PDF Problems: Solved

PDFs can be a real pain. Part of the problem is the flipside of the solution. PDFs protect documents; they preserve the format and the content so that people can read them (and print them) without changing them.

Nice of you're the author and you want to keep some control over your work. You can be pretty sure that your document will always look like it did when you put it out into the ether. No pictures popping down to the next page and no additional commentary slipped into the text unnoticed.

But what if you're the reader, or user of the document. Maybe you want to lift something out of it and use it in your own document. (That's not necessarily evil -- it could be data from a government report, or something else that's in the public domain). Or you might want to cut out some paragraphs so printing it doesn't use up so much paper. You might even want to combine a few PDFs so you have all of the information in one place.

Adobe Reader
Or forget about all that stuff, what if you just want to read a PDF quickly. Adobe Reader is more than 20 megabytes just to download. (Plus, Adobe tries to slip in its Album Starter Edition for another 7 megabytes).

That's a big program. It takes up a lot of space on your hard drive, then it takes time to load -- and that's even if you leave a little bit of it in memory for "quick starting" it.

Sumatra PDF (Free, Open Source)
Sumatra is slick. It's simple, small, super-fast and open source. It takes up just 895 KB on your hard drive.

What can it do? I'll print the entire manual:

• open PDF files via menu
• open PDF files via drag & drop
• page up and 'p' for going to previous page
• page down and 'n' for going to next page
• 'q' to quit
• set different zoom levels via menu

Of course that's not a lot of functionality, but you'll appreciate it the first time you click on a PDF link in your browser and the file flies open in half a second.

I made it my default PDF reader (it asks the first time you fire it up). That way I can check out a PDF document quickly. Most of the time that's all I need to do. If I need to do more, I have a program for that too.

PDF-Reader (Free)
This is a step up from Sumatra. It's a little bigger (2MB), and it does a little more. You can cut and copy from PDF documents, move words around, move images and add things. Here's the catch: you can make all of those changes, but you can't save the result. You can print it, though and that's handy.

If you want to save your work, you have to upgrade to PDF-Editor. It's $80 bucks and probably worth it. I don't use it. If there's something specific you want to do with pdfs and you don't want to fork over the full $80, the company has a whole line of PDF software that does various things for less money. It's all affordable and you can try it before you buy it. (Incidentally, the company, CAD-KAS Software, has a whole line of interesting-looking programs, mostly in the $10 - $20 range).

So why don't I upgrade to PDF-Editor? Two reasons. First, PDF-Editor had a few hiccups right after I installed it. It seems to be OK now, but I want to use it for a while before I consider upgrading.

ABBYY PDF Transformer ($100)
The other reason is that I already own ABBYY PDF Transformer. The main thing I need to do with PDFs is convert them to text. Formatted text -- because I'm usually working with tables of data that I want to put into a spreadsheet. PDF Transformer does that really well.

Creating PDF Files
By the way, if you just want to create PDF files, that's easy and free. Some software (like Microsoft Office and Open Office) hve plug ins that let you print to PDF. You can also get little programs that show up like printers in all of your software and let you "print" your work into PDF. Instead of coming out of your printer on paper, they turn into a PDF document on your computer.

Cute PDF (Free)
You just install this freeware and the open-source Ghostscript converter and any program that prints will print to PDF. It's nice because it doesn't harass you about upgrading or hit you with advertising. It just does what it's supposed to do. You can upgrade though.

For traditionalists

Adobe Reader (Free)
This is the PDF reader nearly everybody uses. It works, it lets you do a few things with PDF documents (read them, print them, copy text (awkwardly and without the formatting), and copy images). But it's big and slow.

Adobe Acrobat ($300 and up)
This is the program that probably created the PDFs you read. It lets you create, combine, edit, and annotate PDFs. You can also convert a PDF to a text document (e.g. Word) with the formatting intact.

In Sync: Google & Outlook

I have a Cingular (HTC) 8125 that runs windows Mobile 5. I use Gmail and Google Calendar. Mail works fine on the phone, but there's no way to read by Google Calendar.

A couple of options have popped up. The most interesting is an Open Source program that syncs Outlook with Google Calendar. You can then sync your phone/pda with Outlook. Round about, but useful. Unfortunately, it's a little complicated to set up.

To get the sync program, which is called Remote Calendars, go to the download page on Source Forge. The latest msi is what you want. But wait!

