Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite – Page 38

April 5, 2010

Adobe Captivate: Train the Text to Speech Agents

by Kevin Siegel

During my beginner Captivate classes, I always teach students how to use Captivate's Text to Speech feature. I always look forward to teaching that particular feature because it honestly gets everyone in the room pumped up. And why not? Text to Speech is an easy-to-use utility that will instantly convert written text into audio files. All you have to do is type a slide note, select the note, click Text-to-Speech, select a "speech agent," and click Generate Audio.

If you've spent any time with Captivate's Text to Speech utility, you have probably discovered that the pronunciation of the spoken words isn't always perfect. Unfortunately, if you don't like it, there isn't a pronunciation editor in Captivate that will help, so you're stuck. Bummer! The end! Have a nice day.

Oh, you were looking for solutions here? In that case, read on.

Believe it or not, there is actually a pronunciation editor for the Text to Speech utility, but it's not part of the Captivate interface and you aren't likely to stumble upon it accidentally.

If you have installed Captivate and the Text to Speech Utility, you'll typically find the tool in the following location:

Program [Captivate Installation Folder]\VT\Kate or Paul (depending on the agent you selected when you recorded)\M16\bin

There is an application hiding in the BIN folder called UserDicEng.exe.

UserDicEng.exe

Open UserDicENG.exe and the English User Dictionary Editor will open.

To change the pronunciation of a particular word:

Open the userdict_eng.csv dictionary file
(Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 4\VT\agent\M16\data-common\userdict\)
Click Add word
Type the original word into the Source field
Type the correct word into the Target field using the correct pronunciation (using the letters or the Pronunciation Symbols)
You can always click Read to hear the pronunciation of the new, target word.
Click OK
When satisfied, click the File Save button
Click the Close button
The new pronunciation will be used by your Speech Agent within Captivate the next time you convert text to speech.

April 1, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker: Multiple Spaces Between Sentences

by Barbara Binder

Have you ever tried to type multiple spaces between sentences in a FrameMaker document and found yourself unable to do so? Have you ever wondered why you couldn't do it? I mean, you can do it in MS Word!

The answer is simple… "Because you shouldn't!"

Was that a bit harsh? Did you find that answer wanting? I was afraid you'd say that. If you took the time to read this far in my article, you are probably pretty determined to add extra spacing between your sentences.

Before I show you how to allow for this in FrameMaker, please take a moment to pick up any professionally typeset publication sitting within reach. (By "professionally typeset" I mean anything you paid money for: a book, newspaper, magazine and not a party invitation sent by your next door neighbor.) Look at the spaces between the sentences–how many do you see? I'm betting that there is just a single space. And you didn't even notice the spacing until you looked, right?

Typing a single space after punctuation is the standard for professionally typeset publications. The whole two-spaces-after-punctuation thing showed up as a response to the very hard to read Courier element that was standard on the IBM Selectric typewriter. Sadly, the generation that learned to type on a typewriter communicated that style to people learning how to type via word processors and they then demanded the same style from their page layout folks.

The FrameMaker team knew all of this and, in an effort to help you avoid this common error, they created a feature called "Smart Spaces." When it's on, you can press the spacebar all you like in FrameMaker, but you'll never get two spaces in a row. In my opinion, it's an awesome feature!

From my years in the classroom training, I know that this little discussion will convince most of my students to try to stop double spacing. But I also know that there are people out there who will look me straight in the eye and say, "but I want double spaces" (and the usually unspoken "and I don't want you or my computer to tell me what to do"). For them, I sigh quietly, and tell them to choose Format > Document > Text Options and deselect Smart Spaces.

Smart spaces

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If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker 9 class. Too elementary for your skill level? How about the Advanced FrameMaker 9 class? Hope to "see" you there.

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About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

April 1, 2010

Acrobat 9: We Want You to Read This (But Not All of You, Apparently)

by David R. Mankin

You couldn't escape it in recent weeks. There was a new plan to reform the United State's health care system. There were screams for the promised transparency. They shoved, pushed, yelled… and the level of rhetoric was feverish.

In an attempt to bring the general public into the arena of discussion, the White House apparently released a PDF in which "Stability & Security for All Americans" was proclaimed.

I had a few problems with the PDF and none of them had anything to do with politics or health care at all. The PDF had the White House's URL at the bottom, but I noticed the URL text was NOT linked. Finding this curious, I inspected the document a bit more closely. By starting Acrobat's Accessibility Quick Check (Advanced > Accessibility > Quick Check), I discovered that the PDF was not tagged and therefore would not pass the government's own "508" standards. (In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.) Imagine that–the White House, at the very TOP of the government's chain of command, did not follow the rules. Curious, huh?

