Bear Flag Republic Radio Weblog

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"The folks at FinePrint have taken this concept one step further in developing pdfFactory, their newest offering. This product also uses a print driver to intercept the print command, this time to permit on-the-fly creation of PDF files. The user can modify the output in several different ways and then save the resulting PDF to the hard disk....

Beyond the cost considerations, however, there are several innovations. The most important is that output may be concatenated into one single PDF file from a series of separate print jobs, from the same or different sources. The usefulness of this feature is best described by real-life examples. The following scenarios illustrate a point that I have long made, and that is that one of the most significant contributions that Acrobat makes to a lawyer's productivity is its ability to create the bundled document: a single file containing output from a number of different programs, collected together for ease of reference and, to be sure, for printing it out when nothing but paper will do.

The first example is that of the legal secretary who is attempting to schedule an attorney's trip for an out-of-town deposition. She can visit the airline's web site and print to Factory a page showing the times of departure from Chicago and the alternatives for return flights, as well as a diagram of the aircraft's layout, then go to MapQuest and print out a map and driving directions, then print from WordPerfect a copy of the confirming letter to the client and a copy of a deposition notice, all in one PDF file which can then be transferred to the attorney's laptop or PDA or sent by e-mail for later use." [LLRX]

I'm posting this in part for Bruce, but I've been thinking about how we could make the best use of PDFs at SLS and I wonder if there isn't a larger application here for libraries. We collate information to answer reference questions all the time, so would on-the-fly, compilation PDFs be of use in this situation? I'm pretty sure you can take a web page and PDF it, combined with results from a database search, and maybe it would be easier to give the patron this type of printed file or even to email it to them.

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Another Big MS Browser Hole Found. Don't click that back button if you're using Internet Explorer on a PC running Windows: You're opening yourself up to a potential malicious hack. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]
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