©1999 Kas Thomas. All rights reserved.
Contents
1. If you have a feature you d like to see added contact the author at kt acroforms com And in the meantime tell your friends about us Remember the URL www acroforms com2. PDF Blit the ability to create multiple columns of justified type on the same page is not implemented Again if there is sufficient interest we will implement this in a future upgrade PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 9 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved View in Acrobat By checking the View in Acrobat checkbox you are telling PDF Blit to launch Acrobat or Acrobat Reader whichever is present on the BBEdit default disk and display your just created PDF file in Acrobat when PDF Blit is done Of course sufficient free memory to run Acrobat must exist in order for this to work properly After Acrobat or Reader launches your document will come to the front and Acrobat will be the active application BBEdit will continue to run in the background If you do not wish to see your PDF document open in Acrobat leave View in Acrobat unchecked Interpret Tags PDF Blit v1 0 has a rudimentary built in ability to interpret HTML tags But not all HTML tags The tags that are supported at this time include e lt I gt lt I gt for italics e lt B gt for boldface e lt H1 gt thru lt H6 gt lt H1 gt thru lt H6 gt for headings e lt PRE gt and lt PRE gt for constant width preformatted text Courier e lt FONT COLOR RRGGBB gt where RRGGBB represents hex values for red green and blue color components Examples This shows the use of lt I gt for italics This shows the use of lt B gt for boldf
3. PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 1999 by Kas Thomas All rights reserved www acroforms com DISCLAIMER Reasonable care has been taken in the preparation of this document and the software described herein However the author makes no representations or warranties regarding the fitness of the software for a particular purpose or its merchantibility moreover the author assumes no responsibility or liability for errors omissions bugs or inaccuracies in either the software or its documentation Said software and documentation are provided as is and are subject to revision without prior notice TRADEMARKS Acrobat is a trademark of Adobe Systems Inc Code Warrior is a trademark of Metrowerks Inc PowerMac and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Computer Other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective holders UPDATES Updates will be posted at http www acroforms com Bugs feature requests support inquiries and questions regarding distribution of this software should be directed to kthomas acroforms com Author Kas Thomas Developed using Metrowerks Code Warrior Pro 5 PDFLib by Thomas Merz tm muc de BBEdit Extension Interface SDK v7 0 from http www barebones com This documentation created using BBEdit v5 0 PDF Blit v1 0 PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 4 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved What Is PDF Blit PDF Blit is an extension or plug in for BBEdit and BBEdit Lit
4. ace This shows the use of lt B gt lt I gt for boldface italics This shows the use of lt pre gt for preformatted text PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 10 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved This shows preformatted boldface text via lt pre gt lt B gt And of course you can combine tags in almost any manner you want Heading lt h1 gt looks like this Heading lt h2 gt looks like this Heading lt h3 gt looks like this Heading lt h4 gt looks like this Heading lt h5 gt looks like this Heading lt h6 gt looks like this All other HTML tags are ignored and will not print unless escaped as described in Note 4 below Note 1 The HTML tags are not case sensitive Note 2 Headings are always Times Bold Note 3 Style tags bold italics etc should not be nested with heading tags h1 h6 etc Note 4 When tag interpretation is enabled the angle brackets will not print unless they are escaped with a backslash as in lt PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 11 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Additional Non Standard Tags In addition to the standard HTML tags listed above PDF Blit recognizes some tags of its own e Use lt gt to force a page break e Use lt 30 gt to force the file to end abruptly The former is useful when you are formatting a long document and need to be sure that a short section ends on a particular page The latter marking is useful as a workaround for a PDF Bli
5. e the text editor marketed by Bare Bones Software The plug in is designed to give a PDF export capability to BBEdit thereby letting BBEdit users create attractive richly formatted documents without having to use Distiller Acrobat or any other PDF authoring software With PDF Blit you can output Portable Document Format files directly from BBEdit Features PDF Blit will let you create very attractive colorful documents directly from BBEdit in your choice of serif Times Roman sans serif Helvetica or fixed width Courier typeface at any point size and with any line spacing Not only that but you can use italics boldface type headings and colored type freely throughout your document by appropriate use of HTML style tags see further below This manual for example was created using BBEdit and PDF Blit In fact the raw text version of this document is included in the PDF Blit distribution files so that you can see how various tags were used to achieve various effects in this document PDF Blit s powerful capabilities include e Choice of 12 default typefaces e Fonts in any point size including fractional values e Leading line spacing of any magnitude including fractional values e Text color can be varied on the fly e Typeface can be styled italics boldface bold italics on the fly e 6 heading sizes e Customizable tab width e Customizable character width Fonts can be condensed or expanded in o
