PDF : well known to you and your correspondents

There is great chance you already make a daily use of PDF files. PDF has been brought to you by Adobe, a major publishing software company. As PDF documents can be easily made, you can find them about everywhere : in the e-mail, on the Net, or on CD's. PDF is now a worldwide standard and you can send PDF documents to all your correspondents without risk. You can be pretty sure that, if they have a PC, they can read it. If this is still not the case, there will be no additional cost to them in order to do so. The only thing they need to browse and print those documents is the Acrobat reader that can be distributed free (on the Internet or CD).
Acrobat is available on Windows, Macintosh and Unix platforms.

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PDF is easy and versatile

Numerous documents on the Internet or on CD are in PDF format for reasons that are easy to understand :

• One format for all documents : from the simplest to the most complex. If you can put it on paper, Acrobat PDF can handle it. Thanks to the Acrobat PDF reader you really see the document on screen as it will be on paper : PDF is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). You can even zoom (up to 16x) to have an eye to the smallest details.
• One format for all sizes : from one to hundreds of pages. Browsing through heavy documents is fast. There is an electronic search function and when outlines are available you can use them to jump to other parts of the document by just clicking on the entries.
• One format for all resolutions : whether you want to have a low resolution (eg 72 dpi) document for the Internet (with RGB color palette) or a high resolution (eg 2400 dpi) document for quality printing (with CMYK color palette) that you can use with your Postscript color printer or give to a professional print shop.

Thanks to tools like the Acrobat distiller, it is easy to produce a PDF document from your favorite PC applications like Word and Excel or publishing tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Xpress etc. It is even possible with most of those tools to open an existing PDF document to modify it.

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PDF is integrated into Leaflet

With all those benefits, PDF output is a natural choice for Leaflet users. PDF output is just a click away and since it's the same user interface as the traditional printer output, you already know how it works.
Information about parameters specific to PDF is available through the online documentation or in the manual (By the way the manual is a PDF document!).

Any combination of pages can be specified and by selecting a saved PDF profile, output is straightforward and also fast .

Through the use of Leaflet Server and the appropriate API functions the generation and production of PDF documents can be automated.

Because Leaflet is cross-media and handles with the same ease output to the Internet as output for high quality printing, PDF is really an " all-round " tool.
The PDF option has become the favorite tool for :

• Previewing final output during document drawing and setup.
• Electronic document distribution through e-mail or on CD.
• Output to professional print-shops.

PDF is easier and cheaper to use

Now with more and more print shops switching to PDF workflows it is easier and cheaper to produce PDF files than Postscript files. Easier because you can control the quality of your work in detail on screen, even without having an expensive Postscript color printer at your disposal.
No more expensive and slow color paper copies wasted for document (p)review; just do it on screen with the Acrobat reader. When work is done, you can print it to any Windows printer. You can keep a PDF file on disk and print it several times as long as it is up to date, there is no need to generate it once again.

PDF can be shared and distributed through the net.

With PDF, what you did with paper, now you can do it with computer files at electronic speed. You can distribute documents as fast as Leaflet generates them. After "printing on demand", time has come to do some "delivery on demand".
Just send the PDF file of your Leaflet document to prospects, customers or reviewers by e-mail or on CD-Rom or put them on the net to be downloaded at the click of a hyperlink.
And because Leaflet uses advanced techniques like subsetting to generate the pages, your files will be small enough to send through the net.
It is possible to annotate a PDF document with electronic Post-It notes . Once corrections are agreed upon, high resolution can be chosen in order to get the final printed copy. Alternatively you can electronically sign a PDF document and deny other users the right to modify it.

PDF is the new standard for print shop workflows

Print shops are switching over to PDF workflows. Producing a high definition CMYK PDF file is the new way to deliver material. Just because Leaflet generates 100% of its PDF code without any other "black box" program, we can guarantee that PDF files made by Leaflet can eventually be processed by the workflow of the print shop you have chosen.
PDF files have the advantage that the contents of the file are human readable and can be "preflighted" before sending to production in order to avoid most of the common problems that could result in additional delays or bad output.
Numerous tools are available for professionals to analyze the content of a PDF file.

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A step further with PDF.

Leaflet supports most of the features available for PDF.

As a matter of example you can add multiple outline trees in your Leaflet document just by drawing with the outline tree tool. Combining outline trees and the search function allows to browse fairly easily hefty catalogues distributed on a CD-Rom, one of the cheapest distribution media available.

Leaflet supports also the making of page thumbnails and placing of annotations. All those features make the PDF files generated with Leaflet the ideal candidates for no fuss electronic catalogues on CD-Rom whatever their size may be!

There is more to Acrobat than the reader. With the full Acrobat license you can edit PDF documents by merging several documents, deleting, inserting, moving pages etc.

With this technique it is now possible to generate automatically indexes or table of contents with exact page numbering and to merge them in one single PDF document together with cover pages typically made in Photoshop or Quark Xpress.

If you want to customize your documents further or integrate them with other document parts there is a good chance your favorite DTP package now opens PDF documents. With some tools the separate elements (text, picture, rectangle, barcode etc.) that have been placed on the page by Leaflet are recovered and you can manipulate them separately.

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Summary of features and benefits of the Leaflet PDF option
Features	Benefits
Totally integrated into Leaflet	Output to PDF is as easy as output to printer. There is only one program to use : Leaflet. There is no learning curve, you will be up and running in a few minutes time.
PDF profiles to retain the values of the PDF output parameters	Just choose the relevant profile for the job you are doing. All parameters are preset, so there is no error possible. Those profiles can be copied from one user to another, so you are sure everybody works the same way.
Advanced PDF functions are supported like multiple outline trees, thumbnails and annotations	Using those functions in Leaflet template design (without any programming) allows you to create very easily a PDF file with all the necessary navigation tools in order to find the right reference in a few seconds in a catalogue of several hundred pages. In fact it goes much faster than looking in the paper catalogue. Since it is possible to have several indexes (or outline trees) with various levels of detail at the same in a PDF document, the reader can choose the one that best suits his search process.
Low definition output for distribution via e-mail or download from an Internet site	Switch over from "print on demand" to "delivery on demand". Allow the reader to print only the pages he really needs, communicate at electronic speed and avoid a lot of slow printing of expensive color proofs. PDF is faster and cheaper.
Advanced technology to reduce file size	While e-mail is most efficient, it chokes when transferred files are to big. The same is true when downloading PDF files from the Internet : small is beautiful! Therefore Leaflet takes care to put only absolutely necessary data into the PDF files it builds.
High definition output for high quality printing at the office or material delivery for the professional print shop	WYSIWYG output where you can preview on screen the output between 72 and 1200 dpi. Generate once on the Leaflet PC and print as many times with any PC. The Leaflet PC is then faster available for generating other documents.
No use of third parties to generate the PDF files	100% of the code that is in the PDF files generated by Leaflet comes from Leaflet. This is the best guarantee that whatever the PDF workflow your printer uses, Leaflet PDF files will be processed perfectly.
Use Acrobat PDF to merge several documents into one	A comprehensive catalogue with indexes, table of contents and cover pages can be merged into one single PDF document for efficient storage and distribution.
Programmable with the functions available in Leaflet Server	When further automation is necessary, PDF documents can also be generated in batch using all the API functions available with Leaflet Server.

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