countries, especially the ones voting negatively, it is possible to finish at that meeting and publish the revised document.”

So Is It Still An Adobe-Microsoft Showdown?

In the face of impending success, you can’t help but wonder about OOXML and where its standardization is headed.

OOXML was also submitted and fast tracked for an official ISO standard, but rejected in September. Alongside that rejection was the controversy over Microsoft’s active influence over committee members and their votes. The OOXML proposal then went back to the drawing board for revisions to take the negative votes and comments into account.

Boxing Animals Now, three months later, as its Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) draws near in February, OOXML’s standardization is still up in the air as its interoperability, the OOXML hot topic of the day, will be a major factor in the decision to approve it as such.

Making it even harder is that OOXML is constantly held up against ODF, the poster child of open source solutions. It’ll be interesting to see how “open” and how much “interoperability” a Microsoft format can possess in general.

While that issue unfolds, the PDF will more than likely get the ISO standardization without much drama. Has Adobe won this round already without even trying?

These are exciting times for the PDF format indeed.

How Has Web 2.0 Made An Impact On The PDF Format?

If you were to come up with a good sampling of trends you see online, what would be included in that list? Facebook, YouTube, G-mail, ebay? Perhaps Yahoo!, Google Maps and Wiki sites as well. Let’s not forget the infinite number of blogs, RSS feeds, tagging, podcasting and bookmarking sites that are out there. If you’ve listed these, then you’ve listed a good sample of Web 2.0 elements.

Web 2.0 is a term that you’ve probably seen around on the Internet, and perhaps a term that is a bit obscured. Coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004, the term encompasses a broad definition. But in a nutshell, it refers to the general trend in which the World Wide Web is going—a more connected and dynamic direction than ever before.

Broadly speaking, Web 2.0 places emphasis on the web as platform. Moreover, the user participation that enriches it, the networks that add to it, the tech innovation that motivates it, and the data that drives it, are all hallmarks of a Web 2.0 application. The result of such a combination? A web environment in which users can do more.

From just that short description alone, you can see that it’s a Web 2.0 world out there. And it’s seeping into the PDF world simply by influencing our digital habits and interests. For example, web designing tools are turning users into developers. If you’re a downloader, you’re a server as well. Desktop publishing software can make the user both publisher and reader at the same time.

These desktop applications, in turn, are then gradually shifted to web applications. Whether or not you’re an avid user of the PDF, you can see that these characteristics play a role in how we look at the file format in a different way, how it’s used, how it’s innovated and how it can be made more efficient online.

Web 2.0—It’s presence, It’s Impact, And It’s Influence On The PDF

Along with this Web 2.0 growth, Adobe has been taking PDF and its authoring tools and combining it with the web tools of Macromedia. This is forming an important relationship between the PDF and online content.

And this is why the PDF is gaining a foothold as Web 2.0 further develops. Adobe’s AIR is a runtime client that can render PDF, HTML and Flash content that can work external to the browser and as a desktop application connected to the Web while still taking advantage of your local storage and hard drive. This is just an example of PDF technology being leveraged for the web.

There is so much PDF content on the web because the PDF is accomplishing what other formats can’t do online. For instance, if you take a look at the main use of PDFs today, three words that might come to mind are: Interactive Document Processing. This is an efficient way of connecting both business workflows and the Web to each other.

The PDF format is becoming the interface between businesses and users. Just because of the sheer growth of the Internet and the wide user-base websites have established, it’s now convenient that tax forms be downloaded in PDF, or that applications be filled out online. Document processing and dynamic security control is what software and online services like LiveCycle Design ES and Adobe Document Server is geared towards–creating and connecting custom tailored backend systems with the client user.

Real time collaboration is now a major feature that enhances PDF workflows. The format is no longer a static virtual page , but a dynamic virtual space. This connectedness is also accompanied by hyperlinking, a thing to which other online documents is not immune. The format actually goes beyond the identity of a closed format and connects to the web and to users online.

However, what makes the PDF more unique is that the Adobe Reader is feature rich. Reader 8.1 can now support RSS feeds in XML format, a more dynamic and heavy duty linking than simple hyperlinking can provide. A Reader can keep you in touch with dynamic content that’s constantly updated.

