Why does OpenOffice.org produce better PDF than Acrobat?

I recently tweaked the format on my Load Testing WDK Apps with Apache JMeter white paper. When I printed to PDF from Word I got a couple of undeseriable effects. The Navigator logo was jaggy. And my “asides” were in simple, not shadowed, text boxes.

I tried a couple of different quality settings in the PDF options but I didn’t see a difference. Just for fun I decided to import the Word doc into OpenOffice 2.0. Without changing a thing I then immediately did an Export to PDF.

The resulting PDF had none of the problems of the PDF produced from Word using Acrobat. The logo was sharp and the text boxes were shadowed. Plus, I reaped a couple of bonus benefits. In Word, some of my wide screenshots were being cropped and likewise in the resulting PDF. In the OO-generated PDF my screenshots were automatically scaled to fit the page. Another nice bonus was that the PDF was about 1/3rd the size of the PDF produced by Acrobat.

My eternal optimism tells me there are probably config settings in both Word and Acrobat I could tweak that would give me the same results–I just didn’t have time to dig. It was definitely a pleasant surprise.

Another take on XML eForms

Another take on XML eForms

The average person—for example, the HR person who wants to take vacation requisitions online, or the accountant who wants to computerize purchase orders—doesn’t want to get IT involved for one or two lousy forms. They don’t want to lay out six-to-10 figures for enterprise-class software for forms creation and a back-end system to support the 25 people who will use the simple forms.

[PDFZone]

I agree with this sentiment. It is frustrating that the industry still struggles to catch up to where Lotus Notes was nearly 15 years ago.

I love the idea of capturing forms data as XML but the XForms stuff I’ve played with has either been too simplistic for complex forms (Documentum Forms Builder), too difficult to integrate with back-end repositories (Adobe), or not ready for prime time (Chiba). All of them require more than business expertise to implement.

Captivated by Captivate

Macromedia Captivate is a pretty sweet product. I was looking for something to use to create a Flash demo of an application we recently rolled out. I took at look at a free tool called Wink, Camtasia Studio from TechSmith (makers of the SnagIt screen capture software), and Macromedia’s Captivate, formerly known as RoboDemo.

For quickly creating Flash files based on screen activity, Wink is hard to beat, especially for the price (free). Camtasia had a lot to offer but I had read some complaints about crashes and I figured Macromedia’s support for Flash would be more robust. So, I downloaded the 30-day trial from Macromedia’s site and went to work.

What an excellent tool! Creating demos and tutorials is as easy as creating a PowerPoint presentation. Most users will be able to jump right in without cracking open the doc. The nice thing is that it also has the capability to add quizzes and it can report test results to an LMS. So, not only will I be able to use it for demos and tutorials but I’ll be able to create some CBT’s as well.

For the demo, a colleague and I first whiteboarded the entire thing and scripted the application demo segments. Then, she created PowerPoint slides while I captured the app demo. I then imported her PowerPoint file into Captivate, wrapping her slides around the app demo segments. We briefly considered adding a soundtrack but we decided it wouldn’t work well with the interactivity we needed to include. We spent some time fiddling with the transitions, adjusting mouse paths, and adding some branching (so viewers could optionally skip certain segments). Nothing at all in the neighborhood of technical. We wound up with an extremely polished Flash file that can be distributed via CD, standalone executable, web site, or email.

At $500 the tool is the most expensive option of the three I looked at but it seemed well worth it.

Recent reads

Hey Ranger! : True Tales of Humor & Misadventure from America’s National Parks, by Jim Burnett. A quick and humorous read about the crazy things that happen to park rangers. The author’s sense of humour is pretty corny but entertaining. The first half of the book is better than the last half. The last half feels a little bit like filler.

Alone at Sea: The Adventures of Joshua Slocum, by Ann Spencer. This is a biography of Joshua Slocum. Joshua is a legendary sailor who had to learn how to find meaning in his life as the age of clipper ships gave way to steam. He refurbished an old oyster boat and sailed around the world single-handed. This was an informative book that got me excited about learning more about Slocum and reading some of his books. My only complaint was that the story seemed to jump around a bit instead of being strictly chronological. Reading this gave me an appreciation for how someone like Bernard Moitessier might come to idolize Slocum.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris. I think David Sedaris is hilarious. This collection of essays is similar to his other material in that it focuses on his childhood, his family, and the mundane details of life, in general. The first half of the book seems funnier than the last half. By the end the essays left me feeling a bit sorry for the guy. His family strikes me as full of people who are funny as hell to read about but that you might not want to spend much time with.

Documentum kicked off user conference today

Documentum kicked off their annual user conference, Momentum, today at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. I’m here with a couple of colleagues. Patrick Dawson and I are presenting on “How Southwest Airlines Designs High Usage EMC Documentum Applications” tomorrow morning. Tuning and performance is usually a hot topic so I’m hoping for a good turnout.