[lbo-talk] Wall Street downloads

Paul paul_ at igc.org
Sat Apr 9 16:35:04 PDT 2005


1) Doug H., citing me, writes:
>>Don't forget that there is the problem that many laser printers have in
>>properly kerning pdfs.
>
>Is it a prob with non-Postscript printers? I've got a HP LaserJet with
>postscript and it prints just like the original PageMaker files from which
>the book was printed.

Sorry I don't know. I only know that it is a problem because I sometimes run into when printing in institutions or libraries and that I have seen reference to the problem on the internet (but never saw a fix I could use in those circumstances).

2) Carol C. writes, quoting me:

> I use a cheap but effective pdf-to-word converter ($20).
>I didn't know such converters existed. What is the program you are
>using? Who sells it? Are there others?

I use "PDF Converter" from ScanSoft which came out a couple of years ago and is sold in the usual places (Staples, CompUSA, etc) as the standard. It usually works fine for my *personal* use but has flaws handling complicated graphic mixes, so I would think it is less useful for a professional presentational use. ScanSoft now also has a second version that is maybe another $20 and also creates PDFs. I think a few years ago there were some small other companies - can't recall the names but I imagine that by now they have been crushed.

Important caveat: this works only for your usual PDFs that have a text layer (I imagine like Doug's downloads). For PDFs where the text is just a pure graphic layer (sort of like a JPEG) including those provided by JSTOR, one has to turn to the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) programs like the type that work with scanners. Cheap ones come with the scanner; better ones like AABBY or OmniScan cost maybe $150.

Feel free to contact me offlist if I can help more.

Paul



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