We’re planning the next version of Aerialist and we’d love to hear what sort of features and enhancements you would like to see added.
To complete the survey please click on the link below:
The survey will help us to quickly compile the feedback you provide and it should only take a few minutes to fill out. We’ll use the results from this survey to plan what enhancements should be made to Aerialist and what new features we can add to meet your PDF needs.
Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 has just been released with several new features and jammed packed with some serious functionality.
For those still working primarily in the world of paper – we have taken the best features of our product Debenu PDF Crackerjack, such as Imposition and Booklet-making as well as Auto Mail-Merge from Variform to bring a truly complete solution for Adobe Acrobat.
Features as follows:
Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 is still priced at $495 with ridiculously low discounts on volume licensing. Debenu offer complementary technical support for all customers. This latest version is compatible with Mac and Windows and Updated to version 9 and 10 of Acrobat.
Give Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 a try!
Debenu PDF Aerialist version 11.2.1.9 has been released and is available from the product updates page on the website. This is a free upgrade for all customers who own a version 11 license. If you own a version prior to version 11 then you can upgrade to version 11 on this page.
This new release of Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 is full of great new features and improvements, so we suggest that you check it out as soon as you can. Enjoy!
Debenu PDF Aerialist Lite has also been updated. Download the latest version from the Debenu PDF Aerialist product updates page.
Debenu PDF Aerialist version 11.2.1.21 has been released and is available from the product updates page on the website. This is a free upgrade for all customers who own a version 11 license. If you own a version prior to version 11 then you can upgrade to version 11 on this page.
This new release of Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 is full of great new features and improvements, so we suggest that you check it out as soon as you can. Enjoy!
Debenu PDF Aerialist Lite has also been updated. Download the latest version from the Debenu PDF Aerialist product updates page.
Over the past 12 months Debenu PDF Aerialist has been given a new lease on life with its user interface completely re-engineered to work with Acrobat 9, Acrobat 10 and Acrobat 11. But the changes haven’t just been visual, a whole set of new features have been added and existing features have been enhanced. Here’s a short summary of 11 new features in Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 that you may have missed.
In Debenu PDF Aerialist it has always been possible to generate a report on all links in a PDF file and get information such as a link summary, a list of external dependencies or even a list of broken links, but until now it has not been possible to get a list of all broken links in a PDF and easily fix them in the same place. Say hello to Audit Links:
The new Audit Links feature lets you quickly find all broken links and then fix them on the spot. You can even double-click on each broken link in the list and you will automatically be shown where in the document this link is located. Fixing broken links has never been so easy.
What’s more, you can even fix broken bookmarks with this new feature. Simply select the ‘Check for bad bookmarks’ option and click on the ‘Find’ button.
Exporting links from one PDF and importing them into another PDF is now a simple task with this new feature. Whether you want to replicate a set of links in multiple documents or backup links that you’ve created in a PDF before you re-create the PDF, this new feature has you covered. It even lets you specify header and footer links and gives you precise control over which pages links will be copied from.
When dealing with PDFs it’s often more useful to have the table of contents (TOC) as bookmarks, instead of or in addition to, a TOC at the start of the document. This new feature lets you import the text and link actions from an existing TOC and generate a TOC using bookmarks.
It’s a powerful feature which will help make your documents more navigable with only a few simple steps.
Bookmarks make navigating around PDF files easy. This feature lets you interlink PDFs by automatically generating a set of bookmarks based on the folder and file names of the selected root folder. The set of bookmarks is then applied to each file separately in the root folder or alternatively all of the PDFs are merged into one PDF and the set of bookmarks is applied to it.
Edit all bookmarks for the current PDF. Change the appearance and style of the bookmarks as well as actions. Modify all bookmark levels or only a specific bookmark level.
Collapse or expand bookmarks in the current PDF. Change all bookmark levels or only specific levels. To change multiple bookmark levels use the ‘Collapse defined bookmark levels’ option with the letter “L” for level followed by the level number (e.g. L1,L3).
Imposition is an integral part of the prepress printing process. It involves the arrangement of the printed pages on the printer’s sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplify binding and reduce paper waste. Debenu PDF Aerialist lets you impose PDFs in numerous different ways. Choose step and repeat, N-up, 2-up or 4-up to create imposed PDF files that meet your needs. Control sheet size, margins, gutters and printers. Add trim and registration marks, control creep and bleed, and so on.
Debenu PDF Aerialist extends the usability of PDF forms in Adobe Acrobat by allowing merging with text-delimited variable data files from local data sources such as spreadsheets, CSV files or text files.
Mail Merge in Debenu PDF Aerialist is great for PDF-based mail merge, form filling, and other variable data applications.
The Create Keyword Links feature has been updated to work with multiple keywords at once. Setup all of the keywords that you want to add links to and then click the ‘Create All’ button to effortlessly create all of the links in one go.
This feature has been updated to give you greater control when deleting links. Now you can choose to delete all working or broken links in the document or specify a page range for where links should be deleted.
The Sort Bookmarks feature has been updated to make working with multiple levels of bookmarks easier. It gives you precise control over which bookmark levels are sorted.
That’s it. 11 new features to make you even more productive at work. What’s more, we’re going to add even more fantastic features this year! Leave a comment if you have a feature request.
Debenu PDF Aerialist is the ultimate plug-in for Adobe Acrobat.
