RE: equations, acrobat, WP, other

["David L. Bridges" <dbridge9@idt.net>]

> Subject: Re: equations, acrobat, WP, other

Apologies for the un-timely reply.  I got hit by a Mack truck, at my office,
figuratively speaking.

> I tried to access your page
> http://maple.LeMoyne.edu/~BridgeDL/
> but the reply was that "server is not available".

It should be OK now.  I don't know what went wrong, but for a while nothing
was working.

> You are saving a word file in the pdf format. To my understanding
> it offers you a possibility of sending it to any computer, either on a
> diskette or as an attachment to e-mail, and be nearly certain that
> recipients will be able to visualize the file; both on screen and on
> paper.  The only software they need is Acrobat reader, available
> for free downloading from Adobe. Do I understand you correctly?

Yes.  Exactly right.  And you need only the $50 Acrobat software, available
for many platforms.  In addition to diskette and attachment, you can make an
HTML hyperlink on a Web page reference a pdf file.  Clicking on the link
runs the Acrobat Reader plug-in and displays the file (after a delay for
loading the plug-in and downloading the pdf file).

> That is not the same as turning files into web documents (browsable
> with netscape, for example).

Yes.  Not the same.  There are obvious differences in loading speed and
display characteristics.  Also, HTML is plain text;  pdf is postscript (or
some variant thereof, probably compressed and, optionally, "optimized" - I
am a layman on this subject).  This means HTML is directly editable with
anything that edits text, or with an HTML editor.  Editors for pdf are rare.
Adobe Illustrator can do it, though my foray into this foundered on improper
handling of embedded TrueType fonts, a problem that may now be corrected.
Trust me, you don't want to get into this.

> Your second message states that linked
> pdf files (not yet tried by you) can be as useful as HTML documents.
> Can you elaborate on this?

Ummm, maybe.  I *think* this means you can create a pretty fancy document
(using MS Word or some equivalent, embedding equations, graphs, drawings,
tif and/or gif and/or jpg images) and add hyperlinks to other pdf documents
and to HTML pages to end up with HTML-like hyperlinked documents.  I have
not had the need to try this, and I imagine it would have a substantially
different look and feel from pure HTML, but still I was intrigued by the
idea and filed it away for future reference.

Best wishes -- David