Downloading PDF forms from a website

[Josie]

Hi all...I've been given a task by hubby to get a website up and running, despite the fact taht I'm just a ultra green neophyte.. :\

On this website, they want people to be able to upload and download scanned ads, word processing documents, etc. I'm thinking that if everyone uses Adobe Reader, then everyone will be able to get and access a free program. So here are my two main questions for now. I'm sure the future will bring only more! :D ....

1. Is using Reader the best way to have people exchange forms? If not, what is better - and FREE?

2. How do I let them upload and download each other's forms from the website?

Thanks in advance!

[Rich]

Although I believe Acrobat is an excellent publishing tool (when you can't use plain html--which you usually can :) ), it doesn't make a very effective document exchange tool for the masses.

Even though the reader is free, to get the original document into pdf format requires the distiller, which is not free.

Of course, you can manually convert all the submissions that you receive and publish them. However, if you site becomes a large success, you can easily keep a few dozen people busy doing the manual publishing.

Rich

[Josie]

Originally posted by Rich:
Although I believe Acrobat is an excellent publishing tool (when you can't use plain html--which you usually can :) ), it doesn't make a very effective document exchange tool for the masses.
How do you publish with "plain html" to a website that others will download?

Even though the reader is free, to get the original document into pdf format requires the distiller, which is not free.
You mean you can't just scan an image and upload it, even if it's a document?

Of course, you can manually convert all the submissions that you receive and publish them. However, if you site becomes a large success, you can easily keep a few dozen people busy doing the manual publishing.

Does "manually convert" mean that I type the documents they send me? No thanks! :y

~Joanne

[dank]

you can't just scan an image and upload it, even if it's a document?
You could, but it wouldn't work very well. For text to come out with any clarity, you would probably go with .gif (jpeg makes for blurry text), but that would make for unweildy file sizes. I don't think there are any graphics formats that would balance size and clarity in a good enough manner to be useful for document sharing.

A better route would be to keep the documents simple and format them with some basic HTML, i.e. line breaks and bold tags, when submitted.

Dan

[Josie]

Originally posted by dank:

...for document sharing.

A better route would be to keep the documents simple and format them with some basic HTML, i.e. line breaks and bold tags, when submitted.

Dan

Well, gee...I don't know. This will be used by non-html kind of people. I don't think they'll know how to upload anything in html. Word or Works is what I'm pretty sure they'll be using.

~jo

[dank]

I was thinking something on your end to auto-format the submitted text. This could be done for paragraph markers, but any fancier formatting would require giving them some tags to work with.

Dan

[sheila]

I've distributed quite a number of documents via my website. I do this as a resource to my students. I teach math (and sometimes a bit of computer programming), so there is the difficulty that goes with distributing properly formatted equations and expressions along with the proper symbols. Plain ol' HTML just doesn't cut it, there.

Here is what I have done:

I have distributed documents as: .pdf, MS Word documents, HTML, scanned as .gif images, and plain text.

Here is an example of something I distributed as a scanned gif image:
http://www.thinkspot.net/csumath/Quiz1/Quiz1Page1.html
(caution...some dead links on that page...I pulled it out of an old archive.)

This was a solution/answer-key for a quiz. I wrote the solution key out by hand, so the only choice in that case was to scan it. You can see the quality for yourself. It's good enough for students to use as an answer key to check their work, but I wouldn't want to use something of that quality to publish additional work from. As others have mentioned: the quality of the document goes down when you scan and convert it to an image.

Also, scanning wasn't exactly a quick task. And I usually had to do post-processing on the images (Re-focusing, cropping, resizing and so on..), plus make an HTML page to embed the image in. (Of course, this could probably be scripted if you were going to do it often.)

From the end-user's point of view, I think that distributing the documents in Adobe's .pdf format is an excellent choice, as long as they won't want to do any editting of the document itself, and will be satisfied with the end product as-is. (I was given access to some worksheets for my computer science students this past year, and they were in .pdf format. Fairly nice worksheets, given that they were ready to use and free, but I would've liked to tweak them a bit, and I didn't have the multi-hundred dollar software to do that with.)

However, if you expect your submitters to be submitting in MS Word/Works format, primarily, there is the task of getting it into .pdf format. Either you have to purchase the software to do that (as already mentioned), and spend the time converting all the documents. (When they said, "manually", they didn't mean that you would have to type the documents yourself, but you wouldn't be able to automate the process either...i.e. have the people upload the docs in MS Word format and somehow your website has scripts that convert it into .pdf format...at least, I don't think that would be possible?)

I have seen other software that purports to convert MS Word to LaTeX format (which I have not tried out myself), and if you have a document in LaTeX format, there is free software that will convert it to .pdf format, but again...the time for you or some of your staff to manually do this can add up.

I have also distributed documents in MSWord format. That usually goes pretty well. Most of the people interested in the document have MS Word. For those who don't, I provide a link to the freely downloadable MS Word Viewer. Unfortunately, that only runs on PCs, so still some people are out in the cold. I would usually use MS Word to convert to HTML and put both formats on the web page. (For producing math formulas in MS Word I use Math Type (http://www.mathtype.com/) and when I convert a document with these math formulas to HTML, MS Word automatically creates little .gif images of all the equations. (Here is an example of such a document: http://www.thinkspot.net/materdei/apcalculus/Hwk57/APCalcHWK57.html

I will save what I've typed so far, and submit further comments in a subsequent post, because my computer is about to crash, and I've spent a long time typing this...