This video tutorial shows you how to convert page numbers (GoTo Page actions in PDF lingo) to named destinations in a PDF file using Debenu PDF Aerialist. Using GoTo Page actions for links in PDF files with lots of pages and lots of links is an issue because deleting one page will break all links to subsequent pages. If you use named destinations instead of page numbers, then this is no longer an issue because the link is to a unique destination associated with the page object rather than the page number and this does not change when the total number of pages in the PDF changes.
Don’t forget, there’s a 14 day free trial of Debenu PDF Aerialist. Enjoy the video tutorial:
The post Convert Page Numbers to Named Destinations in PDF Files appeared first on Debenu Blog.
Debenu PDF Aerialist version 11.2.1.24 has been released and is available from the Debenu PDF Aerialist product updates page. This is a free upgrade for all customers who own a version 11 license. If you own a version prior to version 11 then you can upgrade to version 11 on this page. If you’re interested in what’s new in version 11 of Debenu PDF Aerialist check out this blog post: 11 New Features in Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 That You May Have Missed.
This new release of Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 is primarily a maintenance release but it does include some useful improvements to the Mail Merge functionality and some minor improvements in the overall architecture of the application.
Debenu PDF Aerialist Lite has also been updated. Download the latest version from the Debenu PDF Aerialist Lite product updates page.
The post Debenu PDF Aerialist 11.2.1.24 Released appeared first on Debenu Blog.
PDF bookmarks can drastically improve the navigability of longer PDF documents. Luckily, it’s a snap to create single book marks using Adobe Acrobat Pro. It’s even easier to create lots of book marks with Debenu PDF Aerialist and let’s face it, how often will you need to create one book mark? It’s more likely you will need to create 10 or more.
We get sent e-books from time to time, one was from Marketo. It frustrated me that there were no bookmarks for me to easily navigate the document so I decided to make some of my own.
So here is how you do it in about 11 steps. This is why Debenu PDF Aerialist is the Ultimate PDF Plug-in.
Step 1
Open the document in Adobe Acrobat Pro (make sure you have Debenu PDF Aerialist installed).
Step 2
In Debenu PDF Aerialist 11, click bookmarks.
Step 3
Click Build Bookmarks from the scroll down menu
Step 4
A box appears, with a number of options. Select level 1. This will help create the first bookmark.
Step 5
Scroll through the document and find when a heading for the first Bookmark you want to make occurs. Use your cursor to select all or part of the text. In this example there are two headings (parts and the sections in each part).
Debenu PDF Aerialist auto populates based on the colour, font, and size of the text.A range of options that can be chosen that will target the text after you have selected it.
The example below from the Marketo document is the information related to the selected text.
Step 6
Click build. Aerialist will scan the document for text that matches the variables for the Level 1 bookmarks.
As can be seen only two bookmarks are created, but there are four sections in total. But why is this? Let’s scroll down a to ‘Part 3’ and use PDF Aerialist to tell us if it is the same. There is a simple explanation for this.
Step 7
Highlight ‘Part Three’. Paying attention to if the font changes at all, and what remains the same.
The font is slightly different! But the size is the same.
The creator used a slightly different font when creating the original document. De-Select ‘Font Name’, and make sure ‘Font Size’ is the only thing selected.
Step 8
Level 1 bookmarks will be made on the basis of size 32 fonts. Click build. And four bookmarks appear. One for each section like the table of contents indicates.
Step 9
There are two types of headings the main one (Parts One – Four) and their sub headings e.g. ‘The Importance of Lead Nurturing’.
Click Level 2 and highlight a portion of text that correspondents to the sub headings.
Step 10
Make sure you select multi-line headings, as some of the headings stretch over two lines.
Step 11
Click build.
Bookmarks are populated as per the levels selected. The PDF file now has all the bookmarks needed to make it an easy to navigate document.
Well done!
This is for Debenu PDF Aerialist, which is a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Pro. You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Pro and Debenu PDF Aerialist to do this. There is however another product we produce called Debenu PDF Maximus which can also generate bookmarks, this is stand alone software and does not need Adobe Acrobat to run.
The post Adding Bookmarks to a PDF E-book appeared first on Debenu Blog.
We released a Pharmaceutical Grade version of Debenu PDF Aerialist, with specialist features for Regulatory Electronic Submissions. The idea is to complement and extend the feature set Adobe Acrobat® has, creating a much more powerful solution. Allowing faster approval time for New Drug Applications, while reducing the lead time for novel drugs to get to market.
Debenu COO, Susana De Abrew, headed up the concept for this new version and explains “Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma, is designed to assist in the legal compliance requirements required to successfully complete Electronic Submissions to Pharmaceutical Regulatory Authorities globally.”
The reason we created this version is because Debenu PDF Aerialist is already popular amongst management, having been on the market for many years. Speaking with existing customers we learnt that it is used in the U.S. for New Drug Applications (NDA) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in Europe for eSubmissions to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). In some organizations it is a part of procedure policy to use Debenu to assist with applications.
In Australia with the introduction of the Non-eCTD electronic submissions (NeeS) for human medicinal products by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) Debenu PDF Aerialist has been adopted by organizations to deal with the new health sector and legislative reform.