Another aspect of today’s web is the “openness” of software and technology that is now becoming the norm for Web 2.0. It generates user input and contribution that drives the innovation and integration of different technologies.

Software manufacturing is becoming a communal project. The Adobe Mars project, for instance, still in beta status, is an example of this communal production. In one sense, Web 2.0 has made PDF users participants, third party developers and innovators all in one.

The user perspective on the PDF is changing drastically in that anyone can create one for any purpose, not just for those dealing with top corporation documents. This allows users to spontaneously create and share PDF files as you would normally email media or image files. PDFs are being uploaded and downloaded publicly on webpages in the form of documents and data containers.

In one form or another, the PDF is being developed in stride with Web 2.0 in mind. The PDF has gradually shifted its position and is a far from what it was three versions ago, the last version especially. If Web 2.0 is a vision of what the web could be, then the PDF format is a vision of what Web 2.0 documents should be.

Why Performing OCR On Handwriting Doesn’t Work

Unsurprisingly, OCR is consistently a hot topic in PDF and the PDF user mind in general. In paper intense work environments, PDF conversion and OCR engines have proven to be a successful work-around for transferring paper files into word processing applications. Thus, with the help of scanners and the PDF format, any and all types of paper work can be done electronically and efficiently. Or can it?

While trying to integrate and transfer every non-digital working habit into an electronic equivalent, there are still some things that just can’t be done with ease using the same everyday tools. For instance, what about converting hand printed/written documents?

Three Flavours Of OCR

Many of you have probably wondered why such a thing can’t be done with the OCR technology in PDF conversion products. Well, this is because OCR technology and devices are only capable of recognizing the machine printed characters and fonts. And seeing as how the number of documents that are being scanned in are usually typewritten, OCR is employed in almost all cases.

In other cases, there are documents that contain handwritten sections and/or fields that are used for collecting data—a thing being slowly superseded by the fill-able PDF form. You can create a digital copy from such a document simply by scanning it in, right? Yes. However, it requires a different recognition technology altogether. Using OCR, you can perhaps get maybe one letter to “OCR” into ASCII, if it’s printed clearly and written in ink that’s thick enough to be read. But that’s about it. This is where another flavor of OCR comes in: Intelligent Character Recognition.

ICR is a more advanced form of OCR that translates hand printed letters into digital ASCII equivalents. This version of OCR is primarily used for processing applications and forms on which you “print clearly” and place individual letters in boxes. This structured method of reading a hand printed document is one of the major limitations of the technology, but controls and reduces the amount of human errors that cause misinterpretations.

In addition, there are documents that contain handwriting—aka cursive writing. Can recognition on such documents be performed? The answer: Yes. The third flavor of OCR is IR (Intelligent Recognition), the latest generation of OCR technology to date. This is used to read unconstrained writing (text not contained in boxes) and uses the same methods to translate the characters into ASCII text. From my online searching, there are a good number of companies that provide full fledged OCR/ICR/IR solutions, which can be integrated with digital workflows.

Thus, if you’re looking to OCR handwritten PDFs, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The ability to do everything and anything with technology is perhaps the ultimate goal for developers and users. Practicing it, on the other hand, is perhaps the ideal goal for every worker bee out there. It’s sad to say, but there are some cases in which you can only do so much.

Able2Extract v.5.0 Is Here!

We are proud to announce that we have officially launched the upgraded version of our flagship products, Able2Extract and Able2Doc. It’s a whole new version on a whole new level with a whole new look!

New Able2Extract 5.0 Features

This latest 5.0 version is sporting newer, more advanced features that lets you convert your PDF into more formats than ever before. We’ve managed to pack this upgrade with a lot more conversion options. Like what?, you ask. Read on.

First off the list, Able2Extract v.5.0 now offers PDF to Image conversions. Our new PDF to Image converter can generate popular image file formats, such as JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, and TIFF. You can designate the output directory, set image DPI and perform black and white conversions.

Second, with Able2Extract v. 5.0, you can now view and convert Microsoft’s new XPS document format. Convert XPS with all the same output features and conversion settings by simply opening and converting the format as you would a regular PDF file.

