Sid Steward - PDF Hacks

• Simon St.Laurent (http://simonstl.com/) is an editor withOReilly Media, Inc. Prior to that,hed been a web developer, network administrator,computer book author, and XML troublemaker. He lives in Dryden, NewYork. His books include XML: A Primer , XML Elements of Style , Building XMLApplications , Cookies , and Sharing Bandwidth .

• Michael Fitzgerald is principal of WyeastCommunications (http://www.wyeast.net), a writing, training,and programming consultancy specializing in XML. He is the author of Learning XSLT (OReilly), XSL Essentials (John Wiley), and Building B2B Applications with XML: A Resource Guide (John Wiley). Mike is the creator of Ox (http://www.wyeast.net/ox.html), an opensource Java tool for generating brief, syntax-related documentationat the command line. He was also a member of the original RELAX NGtechnical committee at OASIS (2001-2003). A native of Oregon, Mikenow lives with his family in Mapleton, Utah. You can find histechnical blog at http://www.oreillynet.com/weblogs/author/1365.

• C. K. Sample III maintains 3650 and a 12-inch (http://3650anda12inch.blogspot.com), a weblogdiscussing the use of a 12 PowerBook G4 and a Nokia 3650. He is adoctoral candidate in English at Fordham University, focusing on20th-century American and British literature, as well as 20th-centuryworld literature, biblical studies, and critical theory. C. K.(Clinton Kennedy; no relation) works in FordhamsDepartment of Instructional Technology and Academic Computing as theTechnical Supervisor for the Fordham GraduateCenters North Hall Labs in Tarrytown, New York. Hisfirst computer was an Atari 400,and his first Mac was a PowerBook 5300CS. Originally from Jackson,Mississippi, C. K. currently lives in Bronxville, New York, with hisfiance, Kristin Landgrebe, and his pet Eclectus parrot,Misha, who just turned two years old.

• Darren Nickerson is a long-time member of the HylaFAX open sourcecommunity and the founder of its online portal: http://www.hylafax.org. He is employed as asenior sales and support engineer at iFAX Solutions, deliveringHylaFAX-based fax solutions to businesses worldwide.

• Ross Presser manages a small printing companysWindows network and develops humdrum in-house applications in severalflavors of Visual Basic. During the few hours he is allowed to relax,he voraciously reads all kinds of text and kicks back to the music ofJimmy Buffett. He and his Parrothead wife live in southern New Jersey(the part that has less pollution and moretaxes).

The term hacking has a bad reputation in thepress. They use it to refer to someone who breaks into systems orwreaks havoc with computers as their weapon. Among people who writecode, though, the term hack refers to aquick-and-dirty solution to aproblem, or a clever way to get something done. And the term hacker is taken very much as a compliment,referring to someone as being creative , havingthe technical chops to get things done. The Hacks series is anattempt to reclaim the word, document the good ways people arehacking, and pass the hacker ethic of creative participation on tothe uninitiated. Seeing how others approach systems and problems isoften the quickest way to learn about a new technology.

PDF has traditionally been seen as a pretty unhackable technology.Most people work with PDF using tools provided by a single vendor,Adobe, and PDFs are often distributed under the assumption thatpeople cant (or at least wont)modify them. In practice, however, PDF tools offer an enormous amountof flexibility and support a wide range of ways to read, share,manage, and create PDF files. Even if you only read PDF files, thereare lots of ways to improve your reading experience, many of whichare not obvious. Creators of PDF files can similarly do much morethan just print to PDF; they cangenerate files with custom content or create forms for two-waycommunications.