We’re a genuine Technology leader, providing PDF solutions worldwide for leading Pharmaceutical businesses over the last decade, among our customer base are Pfizer, Glaxosmithkline, Abbott and the U.S FDA. Debenu supports the efforts by all organizations to save time and money by building software adopting the best practices in Regulatory Electronic Submissions. This is done with unique intellectual property, which becomes available to any user in the license agreements attached to each product.
Automation technology is used in Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma to improve consistency, reduce manual errors and make it easier to adhere to regulatory compliance. Assisting in the process of application approvals is crucial. The research, development, review and approval of an NDA takes up to 10 years. When Market leading drugs can earn up to US$1 million per day, faster approvals can really impact the bottom line.
Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma contains best-in-class specialist features such as Table of Contents generation, Hypertext Links and Bookmarks, and Link Audit Reporting. These features are requirements in The Common Technical Document (eCTD) referred to in Europe, Japan and the United States (the three regions party to the International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for human Use – “ICH”.
Specialist Features in Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma Edition Include:
“Our customers have confidence in our PDF expertise because we have been designing and building PDF solutions since 1997. Coupled with an in depth understanding of Regulatory Compliance we are passionate about producing quality products to validated standards. This allows our customers to concentrate on what they do best. It’s our technology, for their success ” says Susana De Abrew who has 15 years Pharmaceutical experience, specializing in Regulatory and IT Compliance.
Susana De Abrew has provided regulatory compliance and technical consulting to the Pharmaceutical industry for 15 years in the US, Europe and Australia. Now as the Chief Operating Officer at Debenu this expertise has been brought in house. Under her leadership the product range is being advanced with innovative new designs, significant development with a strong focus on product quality.
Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma comes with a variety of licenses and also is available for a free trial. Visit the product page to find out more information.
The post Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharmaceutical Edition Released for Regulatory Electronic Submissions. appeared first on Debenu Blog.
We love PDF here at Debenu. Sure, it’s green and searchable, but today, we want to focus on one of its other assets: its navigability, with a focus on bookmarks and links.
First up, there are built-in features of any given reader (e.g., Adobe Reader or the built-in viewer in Debenu PDF Tools). Typically, these will let you change pages one at a time or more quickly via a scroll bar. Often, they will let you jump to specific pages. These are basically the electronic analogs of turning individual pages or flicking through quickly with your thumb. You can make things easier for your readers with PDF, though. Indeed, cognizant of this fact, many regulatory bodies now require content providers to make their electronic documents easy to navigate.
“How can we make it easier to navigate our PDFs?” I hear you cry. The answer is by using bookmarks and links. In their simplest form, PDF bookmarks are similar to physical bookmarks. They are immediately obvious — in Adobe Reader, bookmarks appear in a pane in the left-hand side of the screen — and link directly to a particular part of a document. Here, PDF has an advantage over paper, though, because the bookmark can link to a separate document, web site, or even execute some JavaScript. When a bookmark points to a PDF, it actually links to a particular view, which means a location, zoom level and layout. That means that if you want to link to a particular diagram, for example, you can set a bookmark to zoom in on the page to give readers an optimal view of the figure.
Links are pretty similar to bookmarks. In fact, they have precisely the same options in terms of what they can do and where they can take the reader. The real difference is that, while bookmarks sit beside the document content (i.e., visible in a separate panel), links form an integral part of that content. Links can be overlaid on any image or text elements within a PDF document. If a link is located on page 5 and the reader is looking at page 2, they will not see it. By contrast, they will have equal access to all bookmarks regardless of which page they are currently viewing.
“So how do we apply and use bookmarks and links?” Funny you should ask, actually. As a matter of fact, Debenu Quick PDF Library can be used to create and edit bookmarks and links individually or in bulk, allowing developers to build these features into their own applications. Bookmarks and links can be manually created and edited in Adobe Acrobat, and this functionality is significantly augmented when used with our plug-in, Debenu PDF Aerialist. Using Debenu PDF Aerialist, you can do all sorts of fancy things like generating hyperlinked tables of contents, creating, editing or updating links and bookmarks en masse, automatically linking every instance of a keyword or auditing and validating links. You can also use Debenu PDF Aerialist to manipulate PDFs in bulk through batch processing. If you want to manipulate bookmarks or links without Acrobat, you can do so using the advanced scripting features (accessed via Advanced > PDF Script) of Debenu PDF Tools Pro.
The post Navigating PDF files with Bookmarks and Links appeared first on Debenu Blog.
Considering this sort of question always reminds me of that old techie joke quote: “Who the heck is General Failure, and why is he reading my disk?”
To my mind, asking why validating bookmarks and links is important is a bit like asking why road maintenance is important. In essence, the goal is to prevent issues down the track. (See what I did there?) At best, including broken links and bookmarks in your PDF documents can annoy your reader by disrupting their viewing experience. At worst, it can make navigating through crucial content impossible. Imagine you have assembled a multi-part regulatory submission and broken it into separate PDFs for faster viewing. Maybe they are supposed to be liberally inter-linked for a seamless viewing experience, perhaps via a shared set of roadmap bookmarks. Now think about the problems you would have if those interactive links were broken.
A stitch in time saves nine, right? You can avoid this problem entirely if you check and fix the links and bookmarks before you send off the submission. That works in principle, and I heartily recommend it, but if you have to check every link manually, that means a lot of work if you have numerous, long or complex documents. This involves opening each file in something like Acrobat and visually searching through, manually checking the properties of each link or bookmark and verifying that each link both works at all and connects to the right location. Manual processing of this sort is time-consuming and prone to errors. The simplest solution might be to use Acrobat’s “Remove All Links” tool. Sure, it would delete any dead links, but it would remove all of that rich interactivity, too.
