Adobe interview: Diana Helander
Diana Helander, Group Manager for Worldwide Standards with Adobe Systems, talks about her work as the company's representative to the PDF for Engineering (PDF/E) workgroup that's been defining a subset of the file format aimed at the specific needs of that industry. Following the approval of PDF/X and PDF/A, two internationally approved standards for printing and archiving respectively, PDF/E is in the pipeline for international review and potential approval by late 2007.

TIP: Creating & validating PDF/A files
The PDF for Archiving standard had not yet achieved international approval prior to the release of Acrobat Professional 7.0, so Adobe used the draft version for adding support out of the Distiller for creating PDF/A-1b (minimal compliance) files. Beginning with the upgrade to version 7.0.7, Acrobat Professional now uses the final PDF/A-1b specification (as does Acrobat 3D, released in January 2006) for creating and validating standard-compliant PDF/A files.

Acrobat 3D Corner is live
The latest Tech Corner section -- focusing on Adobe Acrobat 3D and 3D PDF — is now live on AcrobatUsers.com. The topic-dedicated area includes case studies, tutorials, samples gallery, resource links, events calendar, a 3D-oriented blog and an "Ask an expert" area for readers to submit relevant questions that will be answered on the site.

PDF redaction tools & techniques
With a seemingly increasing need — especially in some industries and professions — to be able to remove or conceal sensitive data in PDF documents, there's also been a steady flow of news stories about situations in which improper redaction technique or lack of a capable tool has led to the unintended release of information. Adobe, the National Security Agency (NSA) and Appligent have all released white papers on the topic in the past few months, all suggesting more foolproof methods and products. Duff Johnson takes a look at the issues and best-case solutions. 

Failed PDF-redaction reactions
In recent news coverage of a Major League Baseball steroid investigation, the New York Sun noted another example where a flawed attempt by a federal government agency to redact -- or conceal -- information in a PDF document [PDF: 304 kb] unintentionally revealed sensitive details. The newspaper reported in late June: "In a technical flub that has flummoxed the Justice Department before, the computer-generated filing yesterday used an ineffective method of blacking out the text of portions not to be released to the public. As a result, the redacted portions could be easily read by copying them into a word processing program."

The incident in the high-profile court case and news story led to subsequent coverage by other media, including The New York Times' article titled "Prosecutors Can't Keep a Secret in Steroid Case," which includes a link to a  version of the PDF [PDF: 1 MB] document that highlights areas where text had been blacked out. At Slashdot, the so-called "News for Nerds" site known for heated, often meandering technology discussions, site inhabitants weighed in on the matter in a protracted dialogue headlined "More PDF Blackout Follies."

One Slashdot writer posits that "perhaps the technology is at fault. If the same mistake is made over, and over, and over again, many user-interface experts would start investigating whether it's the UI, not the user that's at fault. The argument is that the mistake is being made because the correct solution is not intuitively obvious." Another points to user error as the most-common cause of faulty redaction efforts. "The users are probably just not fully understanding what they are doing. The full version of Adobe [Acrobat] and Word are both great examples of applications that have so many options, tools, settings and functions that the average user of these applications probably never even begins to understand 50 percent of what is available to them."

The state of digital signatures & Acrobat
They've been part of Acrobat for several versions, but remain — for a number of reasons — underused and underappreciated by most users. With the obvious benefits and considerable applications of a method for electronically signing documents, the digital signature capabilities in Acrobat show considerable promise for greater adoption once certain obstacles can be overcome. Duff Johnson sizes up the current digital signatures situation and shares his opinions. 

Download: "Creating PDFs for Distribution: Key Considerations"
At the mid-June meeting of the Acrobat User Group chapter in Boston, Duff Johnson offered an informed review of important factors PDF authors should keep in mind when creating files for distribution. The presentation is available for download from the chapter’s meeting notes archive. 

Online Demonstration!
Adobe® LiveCycle™ Barcoded Forms software automates the capture of user-supplied data from printed and faxed forms through proven 2D barcode technology.
Start Time: July 24, 2006 at 12:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US and Canada)
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