In fairness, I have no way of knowing if this was an official, government-sanctioned flyer. It did not have a digital signature and the Document's properties revealed no metadata pointing back to the document's origin.

So now I was curious about that famous 2000+ page health care bill that has dominated the domestic news reports. The White House promised that the bill would be released for anyone to read… ANYONE. I went searching around the Web for the document and I quickly found links to the bill in PDF format.

I downloaded the PDF and opened it in Acrobat 9 Pro.

As promised, it was more than 2,000 pages (2,409 to be exact). I immediately saw a Digital Certification across the top of the view panel: "Certified by the Superintendent of Documents" at the US Government Printing Office. The PDF was for real.

Two things about the PDF screamed at me immediately. First, it was extremely long. Second (are you ready for this?), the PDF contained no bookmarks. None. There was no way to intelligently read and navigate the document other than to start on page 1 and end at page 2409.

Need to find if the new bill affects retired military's TriCare coverage? No bookmark to help you find it. Care to guess whether this is a tagged document that might meet the government's own criteria for "508 Compliancy"? Nope. Untagged. Unacceptable.

I know one famous address that needs an Acrobat class. Might you too?

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About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.

March 29, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4: Hide and Seek

by Lori Smith

In our Essentials of Adobe Captivate online class we teach a lesson covering rollover captions. In the lesson, attendees are taught to add four rollover captions to a slide that are positioned above images. Learners who take the lesson are encouraged to point to the numbers on the slide which, in turn, makes the associated rollover caption appear.

After the lesson, a student commented "that's great, but could I force my students to point to the numbers in a specific order?"

Hmmmm… interesting request. And to be honest, it's quite impossible in versions of Captivate older than version 4. However, in Captivate 4 this kind of interaction is quite possible. In fact, click this link to see a sample of the solution (there are four images on a slide and you will be forced to mouse over them in order, and one at a time).

It may seem daunting to create this kind of interactivity in Captivate, but it's really quite simple by hiding and showing objects at the correct time. During the steps that follow, I will teach you how to implement this concept for the first two rollover areas shown in the sample.

To prepare for the lesson, create a Captivate project. Insert two images to a slide and then insert two Rollover Slidelets and one button (Insert > Standard Objects).

Name the first Rollover Slidelet rolloverNumber1, the second Rollover Slidelet rolloverNumber2 and the button DoneButton.

First Rollover Slidelet

Second Rollover Slidelet

Button

Make rolloverNumber2 and DoneButton initially invisible by deselecting the Visible checkbox on the Options tab.

Position rolloverNumber1's Slidelet over the first picture.

Insert a text caption in the Slidelet that says something like Congratulations, you found item number 1!

Place rolloverNumber2's Slidelet over the second picture.

Insert a text caption within the Slidelet that says something like You found the second object! Good job.

Preview the lesson and note that rolloverNumber2 is not visible, thus it is not available for the student to roll over. The only interactive option on the slide is rolloverNumber1. After the student rolls over the first picture, you need to activate rolloverNumber2. You can do this by "showing" the rollover area.

Show the Properties of rolloverNumber1.

On the Advanced tab, select Show from the On rollover drop-down menu and select rolloverNumber2 from the Show drop-down menu.

Selecting Show

Finally, after the student finds the second picture, we want to show the "Done" button.

Display the Properties of rolloverNumber2.

On the Advanced tab, select Show from the On rollover drop-down menu and then select DoneButton from the Show drop-down menu.

Second Show action

Not too tricky and you didn't even need any multiple or advanced actions!

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About the Author: Lori Smith is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Adobe Captivate. She will be teaching our Adobe Captivate 4: Advanced Actions online, instructor-led class. Click here for details.

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Need to learn the basics of Adobe Captivate 4 fast? Attend a live, instructor-led online training class. Click here for more information. Looking for more Advanced Captivate 4 training? We've got you covered. Click here for more information.

Worried about your class canceling? You'll be happy to hear that IconLogic never, ever cancels classes (even if there's just one student registered).

March 24, 2010

Acrobat 9: Scanning into a PDF Portfolio

by David R. Mankin

Here's the scenario: You work at a law firm. "Client Z" has a date in court coming soon. You have created a PDF Portfolio for "Client Z." This portfolio contains dozens of individual documents. There is one document that is still missing–It's a police report from another district. The report arrives just in time… via mail. This paper document needs to be added to the PDF Portfolio, and quickly! Not to worry. This can be accomplished with a few mouse clicks (you'll also need a scanner).

Place the document in the scanner and start Acrobat 9. Click the Create Task button and then select PDF From Scanner (or choose File > Create PDF > From Scanner).