It was thinking about just this sort of conundrum that drove the development of Debenu PDF Aerialist’s link and bookmark validation functionality. For one, Aerialist’s Audit Links feature (Links > Audit Links) lets you check entire documents or archives for broken links or bookmarks.
The Audit Links tool
Of course, Debenu PDF Aerialist’s Dead Link Toolbar also offers fine-grained control over dead links, allowing you to selectively delete or modify dead links on an individual or document level. Used in concert with Acrobat’s Actions, Aerialist’s auditing and dead link features can even be used on entire document archives.
Aerialist’s Dead Link Toolbar
So, if you need to validate links in numerous, large or complex PDF documents, try Debenu PDF Aerialist. The demo version is free, so what do you have to lose, except time you’d otherwise spend manually processing PDFs? If you want to save even more time, check out this Knowledge Base article on how to validate and fix links and bookmarks using Debenu PDF Aerialist.
The post Why validate PDF links and bookmarks? appeared first on Debenu Blog.
Debenu PDF Aerialist version 11.2.1.35 has been released and is available from the Debenu PDF Aerialist product updates page. This is a free upgrade for all customers who own a version 11 license. If you own a version prior to version 11 then you can upgrade to version 11 on this page. If you’re interested in what’s new in version 11 of Debenu PDF Aerialist check out this blog post: 11 New Features in Debenu PDF Aerialist 11 That You May Have Missed.
This new release of Debenu PDF Aerialist 11.2.1.35 is a maintenance release which includes a lot of improvements in the bookmarks, links and batch processing areas of the plug-in.
As always we’d love to hear your thoughts on the new version of Debenu PDF Aerialist. If you have any questions, comments or general feedback, please let us know.
The post Debenu PDF Aerialist 11.2.1.35 Released appeared first on Debenu Blog.
I realize that it’s often considered a marketing no-no to mention a competitor by name, but the title of this post is a good question that deserves a proper answer. Since we have received a lot of queries about this, I wanted to talk about the comparison and, hopefully, clear up some misconceptions.
ISIToolBox has been around for a long time. I first heard about it more than a decade ago when I was working in pharma myself and consulting to companies working on establishing good submissions practices. Sure, you needed to buy Acrobat first, since ToolBox worked as a plug-in, but what a plug-in it was! Some of the features were so strikingly distinctive and useful. As the years marched on, even more functionality was added, which saw the feature count for ToolBox grow from 40-plus in 2003 to 50-plus today.
In essence, it seems that those responsible for ToolBox (first ISI and now CSC) have taken an incremental approach to building the product. It is this approach that is responsible for the gradually increasing list of features. We tackled the development of Debenu PDF Aerialist, and in particular, the Pharma edition, rather differently. From the outset, we wanted it to seamlessly complement Acrobat’s functionality to deliver a complete solution for those preparing documents for eCTD or NeeS submissions, e-filing or other purposes. That meant that we needed to start by carefully studying Acrobat’s interface and features to avoid redundancy. Acknowledging that Acrobat was delivering a key subset of the required functionality, we also started at a lower price-point than ToolBox. Finally, since we thought that the best test of whether a solution would fit a company’s workflow was to try it, we have always made sure to offer a fully-functional, free trial of Aerialist.
The different results of these two approaches is most apparent when using the latest versions of Acrobat. Adobe has been far from complacent in the last decade: ultimately, many of the third-party features that were so impressive in 2003 have since been built in to Acrobat. In other words, you can accomplish quite a lot without resorting to any plug-ins. The best way to illustrate this feature duplication is probably to work through the key features outlined on the TRS ToolBox product pages. Below, I’ll run through those key features, specifying how they can be addressed using the combination of Acrobat XI and Debenu PDF Aerialist.
So, with all of that in mind, I think you are left with four key reasons for choosing Aerialist:
That’s all from me for now, but please do keep those good questions coming!
The post Why buy Aerialist over TRS ToolBox (formerly ISIToolBox)? appeared first on Debenu Blog.
A while back, I wrote a blog post comparing TRS ToolBox with the dynamic duo of Aerialist Pharma and Acrobat for preparing regulatory submissions. Since then, a lot of you have quite reasonably asked how Aerialist Pharma and Acrobat align with the US FDA regulations themselves, rather than with other products seeking to solve the same problems. That is a fair enough question, I think, and this post is my answer to you.
There will always be a link to the most recent version of the guidelines here, but as of today, the current guidelines are here (in PDF, of course). Given the importance and stringency of the regulations, this document is surprisingly succinct, clear and simple. In the following sections, I have outlined each of the key areas mentioned, common areas of difficulty, along with the relevant functionality of Aerialist Pharma and Acrobat.
FDA Guidelines: The FDA accepts PDF versions 1.4 to 1.7. Specifically, submitted PDF files must be compatible with Acrobat 8.0, without requiring additional software like plug-ins.
Response: This is almost trivially easy to accomplish in Acrobat. If you haven’t originally created your PDFs using one of the acceptable versions, you can easily convert them using Acrobat’s PDF Optimizer (accessible via Save As > PDF, Optimized, click “Settings”). This conversion process can also be performed on thousands of PDF files at once using Acrobat’s Action Wizard (Tools > Action Wizard).
