My mother creates a weekly church bulletin of text and pictures with the same basic format with pictures and text basically in the same positions, the pictures vary every week but are the same size and position, some of the text varies and some of it is repeated in the same position. She outputs it both as a Word document for printing and a PDF for web publishing, using Word to edit it.
The thought occurred to me that a better workflow might be to obtain Acrobat and edit and keep everything in the PDF format (even though neither of us have any experience with Acrobat)? Anyone have any thoughts?
Acrobat isn’t really a word processor in any sense. You still need something like Word or Adobe InDesign to compose the document, then convert it to PDF. The full version of Acrobat does provide some editing tools but not enough that you could use it as a standalone application to create documents from scratch.
It appears that Acrobat XI does have the ability to replace images and text in an existing PDF. In my experience, the text editing is kind of hit-or-miss, but it’s possible that if the format were fairly fixed and only some images and text needed to change, she could do it with Acrobat alone. But as I said, to compose an original document or make significant edits you would need to use another program.
I don’t understand why you would use PDF as a format for web publishing at all, and certainly not for something like a church bulletin. HTML is the appropriate format for web publishing. PDFs are for documents that are to be printed out and/or saved semi-permanently, and where you need minute control over the formatting. It is not appropriate for something that is intended to be read, fairly casually, on line, and that is ephemeral. I have my browser set up so that PDF documents do not even displayl in the browser window, but, instead, download so that they can be stored and read in a PDF viewer. I am sure I am not the only person who does things this way, as it has distinct advantages both in the avoidance of malware and in using PDFs that are being used for what they aer meant to be used for (as is usually the case). However, on the rare occasions that a PDF is misused as a browser display format, it is pain in the butt for someone with my sort of setup. It will probably also be a pain in the butt for someone using a monitor with a resolution different from that of your mother’s.
A document composed in Word (which as Vinyl Turnip suggests, almost certainly is the appropriate program to use for composition here) can be output as HTML just as easily as it can be as PDF. (Admittedly, Word produces really shitty HTML, but it will still display better and more reliably in a browser than a PDF will.)
My immediate reaction was “Um, what? Why would anyone want to do that?”
What you’re suggesting sounds a lot more tedious than just creating/editing the documents in Word, and I don’t see any advantage to it. It takes only a couple of seconds to save a Word document as a PDF.
OK, sounds like sticking with Word is the way to go then, it was just a thought I had.
I’ll suggest the option of using HTML for web publishing. I don’t know if she never thought of it, of her boss told her to use PDFs. Neither of us can code HTML, but she does use the software provided by a web hosting service to make other updates to the web site.
I have mixed emotions about using PDF for a web output, but why isn’t she outputting to print using PDF? That’s what it is designed for, and avoids a multitude of sins that Word is guilty of. Unless you mean she is merely sending the Word doc direct to her local printing device. If it works that way, keep using it. It sounds like she has a regular work flow that’s acceptable.
If she’s sending it to a commercial printer, PDF is the way to go.
An advantage to using PDF for both would be the uniformity. PDF isn’t the best web layout but both newsletters would look the same.
In any case, don’t use Acrobat for layout or word processing. That’s not what it was designed for.
Some might say I’m advocating using a bazooka to kill a fly, but she could get a LaTeX processor. It’s scary at first, but if she’s only using it to do one layout she could spend 2-3 hours getting the layout set up and then it would be trivial for the rest of forever. I find LaTeX templates easier to edit than Word Documents without screwing stuff up (Word likes to “help” sometimes by dislocating your picture or whatever if you delete the wrong paragraph or hit enter in the wrong place).
Use Word. I find any Acrobat-based editing to be a pain. It is mainly used to have a document be proofread without changing any of the original text by accident.