First, you have to prep Windows and Outlook to run the program. How?

Follow these directions. They look complicated. Heck, they are complicated, but they're straightforward and they work.

The final step is to make sure the sync is going both ways: from Gcal to Outlook and Outlook to Gcal.

When RemoteCalendars works, it's great, but I've had a problem. The RemoteCalendars tool bar options aren't always available and sometimes the toolbar itself disappears. Other people have had the same problem and found solutions.

Be careful, though, they involved editing your Windows registry. I've done it a lot and never had a problem, but for some people it's led to disasters. The other issue is that one of the fixes seems to disable an Outlook security feature. BE CAREFUL!

Here's the first possible fix.

Here's the second.

Option 2

GCalSync seems like a perfect solution, for someone else. It won't work for me because it doesn't work with Windows Mobile, yet. But there's hope. It's Open Source and that means a lot of smart, public-spirited people are working ti improve it and it will consistently get better.

The Moses in Me - Parting a Hard Drive

I just inherited my wife's old laptop. It's a Sony T-150 -- small, light, fast, beautiful LCD, build in DVD burner and a lot more. Thanks United for cracking the screen. She got a company Dell, I ordered a new screen from Sony and we're all living happily ever after.

Just one thing. The hard drive had only one partition. I like multiple partitions. Why? Better organization, faster response, dual operating systems and, of course, with computers it's always better to change something than to leave it the way it was.

And it created a little challenge. Up until now I've always partitioned hard drives when I installed them. It's pretty easy using Windows, and safe since there's nothing on the drive to lose.

My new laptop already had an operating system (XP Home) and some software installed. Reinstalling it all would be a headache. Fortunately, there's software out there that lets you create, move and resize partitions without destroying any of the data that's aready on your drive. Or so you hope.

Partition Magic is the commercial program you run across most. It's about $70 and people say it works well. Paragon Partition Manager looks about the same, and it's only $50.

I chose GParted. It's open source and free. I don't know how the commercial ones work, but it's hard to imagine that they're any easier than GParted.

You just download the iso file from the GParted website. (An iso file is an image of a CD that ready to put on a disk. ISO Recorder is a simple, free program for burning iso files to CDs).


Simple steps to partitioning your hard drive

• Download the GParted LiveCD iso to a file on your hard drive.
• A LiveCD will boot up your computer do an operating system
• You can download the iso itself or as a zip file. They're the same except that the compressed zip file is smaller and will download faster. Once you've downloaded the zip file you'll have to unzip it to get the actual iso.
• Use ISO Recorder (or another program) to burn GParted onto a disk.
• Shut down your computer.
• Start your computer.
• Choose "boot from CD" if it asks. It will probably just do it.
• Set up Gparted (it's pretty simple - you mostly just click ok)
• When the program opens, select the partion you want to chance or the free space you want to partition.
• Right click to bring up a menu, or use the menu at the top to select what you want to do.
• Enter the size you want the partition to be.
• You'll notice that the program measures the sizes of your existing partitions and free space in gigabytes, but you select a new size in megabytes.
  
• Click the check mark to finish the operation
• If you're resizing an existing partition it takes some time, depending on how big the partition is. If you're creating a new partition out of freespace, it's instantaneous.
• When you're finished rearranging things, click the close button at the bottom right.
• Choose "eject and reboot" or you'll boot up to GParted again.
• Admire your work.
• If you want to see, assign drive letters to, or rename your partitions, use Windows Computer Management. How? It's easy:
• Right click "My Computer"
• Select "Manage"
• From the menu on the left side of the window select "Disk Management"
• You'll see a list and graphical representation of your hard disks and partitions on the right side of the window
• From the list at the top right of the window you can right click on a drive or partition to chance the letter
• From the graphical representation at the bottom right of the window you can change the name of a drive or partition. Right click on the partition or drive, select "properties" and enter a name. I choose names like "system." "alt os," "programs," and "data."
• Close Computer Management

A couple of notes.

• GParted has its own set of easy-to-follow directions.
  

• I downloaded the iso and burned it to a CD so I'd have a bootable copy of the program. That way I can easily reuse it on the laptop or other computers. GParted offers two other options. You can bootg your computer driectly to the iso file on the hard drive, or you can put the iso file on a USB drive (a LiveUSB) and boot to that.