FDA Guidelines: The guidelines stipulate that you can’t change the security on any PDFs used in your submission. Specifically, that means that you shouldn’t add security to your own documents (i.e., they should not be secured), and don’t modify the settings on the secured forms provided by the FDA (some forms are configured to prevent unauthorized changes).
Response: In general, this won’t require any action on the part of the user, since it essentially requires users to avoid changing security settings. All of this means that you might need to remove security from some of your own PDF files, which can be done in Acrobat (File > Properties, Security tab) if you have the appropriate privileges or password.
FDA Guidelines: It’s important that your documents can be displayed consistently across machines. When a font is embedded, every glyph in that font is included in the PDF. That ensures that the PDF contains everything needed to consistently display its text content with appropriate formatting (i.e., the PDF is self-contained). Fonts that are not embedded can result in inconsistent appearance, structure, and can alter apparent meaning in some cases. This is because locally available fonts will be substituted for unembedded fonts unless the same fonts are installed on the viewing machine.
Response: Font embedding can be checked (File > Properties, navigate to Fonts tab) or completed (Tools > Print Production > Preflight) in Acrobat. Acrobat can also be used to process large batches of PDFs via its Action Wizard.
FDA Guidelines: Page orientation must be such that reviewers don’t need to rotate pages. The most common manifestation of the problem is when landscape pages are not correctly oriented.
Response: This can be done easily for entire documents in Acrobat (Tools > Pages > Rotate). Acrobat allows you to select rotation angle, page range, and original orientation for rotation. This allows you to, for example, rotate all landscape pages counter-clockwise by 90 degrees. Again, the Action Wizard allows for this task to be completed in bulk.
FDA Guidelines: Pages need to fit on a Letter (8.5″ x 11″) standard sheet and have a margin of at least 3/4″ on the left (portrait) or top (landscape) of the page, and at least 3/8″ on other sides. This allows for binding.
Response: If page sizes or margins are not sufficient to meet requirements when PDFs are originally created, these can be altered using the imposition features of Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Imposition).
FDA Guidelines: While not a firm requirement, this guideline recommends against the use of scanned documents. If they are used, they must be processed via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and validated to ensure faithful, searchable text.
Response: Acrobat itself can be used to create PDF files with searchable text from any number of document formats. When working with scanned or other image-based documents, Acrobat’s built-in OCR feature (Tools > Text Recognition) can scan images to produce searchable text within documents. This can also be conducted across many files using Acrobat’s Action Wizard.
FDA Guidelines: These guidelines stipulate that grayscale and color should be used only when necessary, and that image resolution should be set to 300 dpi, except for photographs, gels and karyotypes, which require 600 dpi.
Response: As long as the original images are of sufficient quality, images can be selectively downsampled using Acrobat’s PDF Optimizer (accessible via Save As > PDF, Optimized > Settings). Individual images can also be downsampled using Acrobat’s Edit Object Tool (Tools > Print Production > Edit Object) and a suitable image editor like Photoshop.
FDA Guidelines: The FDA guidelines stipulate lossless compression of images. They mandate Zip (AKA Flate) for color and grayscale images, and CCITT Group 4 for black and white images (e.g., faxes).
Response: These compression techniques are supported by Acrobat. Image compression settings can be configured using Acrobat’s PDF Optimizer (accessible via Save As > PDF, Optimized > Settings).
FDA Guidelines: This option needs to be set to allow for faster opening of PDF files. This allows users or readers to download one page at a time rather than having to wait for the entire file to download before they can view the document.
Response: This option can be enabled in the (hopefully) now-familiar PDF Optimizer (see above). In the PDF Optimizer, this can be enabled by selecting the Clean Up tab and and checking “Optimize the PDF for fast web view”.
FDA Guidelines: The guidelines state that CMYK (i.e., print-based) color spaces offer more control than RGB (screen-based) ones, and that the International Color Consortium (ICC) color profile specification should be used when printing.
Response: Color matching is an extremely exacting process. While it’s possible to convert any images into an appropriate color space using Acrobat’s Print Production tools (Tools > Print Production), this will not by itself guarantee fidelity between the final document and the image creator’s intent, as the image was not created in that color space. Nevertheless, converting images into an appropriate color space can at least improve consistency between the submission as sent (i.e., post-conversion) and received (i.e., as it arrives in the reviewer’s inbox).
Despite Acrobat’s powerful capabilities here, conversion should be combined with testing and, if necessary, color correction to ensure the highest level of consistency when this is important to the submission. The better solution, of course, is to create the images using the same color space as that used in the submission version, precluding the need for conversion.
FDA Guidelines and Response: These are not required for PDF submissions, or indeed any PDFs, as thumbnails can be automatically generated by viewing software.
FDA Guidelines: The guidelines endorse the liberal use of hyperlinks throughout PDF files to facilitate navigation within and between documents. When they are used, hyperlinks should be designated by thin rectangles or blue text. To minimize confusion, a consistent design is recommended. It is also recommended that relative rather than absolute paths are used to ensure that inter-document links are not broken when files are copied to a new location.
