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And neither one works in Linux/wine. When they clean that up i will get interested.

Now there is OpenOffice, PDFCreater and so on.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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This was in 1994-1995 .

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
 I love to cook with wine     Sometimes I even put it in the food

Oh, stone age then :-)

Back then PDF was the luxury format, super expensive. Amongst my clients nobody really used it. I wonder how they can still command >$400 for Adobe full Acrobat these days, with all this open source software doing the job just fine.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Acrobat still does some tricks that the freebies can't do,

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
 I love to cook with wine     Sometimes I even put it in the food

that

... and my clients aren't using those tricks :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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that

Like costing $400. I've recently gone through ten or so PDF writers and settled, again, on "PDFCreator". It's the only one that will print everything I have. Most won't print large formats or complex diagrams. PDFCreator does it all.

that

The only thing about PDFCreator is that it does it all as image files, it doesn't know how to extract the text whereas Adobe's expensive product does.

It won't be long before the open source community figures out how to do text extraction for PDF's if they haven't done so already.

Ermmm... that's a negative. Might have been the case with much earlier versions, perhaps. It can also embed fonts, set security, compress images, save in "fast web view" mode, much else, just like the big boys.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

that

I don't think that's really true. CutePDF, for example, creates searchable PDF files provided it starts with text in the orignal document.

The difference is that Acrobat Capture (or whatever they are calling it these days) includes OCR so that you get searchable PDFs (not without errors, however) from scanned pages. Essentially the scanned and compressed original image is overlaid over a (typically imperfect) OCR'd text page.

Probably slower and not as accurate. Good OCR technology is probably not free (yet).

It's also a bad idea to embed "tricks" in what's supposed to be nothing but a document.

Thanks, Rich

Amen to that!

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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By "trick" I was, for instance, referring to scan and combine capabilities, etc.

The way you whine over crashes and "Phut", I think you delude yourself about the performance of freeware... they're probably the source of your "Phut" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
 I love to cook with wine     Sometimes I even put it in the food

Much of this depends upon how the original document is structured.

If it's an image, you need OCR.

If it was created from PostScript generated by an old WP, you may find that each character is placed individually. A lot of WPs started generating PS long before they learned how to read the AFM (Adobe Font Metrics) files for the printer's fonts, so the only way to get screen and hardcopy layout to match was to place each character individually according to the WPs own metrics.

Nope. For example LTSpice is freeware. It has not crashed in years and sometimes I really push it, to the point where the PC begins to heat up the office. My mechanical CAD is totally cheapo, paid $10 at the liquidators, for a version two releases old. No burps whatsoever, just does its job. And on and on.

The only free SW that crashes daily is Adobe Acrobat Reader. Which has dropped my confidence in their paid products to zilch. I mean, if a company gave you a sampler freebie and it broke all the time, would you seriously consider buying any of their products?

Phut happens on circuits _before_ I lay my hands onto them. Well, last time a few weeks ago it was a *KABLAM*, so loud that the shepherd scurried out of the lab and wasn't seen back in here all day.

Often goes like this: Client calls, says they are having too many field failures but can't reproduce that in the lab. "Ok, send it over". Then, usually less than an hour after the Fedex truck left ... *PHUT*

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Ok, but I don't download and install any SW from source I don't know. If Acrobat Reader isn't able to work reasonably well on its own then that ain't a sign of good SW engineering IMHO.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Unless you have really small hands, yes.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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that

ps2pdf (ghostscipt) does text (and vector graphics) to pdf conversion, I expect oofice does too.

first page if ATTiny2313 data sheet as converted by pdf2text (ghostscript) with a little help from ICONV to translate the encoding to UTF8

Features · Utilizes the AVR® RISC Architecture · AVR ­ High-performance and Low-power RISC Architecture ­ 120 Powerful Instructions ­ Most Single Clock Cycle Execution ­ 32 x

8 General Purpose Working Registers ­ Fully Static Operation ­ Up to 24 MIPS Throughput at 24 MHz Data and Non-volatile Program and Data Memories ­ 2K Bytes of In-System Self Programmable Flash Endurance 10,000 Write/Erase Cycles ­ 128 Bytes In-System Programmable EEPROM Endurance: 100,000 Write/Erase Cycles ­ 128 Bytes Internal SRAM ­ Programming Lock for Flash Program and EEPROM Data Security Peripheral Features ­ One 8-bit Timer/Counter with Separate Prescaler and Compare Mode ­ One 16-bit Timer/Counter with Separate Prescaler, Compare and Capture Modes ­ Four PWM Channels ­ On-chip Analog Comparator ­ Programmable Watchdog Timer with On-chip Oscillator ­ USI ­ Universal Serial Interface ­ Full Duplex USART Special Microcontroller Features ­ debugWIRE On-chip Debugging ­ In-System Programmable via SPI Port ­ External and Internal Interrupt Sources ­ Low-power Idle, Power-down, and Standby Modes ­ Enhanced Power-on Reset Circuit ­ Programmable Brown-out Detection Circuit ­ Internal Calibrated Oscillator I/O and Packages ­ 18 Programmable I/O Lines ­ 20-pin PDIP, 20-pin SOIC, and 32-pin MLF Operating Voltages ­ 1.8 - 5.5V (ATtiny2313) Speed Grades ­ ATtiny2313V: 0 - 6 MHz @ 1.8 - 5.5V, 0 - 12 MHz @ 2.7 - 5.5V ­ ATtiny2313: 0 - 12 MHz @ 2.7 - 5.5V, 0 - 24 MHz @ 4.5 - 5.5V Power Consumption Estimates ­ Active Mode 1 MHz, 1.8V: 300 µA 32 kHz, 1.8V: 20 µA (including oscillator) ­ Power-down Mode < 0.2 µA at 1.8V ·