PDF — Rah Rah Rah!

Gimme a P! Gimme a D! Gimme an F! What do we have?

A file encapsulating a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, graphics, and other information needed to display it.

Ok, maybe more than you (or I) need to know, but there are some things about PDFs that are useful to understand.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. These files are designed to be exchanged and viewed electronically, and to optimize documents for the web. All you need to view a PDF is the viewer software (Reader) which Adobe distributes for free.

Many people don't understand how limited the options are for editing a PDF. Making changes to a PDF depends partly on what software was used to create it. PDFs do not recognize paragraph returns, line-breaks and other formatting. Text in a PDF is in single lines, so that while small text edits are possible, larger changes to the entire paragraph are difficult at best. And although fonts can be embedded in a PDF document, editing that document still depends on having the font loaded.

Changing graphics in a PDF can be done, but again is limited, even using high-end software such as Adobe Illustrator. So bottom line — if you can, go back to the original file to make changes, then recreate the PDF. Now there's something to cheer about.

The Ravenous Dilettante

Accent on Christmas

I remember when I was a lad, many many years ago, one of my favorite treats at Christmas time was popcorn balls. These caramel corn baseball-sized balls were wrapped in red and green cellophane and hung on the tree. Just thinking about them brings back fond, sticky memories.

Imagine my excitement when we visited southeast Louisiana and were invited to a shrimp ball! I couldn't quite understand how they were going to get the shrimps to stick together, much less hang them on a tree. Of course I found out that we were actually going to a shrimp boil. My yankee ears are not yet fully attuned to some of the accents here.

As it turns out I was far from disappointed. A proper shrimp boil is done outdoors, and is far tastier (and less sticky) than anything hanging on a Christmas tree. If you'd like to know how to do a shrimp boil send us an email. You'll have a ball.

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