For documents containing tables of contents (TOCs), the guidelines state that both bookmarks and links should be created for each entry. The use of invisible rectangles and blue text is recommended to signal hyperlinks without obscuring important text. Bookmarks must be hierarchical, organized in precisely the same way as TOC entries (up to four levels deep). Finally, all links and bookmarks should be set to “Inherit Zoom” to ensure a consistent reading experience.
Response: Using Acrobat, users can manually create, edit or delete bookmarks and links (Tools > Content Editing). Acrobat can also be used to remove all links from a PDF (Tools > Document Processing > Remove All Links). Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma adds a range of powerful options here, many of which can be used to process large batches of documents via their compatibility with Acrobat’s Action Wizard. These are set out in more detail, below.
First of all, Aerialist Pharma can be used to dynamically create links based on keywords (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Links > Create Keyword Links) or page numbers (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Links > Create Page Links), which is ideal for adding links to an existing TOC. Links can also be imported or exported between PDFs (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Links > Export/Import Links).
Aerialist Pharma can also be used to modify link properties throughout a given document (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Links > Set Link(s) Properties), which can be used to modify the appearance and behavior (e.g., setting zoom level) of links to conform with FDA guidelines.
Additionally, Aerialist Pharma can selectively delete all links or just dead ones (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Links > Delete Links), and features a link auditor (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Links > Audit Links) that can be used to find and fix broken links and bookmarks. Aerialist Pharma’s functionality also allows users to generate reports about problem links, bookmarks, external dependencies, or simply count links (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Links > Reports).
Meanwhile, Aerialist Pharma also allows the dynamic creation of bookmarks based on existing TOCs or folder structure or folder structure (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Add Bookmarks, click Import), text formatting such as headings (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Build Bookmarks). Like links, bookmarks can also be imported or exported between PDFs (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Add Bookmarks, click Import or Export) or settings files (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Build Bookmarks, click Import). Aerialist Pharma can also bind separate documents, adding a shared bookmark structure to all selected documents (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Bind Documents).
Bookmarks can be searched (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Find Bookmarks), sorted (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Sort Bookmarks), or deleted (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Delete Bookmarks), and their properties can be edited in bulk using Aerialist Pharma (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Bookmarks > Edit All Properties). They also benefit from the reporting, auditing and fixing options noted above for links.
Aerialist Pharma allows for the dynamic creation of document or master (i.e., inter-document) tables of contents from bookmarks, headings/text formatting, file and folder structure (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Table of Contents).
FDA Guidelines: PDFs should be set to show “Bookmarks Panel and Page” unless there are no bookmarks, in which case, they should be set to “Page Only”. Default settings should be used for Page Layout and Magnification.
Response: These settings are easily accessible in Acrobat (File > Properties in the Initial View tab), and can be set for large batches of PDF files using Acrobat’s handy Action Wizard.
FDA Guidelines: Page numbers should match between document and file (i.e., the initial page should be page 1) unless the submission has been split into multiple files. In this case, page numbering should match intended logical reading order without duplication. For example, if sections of the submission are separated into different files and Section 1 ends at page 10, Section 2 should commence on page 11.
Response: This can be accomplished, with different sets of options, using either Acrobat (Tools > Pages > Header & Footer) or Aerialist Pharma (Tools > Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma 11 > Stamps).
FDA Guidelines: These guidelines stipulate that PDF file names use lower case letters and avoid special characters aside from hyphens or underscores.
Response: While no separate application is needed to name or rename PDF files, Acrobat’s Action Wizard does allow users to add prefixes and suffixes to output file names in bulk as they are processed.
FDA Guidelines: These guidelines relate to the submission of promotional material. As such, they require high resolution (minimum 600 dpi), consistent color display (see Image Color Matching, above), and should be submitted according to their actual size.
Response: Again, Acrobat allows for image downsampling and color space conversion, but as noted earlier, this may not be advisable without subsequent testing. Acrobat and PDF support very large page sizes, so the requirement for size fidelity is unlikely to run up against hard size limits.
While it is not explicitly listed in the FDA guidelines for PDF, it can also be important to archive submissions. In the case of PDF, there is are several formal standards for this, known variously as PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1:2005), PDF/A-2 (ISO 19005-2:2011) and PDF/A-3 (ISO 19005-3:2012).
Acrobat supports these standards admirably. Acrobat’s Preflight tools support compliance-checking and conversion to these standards via pre-configured profiles (Tools > Print Production > Preflight, expand “PDF/A compliance”).
It is crucial that PDF submissions are identical in appearance to their paper equivalents. This consistency ensures that no information is lost in translation. This particular point speaks most to the choice of format for submissions. PDF’s page fidelity, cross-platform compatibility and (if appropriately prepared) self-contained nature make it an ideal transfer format.
Human error is a random variable that can confound even quite sophisticated processes. As a rule, standardizing procedures and reducing manual handling minimize the risk of error. The ability of Aerialist Pharma and Acrobat to automate time- and labor-intensive processes within and across documents significantly reduce manual handling and hence, the risk of human error.
