PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools

In short: I've written software that generates and manipulates PDF for several years now, and this book still had more than a few things to teach me. Adobe Acrobat/Reader is a very complex piece of software, and like many Adobe products, mastery is more an art than a science. Right from the start, this book provides clearly written tips that make master the beast somewhat more manageable. For those who actually write and manipulate PDFs, the later sections will make your life easier at some point, I can say with some certainty. Well worth it for anyone who has a PDF-intensive workflow. Also, you can search for "PDFTK", one of the tools discussed in the book, to find the author's site. There are sample hacks you can read in full to get a better idea of the type of content. And there's of course "Look Inside".

I was seeking information on stamps, headers/footers, and the “libraries” for them. I used 2017 and now use DC PRO versions. These areas were not covered in my reading.... Smart author but I bought the wrong book apparently.

This book is a god-send for those of us who have to struggle with the often frustrating world of PDF documents on our computers. I was completely confused until I dug into this manual, which is relatively easy for a novice to understand. It has been a great help to me in find answers to problems I had with using PDF on a daily basis. I would highly recommend it.

This works, a rather large learning curve, but worth the effort.

Good book. Good condition. Came on time. Great!

The title is completely misleading. I purchased this book and software from Broderbund, after reading the reviews posted here at Amazon, believing the book and software would help me covert PDF files that I could not Save or print in its orginal format into ones I could. I can say for sure,in my opinion, the other reviews of this book led me down the "fools primrose path." Perhaps I should have read the reviews more carefully. Of course the fault is entirely mine.

This is an excellent book, but the title is completely misleading. This boot should have been called "Acrobat for Windows Hacks." The book is not about PDF's, but about how to hack or extend Adobe Acrobat for Windows from a completely outdated version. Today (2022) the book has only historical value.

With PDF files everywhere from web sites to help files, sooner or later you will run into a situation where you need to do something to a PDF file. For me the first time I realized I needed to do something I could not was when I needed to take one and convert it to a Word format so I could quickly outline the high points to study for a certification exam. After several hours I finally got it into a text file thanks to a web site that did the conversion. But even then I lost the tables, illustrations, etc. How to do that is one of the hacks included in this book. I wish it were printed a few years ago because it would have made my life easier. After testing that hack I browsed through the book and kept finding myself asking "You can do that with a PDF file?" There are a lot of good tips in this book from making Acrobat startup faster, to converting PDF files, to automatic timed scrolling for easy reading, to creating a PDF using Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, Perl, HTML, PHP, and Java. With page after page of coding, this is a tremendously useful book for anyone who wants to create or edit PDF files or change the way Acrobat works with files. PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools is very highly recommended and will be put on my shelf reserved for books I want to be able to access quickly.

Ich habe mir das Buch gekauft, in der Hoffnung, regelmäßig reinzuschauen und mir ein paar Tipps zum Thema zu holen. Und ja, ein paar Mal habe ich’s auch aufgeschlagen – und dabei durchaus brauchbare und sinnvolle Inhalte gefunden! Es ist gut erklärt, praxisnah, nicht trocken. Also eigentlich alles, was ein gutes Fachbuch haben sollte. ABER: Ich musste mal wieder feststellen, dass ich einfach kein Buch-Typ bin. Nach ein paar Blicken rein landete es im Regal – wo es auch heute noch wohnt. Kein Fehler vom Buch, eher mein eigenes Nutzungsverhalten. 😄 Fazit: Für Leute, die gerne mit Büchern arbeiten – absolut empfehlenswert. Für alle anderen (wie mich), vielleicht lieber gleich nach interaktiven Tutorials oder YouTube-Videos schauen.

PDFファイルを扱うとなると、すでに作られたものを、Acrobat Reader (Adobe Reader) で開く、というのが一般的に固定観念としてあるように感じる。 本書は、Acrobat Reader をいかに使い倒すか、そして、Adobe 製品以外（Microsoft Word に始まってフリーのツールまで）で、PDFをいかに扱うかを本格的に一般に紹介した、最初の本と言えよう。ここでいう「扱う」とは、読む、表示する、はもちろん、作る、分ける、合わせる、形式変換する、などなど多種多様な方法に及んでいる。 まさに Hack のそろった本書から、その機能を最大限、利用するべく、PDF の世界を広げていくといいだろう。

A very readable "how to" book. It sets out to show how pdf files can be used, manipulated, altered, made intelligent etc. The book can be read in parts: read first the parts that relate to problems or uses you have. Oh, and of course you need to get the software it describes to work. :)

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