[blindlaw] Question

[T. Joseph Carter]

Angie,

Both Windows and Mac consider Rich Text to be a "native" format.  The 
operating system itself knows how to use and manipulate it.  On the 
Mac, so is PDF (though Apple doesn't provide an end-user tool to do 
so by hand.)

In Windows, when you go to print, the program generates a stream of 
data in a custom format used only by Windows.  You can save the 
stream to your hard drive, but it's really only good for printing and 
viewing in a third-party tool you can download if you want to.  Still 
it's useful to be able to use that on a laptop when you're not 
connected to your printer.

The Mac does the same thing, except the program generates a stream of 
PDF data.  Anything you print becomes a PDF whether you send it to 
the printer or not.  We have a little menu full of scripts that 
programs add for processing PDFs.

There are PDF printers for Windows too that convert from the Windows 
format to PDF.  There's no reason one of those couldn't be used to 
get the same functionality as our PDFkit scripts.  And we do have a 
few "virtual printers" as well.  I can Mail PDF or I can print to the 
PageSender virtual printer.  I get more settings if I do the latter.  
On Windows, it's the only choice available.  It gets the job done all 
the same, though.

Joseph

On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 04:18:48AM -0400, Angie Matney wrote:
>Hi Chuck,
>
>Good points about educating others as to which formats work best. One thing,
>though: You shouldn't need to actually print the document to run OCR on it.
>Does Kurzweil have a setting to let you open certain types of files? I use
>my OCR software of choice (Abbyy Finereader) to access pdf's that do not
>have imbedded text. I don't have to print the file; I just run  it through
>the software. Saves a few trees (grin).
>
>Angie