PDF - highlighting text

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

Figured I'd ask this before the next update gets released into the wild with the (perhaps foolish) hope that the fix is an easy one.

According to Adobe's FAQ the Reader Software will allow highlighting of a PDF's text IF the author has set the document's permissions to allow comments.

So, is it possible to adjust that in the HL PDF creator? Sure would make it easier to spot those pesky Power Flaws that one might overlook in the heat of a combat like Check Required or the key item one tucked away into the notes section like the color of a particular energy beam attack: "the stun blast appears silver whereas the lethal setting is blue" so you can remind teammates that they shouldn't have panicked when you "shot" the Mayor. Naturally the GM knew all along since he picked right up on it when you mentioned how the silver beam lanced out. He'd never forget a detail like how the "special effect" of your power looks or sounds.

Anyway, just thought I'd ask. If you can't I'll just stick to using a highlighter on the printout and hope I don't miss something important.

No problem. Don't feel a bit of guilt about it or lose any sleep over it. It'll be fine. Really.

Keep up the good work,
Nigel Fogg, aka The Wayfarer

[Colen]

I can highlight text with no problem (in Acrobat 9 Pro), and after a bit of investigation, it looks like we'd have to explicitly forbid annotations to disable that. Is anyone else having a problem highlighting stuff in our output PDFs? As far as I can tell it should be working...

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

Originally Posted by Colen

I can highlight text with no problem (in Acrobat 9 Pro), and after a bit of investigation, it looks like we'd have to explicitly forbid annotations to disable that. Is anyone else having a problem highlighting stuff in our output PDFs? As far as I can tell it should be working...

Ah, but us non-rich folks who can't affort the $400+ bucks for Acrobat 9 Pro, and therefore rely on the free Adobe Reader 9, would appreciate it if you set PDFlib Lite to enable comments on the output. Right now the Document Properties/Security/Document Restrictions Summary of the generated pdf character sheet says "Commenting: Not Allowed" & Adobe's Webpage FAQ says you can only highlight using Reader if the author allowed comments OR if you also have Acrobat 9 Pro (& maybe Acrobat 9 - I forget) to activate/authorize the feature in Reader.

Nigel Fogg, aka The Wayfarer

[Colen]

Sigh... it shows up as "No security" in acrobat 9 pro. I had to install the free Acrobat reader on a virtual machine to be able to see what you can see.

I don't understand why comments aren't being allowed - our PDF output library lets us explicitly forbid "annotations", but there's nothing to turn them on. They're assumed to be allowed by default. I guess I will need to investigate this a bit more.

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

Originally Posted by Colen

Sigh... it shows up as "No security" in acrobat 9 pro. I had to install the free Acrobat reader on a virtual machine to be able to see what you can see.

I don't understand why comments aren't being allowed - our PDF output library lets us explicitly forbid "annotations", but there's nothing to turn them on. They're assumed to be allowed by default. I guess I will need to investigate this a bit more.

I appreciate the effort. Life is a mystery.

Nigel Fogg

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

Originally Posted by Colen

Sigh... it shows up as "No security" in acrobat 9 pro. I had to install the free Acrobat reader on a virtual machine to be able to see what you can see.

I don't understand why comments aren't being allowed - our PDF output library lets us explicitly forbid "annotations", but there's nothing to turn them on. They're assumed to be allowed by default. I guess I will need to investigate this a bit more.

Just wondering if you've learned how to permit 'Commenting' on the PDFs that are created of the characters? Peraps by not explicitly forbidding "annotations" ?

Adobe Reader (9 in this case) won't allow highlighting if the 'Commenting' portion of 'Document Rights' isn't enabled.

Nigel Fogg, aka The Wayfarer

[Colen]

I asked the authors of our PDF library about this a while ago. It turned out that unless you use the official Adobe PDF creation toolkit, which is not possible for us for a number of reasons, there is no way for us to allow annotations in the PDFs we create. Sorry

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

Originally Posted by Colen

I asked the authors of our PDF library about this a while ago. It turned out that unless you use the official Adobe PDF creation toolkit, which is not possible for us for a number of reasons, there is no way for us to allow annotations in the PDFs we create. Sorry

Hey Colen,

Not to worry, it turns out there is "a" solution. Not the optimal solution but it works.

If you are using Adobe Reader X (version 10.0.1) it has a highlighting feature. So, you save your character as a PDF with Hero Lab. Then you open the character using Adobe Reader X and highlight what you wish (you can choose various colors once you highlight the text & then right-click-properties) and once done highlighting, you can save the file either with a new name or overwrite the HL PDF.

Alas, you will have to do this every time you update your character in HL but hey, it's better than nothing.

Keep up the good work and thanks for not forgetting about this.

Nigel Fogg, aka The Wayfarer