6. he header on each page of a document if you have enabled Show Headers Title The Title text edit box lets you attach Title information to your PDF document This information is seen in Acrobat Reader when the user chooses the Document Info command Note Any text you type here will also show up in the second line of the header on each page of a document if you have enabled Show Headers Keywords The Keywords text edit box lets you attach Keywords information to your PDF document This information is seen in Acrobat Reader when the user chooses the Document Info command Note Any text you type here will also show up in the third header line on each page of a document if you have enabled Show Headers A Short PDF Blit FAQ How can I create a colored background for a page In addition to enabling tag interpretation see above you must do three things 1 Set the rectangle s color by writing lt FONT COLOR RRGGBB gt where RRGGBB are the hex values for the color components 2 Create a rectangle covering the whole page For example lt RECT 0 0 700 800 gt 3 Make sure you have inserted the foregoing code prior to any text that is to appear on the page Otherwise the rectangle will overwrite the text and you won t see any text Also make sure that after you have created the rectangle that you reset the text color to a different color say black an RGB value of 000000 Otherwise your text
7. ins Is there any limit on the number of pages I can have in a document No PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 15 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Will I run out of memory if I try to convert a large document to PDF No you shouldn t Large or small shouldn t matter since the document is written to disk progressively as it is created It isn t cached in memory Sometimes when I make changes to a document and re render it as PDF the changes don t show up in the open document in Acrobat Reader You have to close the old PDF document in Reader before re rendering a new version of it Otherwise Reader still shows you the old version Can I save my PDF document to a different directory or folder Not presently Right now the PDF file is automatically written to the same folder where BBEdit resides Can I somehow insert hidden signatures or copyright notices inside my PDF document Yes To some degree that s what the Author Title and Keyword fields of the setup dialog are for Text you type there will be embedded in the PDF document visible only when the user selects Document Info in Acrobat When I begin a line with a heading using lt h6 gt for example I get an extra carriage return ahead of that line that I don t want What can I do about it This is a known bug or feature depending You can try this workaround Immediately before the heading type a blank space When you convert to PDF the space will be
8. n of Acrobat 4 0 does This feature alone makes PDF Blit a very powerful tool Page Numbering By checking the Show Page Numbers checkbox in PDF Blit s setup dialog you can make PDF Blit number your document s pages for you Page numbers will appear in the default typeface in the upper righthand corner of every page Note To position the page number exactly where you want it experiment with different Top Margin settings below Tip To keep a page number from appearing on the title page first page of your document create a page sized white rectangle see below on that page before any text The first page PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 8 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved is numbered before the rectangle is drawn which means that you can overpaint the first page number with white by using the big white rect technique Header Lines You can make PDF Blit print up to three header lines in the upper left corner of every page by default just by checking the Show Headers checkbox and entering text in the Author Title and Keywords text edit areas in the lower portion of the setup dialog Whatever you type in the Author box will appear as the first line of your header Whatever you type in the Title area will appear on a second header line and whatever you type in Keywords will appear on a third header line To make any header line not appear just delete all text from the appropriate text edit box No header will a