Third, this latest upgrade can support PDF Forms conversion. You can convert interactive PDF forms to editable Word Documents which you can fill out, save and modify later on. This conversion feature has the ability to retain form elements, such as text fields, radio buttons, and checkboxes.

Our Able2Doc v.4.0 can perform the same PDF Forms to Word conversion, and can also support XPS to Word conversion capabilities. Ideal for those who are only looking to convert to Word and TXT file formats.

Go ahead and sample these new features for yourself. You can download the free trial, in either the Standard or Professional versions, and take it for a test run. For ordering, product , and pricing details, check out our site—it, too, has undergone a bit of remodeling.

Top 10 Reasons To Buy A PDF Converter

Top reasons to buy a desktop PDF converter software

When you’re considering whether to buy a PDF converter program or not, making the right choice is difficult, especially if you’re sitting on the fence about why you should purchase a conversion product or not to begin with.

You may think that since you’re not a heavy PDF user you don’t really need one, or that you’ll pay a bundle for one then rarely use the program, or that you can get along fine without one since there are other methods that can save you the money.

Well, if you need a little encouragement to justify the purchase of a PDF converter (and do away with the lingering doubt), here it is—ten reasons for you to buy a PDF converter (in no specific order):

1) PDFs Aren’t Editable

PDF converters are primarily used for making PDF content accessible. Major editing or analysis is what most PDF content requires if the format is used for transmission. PDF converters can save you all the retyping and data input. You can extract PDF content into other editable formats where you can perform the needed analysis easily.

2) Access, Generate And Work In Different Formats

Freeing up the locked down PDF content leads into another benefit that PDF converters provide: choice of format. There are many diverse formats to which the PDF format can now be converted. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF and HTML are just a short list of the common ones which you can generate. It’s ultimately up to you and your work.

3) Going Paperless With Your Files

PDF converters are a simple solution for creating a personal e-filing system. With a PDF converter, you can manage PDF files and document information more effectively. A PDF converter is a good way to keep down the paper consumption and keep your edited work in digital files with the least amount of hassle.

4) The PDF Is A De Facto Standard

What does that mean? By common and popular usage, the PDF is the format professionals turn to when data needs to be kept in tact while being transmitted for review. The PDF is being used across industries, and converting PDF content is inevitably part of that usage. Having a PDF converter will allow you to integrate into such workflows effortlessly.

5) PDF Popularity

Take into consideration that PDFs are now created not just by professionals, but by ordinary end users for ordinary purposes. PDFs are being used on personal webpages for posting documents and miscellaneous content that are impractical as HTML pages. And at one point, you might need to convert those documents in order to use them.

6) Repurposing That PDF Data Completely

Opening PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can perform minor editing. However, doing that won’t give you the ability to completely repurpose the content; PDF converters will. You can eliminate those makeshift extractions that constantly leave you frustrated in the end.

7) PDF Converters As A Long Term Solution

Admittedly, free online converters are great for quick, one time conversions. Free trials are also great for trying out products. Yet, neither are great for long term solutions. These converters are oftentimes limited, or will restrict your PDF conversions to being done online. With a proper PDF converter, you’ll have unlimited access and the ability to work offline whenever you choose.

8 ) An Investment That’s Worth The Time And Money

Time matters. The money you spend matters. Yet, if you don’t have a PDF converter, you’ll find yourself spending a lot of both looking for other alternatives, alternatives that are perhaps not the best choice. Buying a good PDF converter is a worthwhile investment. Even if you occasionally use PDFs for research or collaboration, it makes working with those PDFs a lot easier.

9) PDF Converters As Learning Tools

It’s general knowledge that you can benefit from everything you do. Expand on what you know about the PDF by learning how to convert one. You’ll learn more about the ins and outs of the PDF than you normally would without a proper PDF converter.

10) PDF Converter Features

PDF conversion features in most applications go beyond the basic one-time quick conversion, and even increase the quality of your conversions. Batch conversions, OCR technology, page extractions, conversion settings—customize your PDF extractions with versatile features and get more out of the conversions you need.

So if you’re now convinced and ready to buy a PDF converter, start looking!