quick question about PDF's

[Joseph Nardone]

Hi:

How would you describe a small-file-size PDF that includes text and font vector info as opposed to a large-file-size PDF that is made of images created by high-resolution scanning of a printed copy of the first PDF?

I need to specify what "type" of PDF's are required for inclusion in an iPad app and the last time the client sent me two different 15 page PDF's of which one was 150K and the other was 4 megs even though they were both almost identical content.

Thanks,

Joseph

[headkaze]

I would ask for the high quality version and optimize it but that might be a problem if you don't have Adobe Acrobat.

There is a "PDF Optimizer" in Adobe Acrobat that can effect the filesize considerably. You can optimize images using jpeg or zip compression, disable font embedding, disregard objects and do a general clean up of the document.

[MattW]

Yes, there is a huge chasm of difference between the PDF file content written out by different PDF creation apps. While writing my PDF highlighting app, I came across all sorts of crazy edge-cases that technically fall under the Adobe specs, but are a very strange implementation - lots of extraneous and duplicated data, weird formatting, and so on. And, like headkaze said, images should be compressed, but not all apps do so, and some apps store the full-size image even though it's only seen as a thumbnail in the document, etc. etc.

Can you post a screenshot of a page from each document?

[Joseph Nardone]

Thanks. I am working in a field where I can not modify the PDF's in any way after I receive them from the client so I need to specify the type of PDF ahead of time in a way that a less-computer-savy person can understand.

As long as they are not scanned PDF's I am probably fine but what nobody I asked seems to know is what you call a not-scanned PDF. A "regular" pdf?

I might be better off specifying a maximum size per page for the the PDF - like 20K per page for black & white text.

[MattW]

Originally Posted by Joseph Nardone

Thanks. I am working in a field where I can not modify the PDF's in any way after I receive them from the client so I need to specify the type of PDF ahead of time in a way that a less-computer-savy person can understand.

As long as they are not scanned PDF's I am probably fine but what nobody I asked seems to know is what you call a not-scanned PDF. A "regular" pdf?

I might be better off specifying a maximum size per page for the the PDF - like 20K per page for black & white text.

Hah! The problem you face is that most non-technical people have no idea whether their PDF is scanned or not. They just see text, and therefore it's a PDF document.

I don't think you'll be able to specify a size per page, because you could have a huge PDF file, but each page can be quite small - they just happen to reference a gigantic image in the file somewhere. And do PDF creation apps even have a metric for page size in bytes?

You could write a little app that rattles through the file and makes sure there's some actual text content in it so you could reject it ahead of time? That would be quite simple to do, although I'm not sure if it solves your problem....