9. ne percent increments e Text justification option e User can set margins on all 4 edges of page e Choose from 7 page transition effects box zoom split blinds glitter dissolve wipe and replace e Auto page numbering can be turned on or off e User customizable header can be enabled disabled e PDF file can be auto opened in Acrobat Reader e HTML tags interpreted see below e User control over PDF Document Info fields Author Title Keywords PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Installation You can install PDF Blit by dragging it into your BBEdit Plug Ins folder The extension will load automatically when you start BBEdit You should see PDF Blit in the Tools menu when BBEdit is running It will be grayed out until you have a document open however Basic Operation You can output a PDF version of any file that s open in BBEdit s foremost window simply by choosing PDF Blit from the Tools menu and clicking OK when the PDF Blit dialog appears Your original document will not be altered in any way A new file with the same name as the current document but with pdf appended to the name will appear in the BBEdit default folder the folder BBEdit is in The new file will be a PDF file filetype PDF and creator CARO conforming to Version 1 3 of the PDF specification suitable for viewing by Acrobat Reader 3 0 or higher Preferences You can set various user p
10. op margin to a more generous value for example 150 Some lines of text are going off the right edge of the page Is there a way to keep this from happening Set your right margin to a higher value Or enter hard returns in your problem lines But remember that if you change point sizes or typefaces your lines may reflow in an unexpected manner Is there a way to change the typeface or size or placement of the headers or page numbers Not at this time Sorry Can I use condensed type Will it affect text justification or right hand page margins in any way You can vary character widths in the setup dialog Entering 50 for 50 of normal will give you very VERY tightly condensed skinny letters A more tasteful value would be 85 But in any case text justification is not affected Your text should justify normally to the margins you selected with character width values other than 100 Will PDF Blit hyphenate words to achieve better justification No attempt is made to hyphenate words Even so the justification should look pretty good because we use a combination of word spacing adjustments character spacing and character width adjustment to achieve justification The lack of hyphenation shouldn t be a factor in most cases The only time it might be a factor is when the column width is small relative to the point size of the type In that case you should either turn justification off or use smaller type or smaller marg
11. ppear at all of course unless you have checked the Show Headers checkbox Justify Text You can make PDF Blit justify your document s text flush right and flush left by checking the Justify checkbox But in order for justification to work properly your document must not contain hard returns at the end of every line Carriage returns must occur ONLY at paragraph endings not at line endings Fortunately this is BBEdit s default behavior Soft wrapping of text onscreen does not place hard returns in the actual document So you can leave soft wrapping enabled Documents retrieved from DOS or Windows systems may not justify until you remove all the carriage returns and linefeeds from the line endings Ditto for e mail messages which may contain hard returns at the ends of lines Important In this version of PDF Blit you cannot enable tag interpretation and text justification at the same time This is because PDF Blit does not currently cache whole lines of text when formatting is enabled Therefore you can have formatting italics bold headings colored type etc or you can have text justification but not both If there is sufficient interest we will fix this in a future upgrade In the meantime to enable the Interpret Tags checkbox uncheck the Justify checkbox and vice versa Note To control column width when justification is enabled set your left and right page margins appropriately In this version of
12. references in PDF Blit s setup dialog which appears every time PDF Blit is launched The settings you choose here will persist across BBEdit sessions That is each time you launch PDF Blit you will see the same settings that you chose the last time you used PDF Blit Your settings will not be lost even after you quit BBEdit PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 6 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Advanced Options Default Typeface A drop down menu allows you to select from 12 default typefaces for your document The typefaces are Helvetica Helvetica Bold Helvetica Oblique Helvetica Bold Oblique Times Roman Times Bold Times Oblique Times Bold Oblique Courier Courier Bold Courier Oblique and Courier Bold Oblique If you have left the Interpret tags checkbox unchecked see below the typeface that you select from the drop down menu will remain the sole typeface used throughout your document If you wish to make use of bold italics or bold italics at various places throughout your document you need to check the Interpret tags checkbox and choose one of the three basic typefaces Helvetica Times Roman or Courier as your default typeface Point Size You can choose any point size for the text in your document including fractional values such as 9 8 or 13 6 For most documents a default point size of 10 to 14 points works best Leading Leading refers to the vertical spacing between lines of text You can supply any leading
