Ron Parker wrote:
>On Sat, 2 Feb 2002 09:00:13 -0800, Mitchell Waite wrote:
>- PDF is nice, but it needs lots of things that some people producing PDF
>  seem to forget:
>
>  o There needs to be *at least* a table of contents in bookmark form.

Writing with LaTeX goes a long way to this goal, and does it better than
Adobe's acrobat in most cases.

>  o Page thumbnails are virtually useless, but should be included anyway just
>    so it looks like you care.

Don't know about that with LaTeX

>  o The "real" table of contents, if the book is also provided in paper format
>    with such a table of contents, should consist of hyperlinks.  This is
>    especially important if you didn't go to the trouble to provide one in
>    the PDF file.

I think there is an add-in library for LaTeX to do this.

>  o The index, if there is one, should also contain hyperlinks for the page
>    numbers, see alsos, and so on.

Refrencing is what LaTeX does best.

>  o If sample code is included, it should either be possible to select it
>    and copy it directly from the PDF document, or there should be a hyperlink
>    to a text file containing the sample code.  This should apply whenever
>    the sample is more than 2-3 lines long, and possibly even more often.

There's a button in acrobat reader with an ibar next to a T. You click that
and you can drag and copy text out.

>  o The document should be text, not scanned pages.  This makes it usable
>    with accessibility aids (that's a plug for my employer) as well as making
>    it more usable with things like the PDF reader for PalmOS.  It also means
>    you can zoom in without losing detail (if you want an example of how not
>    to do this, get a copy of the original Dr. Dobbs' Essential Books on
>    Graphics.)  Related to this, the document should be searchable.

Of course, you can compile your document into different formats with LaTeX

>  o If lots of images are supplied, a separate "images index" wouldn't be a
>    bad idea.  Something like a contact sheet, with hyperlinks to the full-
>    sized versions of the images in the document.

I have a document that references all the tables this way. It was pretty
simple to build references. It even numbers figures for you.

It may be a pain in the butt to set everything up, but once you are running
with latex, you'll wonder why you use such meddling software like word and
acrobat.

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