[sheila]

OK, I rebooted now...

The thing about the MS Word docs is:
It's great for those site visitors that also have MS Word. (By the way, if some of them have MS Word and some have Works, you could have compatibility issues...) Those site users with the correct software can view the documents and even edit and modify them after downloading them, if they like.

I always felt that I needed to offer HTML as an alternate format for those who would have difficulty using an MS Word format. And although Word does have a built-in conversion function, I always felt that the documents were not well-formatted, and would then spend time in Dream Weaver "neatening" them up.

I believe that Adobe now offers a subscription service, where you can submit documents in other formats (such as MS Word) and they will convert them to .pdf format for you. This might be the way for you to go. If you had a submission form on your site, that automatically sent the documents off to Adobe for you when the site visitor uploaded it, that could save you a ton of work.

For me, this year I'm going to try to write more of my documents in LaTeX, so that I can quickly and easily convert them to free .pdf format (I'll type my answer keys in LaTeX). I'm hoping this will save me time over the methods I've used in the past. However, this doesn't seem like an option for you.

I hope this blathering of mine has some useful points in it...

[dank]

I believe that Adobe now offers a subscription service, where you can submit documents in other formats (such as MS Word) and they will convert them to .pdf format for you.
https://createpdf.adobe.com/index.pl
I just learned about this a few days ago. Nice tool to try out, but if my trial use was any indication, I couldn't imagine using it regularly. I converted a one page Word document that contained very little formatting, and it took something like 5 minutes to get the finished .pdf file back. Maybe just a slow period for their server (I would think they would want to make things speedy for folks trying out the free trial, so resources probably are not intentionally limited), but if I were in need of such a tool more frequently, I would look into a desktop version.

Sheila, that's a very good looking scanned gif, by the way. :)

Dan

[sheila]

Originally posted by dank:

I converted a one page Word document that contained very little formatting, and it took something like 5 minutes to get the finished .pdf file back. Maybe just a slow period for their server (I would think they would want to make things speedy for folks trying out the free trial, so resources probably are not intentionally limited), but if I were in need of such a tool more frequently, I would look into a desktop version.
Well, that depends. If someone is doing the work of converting FOR you, and it is all handled automatically, so that someone submits it on her website and then some time later she is magically e-mailed the converted document, she might even be willing to wait an hour or two for that service. Depends, I suppose.

Sheila, that's a very good looking scanned gif, by the way. :)
Thanks. The library (http://www.csupomona.edu/~library/) at Cal Poly Pomona (http://www.csupomona.edu/) often provides instructor materials such as homework solutions and exam solutions electronically by scanning printed copies provided to them by the instructor. (I've taken advantage of this myself, before.) They get pretty good quality.
Here's one example (http://opac.library.csupomona.edu/search/rmat+12/rmat+12/-5,-1,0,B/l962~1542810~1542810&F=rmat+105&1,1,,3946,0)
and Here's another (http://opac.library.csupomona.edu/search/rmat+12/rmat+12/-5,-1,0,B/l962~1542810~1542810&F=rmat+105&1,1,,3715,0). (I don't know how long those links will be good for...probably a couple of days, since the summer quarter just ended. They'll probably be taking the instructor electronic reserves offline within the next few days.)

[Josie]

I will save what I've typed so far, and submit further comments in a subsequent post, because my computer is about to crash, and I've spent a long time typing this...

:V {{{{{shiela}}}}}}} Those hugs are for putting so much time and effort into your answer!!! You gave me lots to decipher, but I will print out your response and come back with questions. Thanks so much!
~Jo

[Josie]

Originally posted by sheila:

I believe that Adobe now offers a subscription service, where you can submit documents in other formats (such as MS Word) and they will convert them to .pdf format for you. This might be the way for you to go. If you had a submission form on your site, that automatically sent the documents off to Adobe for you when the site visitor uploaded it, that could save you a ton of work.

I hope this blathering of mine has some useful points in it...

By submission site, what does that mean? A button that sends a document to another source?

As far as html uploads, how is that done? I'm sorry for the naivete of my questions, but like I said, I really am a greenhorn!:o

~Jo

[sheila]

Originally posted by Josie:

By submission site, what does that mean? A button that sends a document to another source?
Yes, that's what I meant. A page on your website with a form, where the submitter could upload their document, click 'submit', and then that would activate a script on your site that would handle it from there.

Since you're such a "greenhorn" ;) you would probably have to hire someone to do the scripting for you.
As far as html uploads, how is that done? I'm sorry for the naivete of my questions, but like I said, I really am a greenhorn!:o

HTML uploads is something that I haven't quite learned how to do yet. (Soon. It's on my ToDo list.) But there are a lot of tutorials out there on the web. It would require a script of some sort. Either buy one, write one, or hire someone to write a custom script for you.