Montag, 3. Dezember 2012

Analyze PDF-documents for coloured pages

The calculation of printing costs for pdf-documents separated
for each serviceline or department in a company is always a
problem. How many pages - coloured or black & white - were printed?
Which were the dimensions of the printed pages? Which are the
responsible company departments? And finally: Who should be
responsible for the costs of new toner cartridges?

Internally the pdf-structure offers the device-flags like
- for example - DeviceRGB, DeviceGray oder DeviceCMYK which
points to the used colours in the document. Better: It could
point 'cause it's not a must to use device-flags in the pdf-
document. It's possible to have coloured pages in a document
with DeviceGray and it's possible to have coloured and b/w-pages
in a document without any device-flag and it's possible to
have only b/w-pages in a document with DeviceCMYK and so on...
So the device-flags are only indicators for the used colour-
models in a document but not a save method to determine
coloured pages.

This is a big problem in service-departments! There are
solutions available ... very expensive solutions.

For the described purpose i'm offering in my product range
the module "PrPages". It's a so-called command-line exe.
A batch executable means easiest installation with all
applications and workflows in 32 - and 64-bit Windows
environments without any problems!

The module's approach is that the real colour informations
are in each image pixel and based on this informations
you can make the only reliable statement regarding the
used colours on a pdf-page.
The graphic type bitmap offers three values for colour-
settings on pixel level. "PrPages" renders the pdf-pages
temporarily into bitmap format and checks the pixel values
for the colour informations to analyze the pages as b/w or
coloured.
Depending on the options you have set, a csv-file is created.
Each line contains the filename, the page count, the page
size of the first page, the pagecount for coloured and
the pagecount for b/w-pages.
Another option results in one line for each pdf-page with
the filename, single page number, the page size and a note
for b/w or coloured.

Depending on the system environment the module works with
high performance using a safe and stable technology.
On my product pages you'll find the "PrPages" as a trial
version to check if the tool is the right choice for your
purposes - Try before you buy.

Montag, 9. April 2012

PDF, JavaScript and Code you don't want

My dear readers!

Regarding trojan- and virus-attacks often you can read about pdf-documents entering your local machine as email-attachments. While opening these attachments it's possible that embedded trojans and other malware will be installed unvisible or system settings could be changed.

This works via scriptlanguage JavaScript. With embedded JavaScript-code the functionality of a pdf-document can be greatly expanded. The embedded code will be coupled with an event like OnLoad (that's while a document will be opened) and then executed if the event happens. Normally this is a positive thing but it may also be to your detriment.

Installing your Adobe- or Foxit-PDF-Reader (which are able to interprete Javascript-Code) it's a standard that using Javascript is activated. It's an optional setting which can be deactivated by you again.

Deactivating Javascript in Adobe Reader 9 or 10 (for example) you can go this way:

...Edit -> Preferences -> JavaScript...

in the right window section you can remove the marks in the checkboxes at
"Java Script / Enable Acrobat JavaScript" and
"Java Script Security / Enable menu items Javascript execution privileges".

Deactivating Javascript in Foxit-Reader 5 goes like this:

...Tools -> Preferences -> JavaScript...

Remove the mark at the checkbox at
"Enable Javascript actions".

If you don't want to deal with such things and if an easy pdf-reader is enough for you should try the small and easy to use Sumatra PDF Reader which aren't able to interprete JavaScript.

Cheers,
Ingo