In concluding, I would like to reiterate that you can meet all of your PDF compliance requirements for US FDA submissions by using a combination of Acrobat and Aerialist Pharma. Some of the FDA’s guidelines, frankly, are best met at the content creation stage (color matching and correction come to mind). Even then, Acrobat and Aerialist Pharma can help with meeting one’s compliance burden with sub-optimal source content. Used together, Acrobat and Aerialist Pharma can drastically reduce manual handling time, improve consistency and minimize the risk of human error. As a result, your submissions will be more likely to be note-perfect when initially sent. This in turn reduces the significant costs, administration and lost opportunities associated with re-submission. Given that it can form such an integral part of the workflow, it is work noting that there is a fully-functional trial version of Debenu PDF Aerialist Pharma available. For that matter, there is also a free trial of Acrobat available from Adobe’s website. Why not try them out? We’re happy to help you get set up and answer any questions you might have.
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The bottom-up process that drove the new version of Debenu’s ultimate Adobe(R) Acrobat(R) plugin, Debenu PDF Aerialist, was propelled completely by user based feedback
Debenu released the major update to the market leading, all-in-one Adobe(R) Acrobat(R) plug-in, Debenu PDF Aerialist. Version 12 of the world-leading plug-in is packed with dozens of new and enhanced features, and adds cutting-edge capabilities for existing functionality like link-building, working with bookmarks, and splitting.
The development team behind the latest version focused on two key new function areas: PDF links and PDF bookmarks. Lead developer on the project Marek Pizùr explained, “Users can now automatically apply dynamic hyperlinks to formatted variable text (i.e., regular expressions), such as part or order numbers. This is possible because we have added the ability to locate variable text, which can then be used to dynamically create specific links.”
While Debenu PDF Aerialist already permitted users to link page numbers and keywords across thousands of PDFs, adding support for regular expressions represents a new level of intelligence.
According to Debenu CTO Rowan Hanna, “This will save people a lot of time and hassle from manual link creation. If you have to create a large PDF catalog, this feature lets you automatically link any part number to the appropriate section, PDF file or web page that describes that part.”
Hanna went on to outline the customer-centric approach that guided the creation of Debenu PDF Aerialist 12, “This development cycle has been driven entirely by user feedback. Our main aim in building this major update was to ensure that we were able to deliver real value to our customers. We are now also offering instructor-led training in order to help our customers get the most out of Aerialist.”
# Highlights in Version 12 #
* Availability of instructor-led training to help users get the most out of Debenu PDF Aerialist 12
# Availability #
Debenu PDF Aerialist 12 is currently available for Mac and Windows systems directly from the Debenu website and from Debenu’s network of resellers.
# About Debenu #
Debenu is one of the world’s most innovative PDF and document management software vendors. Producing revolutionary software and custom solutions for Adobe Acrobat, PDF and other file formats since 2007.
Debenu was founded by the people behind ARTS PDF, a major plug-in developer for Adobe Acrobat, Planet PDF (the world’s #1 news and forum website for PDF), and Nitro PDF.
# Contacts #
Jeremy Koadlow – Marketing Manager
Debenu Pty. Ltd.
jeremy.koadlow[at]debenu.com
www.debenu.com
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One of the powerful new features added in the Debenu PDF Aerialist 12 is support for regular expressions. Specifically, this is now built into the Create Keyword Links feature. So what are regular expressions and why do you care about them? That’s a good question. Well, a regular expression is really just an official-sounding name for a consistent, formal pattern of text. Examples might include SKUs, license, invoice or part numbers.
While Aerialist users could already save time by automatically adding hyperlinks to specific keywords and phrases, the new feature means that this can now be done based on types of expressions. Say you had a PDF-based catalog and wanted to create links for unique part numbers that consisted of two letters, a dash and five numerals (e.g., AB-12345). Prior to the latest release, you would have needed to manually link each part number to the appropriate location. With Aerialist 12, though, it is now possible to find and generate web links for any text in the catalog that matched the appropriate pattern set for part numbers.
To help users make the most of this feature, I have written a Knowledge Base article that demonstrates how to create links based on regular expressions. The basic take-home message is this, though: if you need to produce a lot of hyperlinks based on patterned text, then this feature is for you.
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Those working in the legal sector use a huge volume of documents. Increasingly, these are created, prepared and transmitted in digital format, with some documents never even “touching the ground” in the sense of being physically printed. As of right now, that means that there a whole lot of PDFs flying around. As more and more courts accept or even mandate electronic filing (e-filing), it’s likely that legal professionals will see an even greater number of PDFs as time goes on.
Of course, they will need the right tools and know-how to make the most of PDF, and that’s where the combination of Debenu PDF Aerialist 12 and Adobe Acrobat Professional comes in. Acrobat itself is actually packed with useful features. In fact, there’s at least one book specifically aimed at helping lawyers use Acrobat. An all-in-one plug-in for Acrobat, Debenu PDF Aerialist 12 adds a significant amount of additional power, flexibility and automation potential to Acrobat’s already impressive bag of tricks. If you are a legal professional and wondering whether you could use Acrobat and Aerialist, please read through some of the specific tasks and functions outlined below:
Even alone, Acrobat offers a powerful set of tools for document creation, preparation and validation for a legal professional. The addition of Debenu PDF Aerialist brings with it significant additional functionality, particularly in the areas of combining, splitting, navigating and complex stamping of documents. Don’t just take our word for it, though. There are even fully-functional trial versions of both Acrobat and Aerialist available from the Adobe and Debenu websites, respectively. Using these free downloads, potential users in the legal industry can see for themselves how easy it is to improve their document creation, processing and management using this powerful software combination.
