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Find Text Leading from Acrobat PDF

Ever have to recreate a document from an Acrobat PDF? You can find out most everything about the text by using the Object Inspector, except the leading. Well, here's a cheesy way to figure it out. Open the PDF in Illustrator (you just need one page). Release any and all clipping masks. Draw a guide at the baseline of the first line of text, and one on the line below. Now, Option-drag the first line to make a copy, and position it exactly next to the original first line at baseline. Then put a return anywhere in the copied line. Now adjust leading of the copied lines, so that the second line of copy rests on the baseline of the second line of the original. Now you know your leading.

Or you could buy expensive software to find the leading. Your choice.

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Greg Ledger

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Published in TidBITS 279.
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29 May 1995 | Print Printer-Friendly Version of This Article

BBEdit 3.1.1 Goes IC-, Kodex-, and GX-Savvy

by Tonya Engst Send Email to Author

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Bare Bones Software recently updated the commercial version of its popular text editor BBEdit to version 3.1.1 (see TidBITS-202 for a dated review of BBEdit). The new version has only a few improvements over those in earlier 3.x versions, but the nature of the improvements shows that Bare Bones Software constantly seeks to improve BBEdit.

In TidBITS-276, Adam wrote about Internet Config, an important Internet utility by Peter Lewis and Quinn that helps centralize your basic Internet information so other IC-savvy applications can automatically find it. Given that BBEdit is popular for HTML authoring (and is bundled with Apple's new Internet Servers), and given the popularity of the Internet among Macintosh users, it's great to see BBEdit now sporting an optional Internet menu that enables you to switch quickly to your designated Internet clients, including your news reader, email client, FTP client, Web browser, and Telnet client. You can also Command-click a URL that appears in a BBEdit document to launch or switch to the appropriate helper application and go to the resource specified in the URL. The Internet menu also enables you to view the current document in your designated Web browser, a feature that HTML authors may find handy.

BBEdit 3.1.1 also now works with Kodex, a utility that helps programmers print source code files with special formatting options. BBEdit also supports the QuickDraw GX printing architecture.

A demo version of BBEdit 3.1.1 is available, and it lets you to try all the new features, but you cannot Save, Save As, or Export, and printed output has a demo watermark.

ftp://ftp.std.com/vendors/bbsw/demos/bbedit-31 -demo.hqx

You can also try BBEdit Lite, a lightweight, freeware version of BBEdit, though you won't see any of the new features in action.

ftp://ftp.std.com/vendors/bbsw/freeware/bbedit -lite-30.hqx

Although BBEdit Lite is a credible product in its own right, if you're considering purchasing the $119 commercial version, check out BBEdit's pricing information file. Why? Because almost everyone should fit into one of their discount options, and the discounts are often substantial. Bare Bones Software also recently set up a deal with Baseline Publishing, where Baseline is offering users of Vantage (Baseline's text editor) a $69 upgrade to BBEdit.

ftp://ftp.std.com/vendors/bbsw/product-info/ bbedit-price+order-info.txt

BBEdit now comes on a nicely done CD-ROM, complete with online documentation, twenty or so contributed extensions (plug-in type modules that extend BBEdit's capabilities), and a number of additional goodies. If you don't have a CD-ROM drive or find that you want a printed manual, a disk-manual set is available for an additional $15 plus shipping and handling.

Bare Bones Software -- 508/651-3561 -- 508/ 651-7584 (fax)
<bbsw@netcom.com>
Baseline Publishing -- 901/527-2501 -- 901/523-1232 (fax)
<baseline@eworld.com>

 

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