13. removed the heading will be flush left and the extra carriage return will no longer be there PDF Blit doesn t seem to like for a line to begin with a space I notice it removes spaces at the start of a line What can I do about this Type Option Space instead of space at the start of a line if you really intend to begin a line with a space for example if you re trying to manually align preformatted text Option Space will solve the problem Every once in a while I ll go to output a document and all of a sudden I ll find that the default font has changed by itself What s going on It doesn t change by itself What happens is that if you end a tagged text file before you ve closed the last tag then whatever typeface you were in when the file was closed becomes your new default typeface The answer should be obvious Always close your tags That means if you use lt pre gt you should later close it with lt pre gt especially if it s the last tagged area in the file PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 16 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Leaving off the closing lt pre gt tag will change your default typeface to Courier possibly causing you to think Acrobat Reader can t find a needed font resource Do I need to credit PDF Blit in any documents I create with it No Can I put hypertext links in my PDF document using PDF Blit Not presently This is just one of many features we ll add to PDF Blit if we get enough requests
14. t bug that occasionally results in garbage characters at the very end of a file By using lt 30 gt at the end of a file you can prevent garbage characters from ever showing up Graphics Capability PDFBlit incorporates one vector graphics facility for drawing rectangles The special tag that invokes this facility is lt RECT XX YY WW HH gt where XX and YY are numbers representing the coordinates for the lower left corner of the rectangle and WW and HH are numbers representing the width and height respectively of the rectangle Note that all rectangles are solid filled with the current text color Important In PDF space the lower left corner of a page is the origin The y axis increases in the upward direction Thus to create a rectangle that covers an entire letter sized page you would write lt RECT 0 0 612 792 gt PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 12 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Setting Margins You can set the margins for all four edges of your page The units are in printer s points 72 points to the inch If you want half inch margins left and right set the left and right margin values to 36 For a two inch margin at the top of the page use a value of 144 And so on Author The Author text edit box lets you attach Author information to your PDF document This information is seen in Acrobat Reader when the user chooses the Document Info command Note Any text you type here will also show up in t
15. value you want but for most types of documents the leading value should be close in magnitude to the point size of the text Use a higher leading value for greater space between lines a lower value for more tightly packed lines A leading value that is three to four times the point size of the type will give your document a double spaced look PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Tabs You can tell PDF Blit how many spaces to insert for each Tab in your document A value of from 3 to 6 works good for most documents although if you are setting up special tables you may want to try other values Character Width The default value for character width is 100 meaning 100 of normal width For condensed type enter a value smaller than 100 For example a value of 75 means every character in your document will be 75 of normal width For expanded type use a value greater than 100 Note that the value you supply here applies globally to every character in your document Transition Effect A second drop down menu lets you choose from seven different page transition effects that will take place in Acrobat Reader as you page through an open PDF document The effects apply globally to every page in a document The default effect is replace Box split wipe and blinds implement familiar cinematic transition effects PDF Blit allows you greater control over transition effects than the full commercial versio
16. will be printed over the rectangle in the rectangle s own color which of course will render the text invisible Where can I find out about upgrades to PDF Blit Visit www acroforms com on a regular basis We do not operate a mailing list at present Is source code available for PDF Blit No although a bare bones framework so to speak for the code appeared in a late 1999 issue of MacTech Go to www mactech com for details Code for the PDF generating portions of PDF Blit came from Thomas Merz s excellent PDFLib library For that visit www pdflib com I would like to be able to put thin horizontal rules on a page Is there a way to do this Create one pixel deep rectangles at the positions where you want rules to appear Remember PDF Blit will let you position rectangles with pixel accuracy It may take you awhile to fit the text around your rects but with a little experimentation you should be able to achieve some nice effects PDF Blit 1 0 User Manual 14 1999 Kas Thomas All rights reserved Can I print white text on a grey background But of course Just draw a gray rectangle see above in the appropriate place s and then specify a text color of FFFFFF with a FONT tag But be sure to change the font color back to a non white color later after you re done drawing over the colored rect My headers and page numbers look awfully close to the top of the page Is there a way to change this Set your t
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