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PDF is a perfect fit for print workflows. It’s hardly surprising, though. From the very start, PDF was designed with printing in mind, and it supports all sorts of fancy things like page fidelity, self-containment (e.g., via embedded fonts and images), device-independent color. For quite a while now, Acrobat Professional has also included a collection of specialized features for printing. While the breadth of Acrobat’s print-related functionality has grown across successive versions, there’s one key area that Acrobat doesn’t directly address at all: imposition.
To explain what that is, I’ll start by quoting the very helpful Wikipedia page on the topic:
Imposition … [is] the arrangement of … pages on the printer’s sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplify binding and reduce paper waste. Correct imposition minimizes printing time by maximizing the number of pages per impression, reducing cost of press time and materials. To Achieve this, the printed sheet must be filled as fully as possible.
Thanks, Wikipedia! So then, in its absolute simplest form, a key point of imposition is to fit multiple pages on each sheet for printing. With many commercial printing methods, changing the content to be printed means physically changing the plate or equivalent. That means that, the more pages you can fit on a single plate/sheet, the fewer times you need to change the plates, and the more efficient your print run.
The number of sheets per page isn’t the only consideration, though. The placement and organization of pages should also be informed by the stitching method, grain of the printing substrate (e.g., type of paper), and intended finishing and binding methods.
It’s crucial to get imposition right. Done properly, imposition facilitates stitching, finishing and binding, minimizes waste, and maximizes efficiency. Since Acrobat Pro can’t help with this, having no imposition features and all, where can you turn? As the title of this post implies, this is where Aerialist comes in.
Debenu PDF Aerialist offers a full set of imposition functionality. Using it, you can repeat pages to print business cards or labels (step and repeat), turn regular, sequential PDFs into books or booklets that are ready for binding (2-up, 4-up, N-up), re-size, shuffle or rotate media (i.e., pages), and optimize projects for specific printing processes.
PDF and Acrobat Professional offer good support for print workflows, but there is still a substantial functional gap — a gap that is filled when Acrobat is paired with the imposition functionality of Debenu PDF Aerialist. You don’t need to take my word for it, though. Check out the free trial to see for yourself.
The post Why You Need PDF Aerialist for Print: It Does What Acrobat Can’t (Imposition) appeared first on Debenu Blog.
The legal industry is driven by documents. As such, the preparation of legal documents needs to be fast, and it needs to be done right. A while back, I wrote a blog post about the use of Debenu PDF Aerialist with Acrobat for legal professionals, but it’s helpful to look at how Aerialist compares with a competing product in the space: TRS ToolBox Legal Edition.
First things first, the two products are both plug-ins for Acrobat, so that program is needed regardless. One of the interesting differences between ToolBox and Aerialist is the courses of their development. ToolBox (first as ISIToolBox and now as TRS ToolBox) has been around in one form or another for more than a decade, with more and more features added over time. Despite this incremental expansion of functionality, very little has been removed from the product in that time. Since Acrobat has also added significant functionality during that span, there are now marked functional overlaps between the two pieces of software.
By contrast, Debenu PDF Aerialist has been built from the ground up to work in concert with Acrobat without feature bloat or redundancy. Like ToolBox, Aerialist has been built using a mature and growing technology base. Unlike ToolBox, Aerialist has kept pace with Acrobat’s increasing feature-set to remain a perfect complement to that fundamental PDF application. When features become redundant due to the addition of core Acrobat functionality, they are removed or expanded in Aerialist. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this equation for shrewd purchasing officers is that Debenu also doesn’t charge for these redundant features, which accounts for significant unit savings, when compared with TRS ToolBox Legal Edition. We also don’t expect potential users to simply take our word for it, and have always offered a fully-functional, 14-day free trial of Aerialist.
While I’ve already addressed functionality in broad strokes, it’s worth looking at key features in detail:
So, with all of that in mind, I think you are left with five key reasons for choosing Aerialist:
That’s all from me for now. If you would like to try Debenu PDF Aerialist there is a 14-day free trial.
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Debenu has just released an update to Debenu PDF Aerialist. While the new point-update fixes several bugs, it also adds and expands several key features, all focused around link and bookmark functionality. Overall, the latest release incorporates 4 new or enhanced features and 6 bug fixes. For a full list, see the product updates page. In overview, auditing and reporting have been improved for links and bookmarks, as has the creation of bookmarks from a table of contents (TOC). Aerialist 12.1 remains capable of creating a TOC from bookmarks.
The new-look Links and Bookmarks Audit feature now supports searching through batches of documents, and can be used to find, validate and modify all links and bookmarks, rather than just those that are invalid. Aerialist 12.1 can now be used to change the properties of bookmarks and links, either individually or in groups.
The most important new feature allows the production of visual reports for links and bookmarks. These visual reports expand on the functionality of regular, text-based reports available in earlier versions of Aerialist. Specifically, each report entry lists the destination, title and status of each bookmark or link. For links or bookmarks that point to the current document, entries also embed a small copy of the destination page. This allows users to confirm at a glance whether their internal links and bookmarks lead to the correct locations.
Future blog posts will outline how to make the most of these new and expanded features of Debenu PDF Aerialist.
As a minor update, Debenu PDF Aerialist 12.1 is free to those with a valid licence for Aerialist 12.
As always we’d love to hear your thoughts on the new version of Debenu PDF Aerialist. If you have any questions, comments or general feedback, please let us know.
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