This is not strictly a Flare question, more a PDF question, but I'd be really interested to hear what others who regularly create PDF output from Flare think. I hope no-one thinks it's too far off-topic. My justification is that since Flare creates such wonderful PDFs with minimal intervention, Flare users must surely be well placed to set the industry standard for PDF output.
I guess many PDFs are read on-screen now, rather than as a printed copy, although I know some people still need printed PDFs. If you create PDFS that you expect will be read mainly electronically:
What are your "must have" settings?
Does anyone change the page size, or use landscape instead of portrait pages?
What page layout and magnification settings do you use?
Does anyone generate different PDFs for printed and on-screen users?
Is there anything else you see as important for on-screen PDF files, and why?
I got involved in a very animated discussion at the UK Tech Comm conference, TCUK13, this week (with another Flare user) about PDF settings. This got me wondering what everyone else thinks is best practice. I'd love to know.
Marjorie
My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dogs already think I am.
My settings vary with with document type. The extremes for me are datasheets (which are two or three pages long) and manuals which are 300pages+
Only on datasheets do I allow 'downsampling of images above 300dpi' to 'JPEG' 'High' quality - so that it won't catch screenshots, but will reduce the bulk of any photographs in the document.
For manuals I deal with the size of my image files with print versions in Capture.
On datasheets I 'include non-TOC bookmarks in the bookmarks pane', but I don't for manuals as my TOC is the key there.
I generate tagged pdfs because I care less about size of file than about accessibility.
I always go for: magnification 'fit page', because I like to make sure users see the extent of the page and get the impact of the corporate styling before they start using the bookmarks pane or search to get to what they want to read.
Because I like to start with the pdf fitting to page I always include the navigation setting 'bookmarks panel and page'.
For datasheets I choose layout 'single page', but for manuals which are left-right paginated it is 'two-up (cover page)'
Title bar is always set to 'file name' - but now I think about it I have no strong preference for this.
Interested to see what others have to say.
I thoroughly enjoyed my first TCUK.
Changing the page size is a good question. I have seen docs with a page size "optimized" for screen reading. The pages are almost square. The idea being that the whole page fits on the screen (and a double page layout fits nicely across the predominantly widescreen monitors in use today). I agree that most PDFs are read electronically, but I don't think this approach works. As a reader, I immediately flip to "page-width" view and I never read in double page layout. The scroll wheel on my mouse is easy to use, and I set pages to continuous flow. I also never read right the bottom of a page at the bottom of the screen. I read in the top half of my screen and just scroll to keep the text in that zone. From a writing point of view, shorter pages cause ugly page break headaches if the document contains many images. So I think it is unnecessary to change page size for screen reading. I keep page size at A4.
