Adobe Acrobat 3.0 Available on DARKWING, GLADSTONE… Create PDF Files for your Web Page

Now that Adobe Acrobat 3.0 has been installed on DARKWING and GLADSTONE, you'll be able to easily translate your documents into Portable Document Format (PDF) for web publication.

PDF is useful for distributing documents and forms with heavy formatting and graphics because the document will look the same on all computer platforms, provided the viewer has installed the Acrobat Reader client. Acrobat Reader is available free from Adobe's web site at http://www.adobe.com/

Acrobat's main components are Acrobat Distiller (distill) and Exchange (acroexch). Distiller converts Postscript files to PDF, while Exchange allows you to add hypertext links, rearrange pages, and perform other editorial changes to PDF documents.

Converting a Postscript file to PDF format is simple. For example, to convert a Postscript file named "inputfile.ps" to PDF, you'd type

% distill inputfile.ps

at the % prompt. Acrobat then automatically performs the conversion for you.

The first time you distill a document, you'll be asked whether you want to use the new features available in Acrobat 3.0. Your answer is saved in a preference file so you won't have to answer this question every time you use Distiller. However, if you wish, you can always override this setting by using command line options.

To see a summary of individual command options, type the command followed by the phrase "-help-all," e.g.,

% distill -help all

Need More Information?

Complete documentation on PDF file conversion is available on the web in PDF format at http://www.uoregon.edu/acrobat/ If you have questions about Acrobat, feel free to contact Hans Kuhn (hak@oregon.uoregon.edu, 346-1714).