Select Custom Scan.

Select your scanner from the Input options and any other appropriate settings (such as Color Mode and Resolution).

In the Output section, select Append to existing file or portfolio and browse for your target PDF Portfolio (or PDF file if you simply wish to add pages to an existing PDF file).

Appending to existing file or portfolio.

Click the Scan button and Acrobat will ask you for a file name (if you are appending a PDF Portfolio). The scanning process progresses and, when complete, the target portfolio will be opened automatically with the newly-scanned document included.

I was the guest presenter an AcrobatUsers.com eSeminar this past week. The topic was Scanning and OCR in Acrobat 9. This one-hour eSeminar is available for viewing online and covers this and other amazing scanning and OCR capabilities of Acrobat 9.

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Learn how to make your PDF files interactive and capable! Sign up for my live, online Acrobat 9 Professional class.

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March 22, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4: Crop It!

by Kevin Siegel

I've been teaching Captivate for years. One of my favorite parts of any class is showing features of the software that even veteran developers of the program did not know were available. Case in point: during a recent class a student asked if it was possible to crop imported images directly within Captivate. She had been told that while you could resize images, you could not crop them. The answer to her question was a resounding yes. It's not only possible to crop images in Captivate, it's very easy.

In the picture below, my goal was to crop most of the pink bucket out of the image.

Image to be cropped.

I right-clicked the image and chose Properties.

The Image Properties dialog box appeared. On the Image tab, I clicked the Crop button (located in the lower right corner of the dialog box).

A warning appeared foretelling the dangers of proceeding. I bravely clicked the Yes button.

Crop warning.

The Resize/Crop Image dialog box appeared. I deselected Constrain proportions on the lower left of the dialog box (if I had left this option selected, I would have cropped more of the image than I wanted).

Resize/Crop Image dialog box.

The final step was to drag the resizing handle in the lower left of the image up and to the right until most of the bucket was outside the boundary of the image.

Cropping an image.

After that, a few clicks on the OK button (one to close the Resize/Crop Image dialog box and another to close the Image Properties dialog box) sealed the deal.

Cropped image.

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Worried about your class canceling? You'll be happy to hear that IconLogic never, ever cancels classes (even if there's just one student registered).

March 17, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker: Multiple References to One Table Footnote

by Barbara Binder

Footnotes in FrameMaker are pretty straightforward. Place your cursor where you'd like the footnote reference to appear and choose Special > Footnote. If your cursor was in the body of the footnote, the note will appear at the bottom of the page. If your cursor was in a table, the footnote will appear directly below the last line of the table. (If you are new to footnotes, click here for a review of the basics.)

What do you do when one table has multiple references to a single note? I use one of two techniques:

Add a Cross-Reference

Start by adding a footnote via Special > Footnote.
Click on the note under the table and jot down the Paragraph Format (FrameMaker defaults to TableFootnote).
Create a Character Tag for superscript:
1. Press Ctrl+D to open the Character Designer.
2. Press Shift+F8 to set the Character Designer to As Is.
3. Name the Character Tag Superscript and click twice in front of Superscript to activate the command.
4. Click Apply (NOT Update All) to create the new format, and then be sure to UNCHECK Apply to Selection before clicking Create.
Place your cursor back in the table where you want to place a second reference to the first footnote.
Choose Special > Cross Reference.
Set the Document to Current, the Source Type to Paragraphs, and the Paragraph Tag to TableFootnote (or whatever Paragraph tag you jotted down in step 2).
A list of all the TableFootnotes in the document appears.
Scroll to find the one you want to reference, and click it.
Create a Reference format for the footnote references:
1. Click the Edit Format button in the lower right corner.
2. Change the Name to Superscript.
3. Delete everything on the Definition line and replace with <$paranumonly[TableFootnote]>.
  These building blocks tell FrameMaker to turn on the Superscript Character Tag you created earlier and then they pull the paragraph number only (not the text, or any additional punctuation you may be using) of the tag called TableFootnote. You do not need to reset the formatting back to Default Para Font after the paranumonly building block–it resets itself.
4. Click Add, Done, OK (to losing History, if activated) and Insert.

There you go! If you need to reference the note a third or fourth time, its way easier because you've done all the hard work.

Click your mouse where you want the next cross-reference to go.
Choose Special > Cross Reference.
Click TableFootnote.
Click Insert.

If you end up adding or deleting the table footnotes, you'll find that these will all update automatically when you update your references, or update your book.

Cheat

True confessions. When I feel fairly confident the footnotes won't undergo edits that will force renumbering, I'll just type in the letter of the note and superscript it. Shhhh. That's our little secret.

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March 16, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4: Got a Sizing Problem? Let Captivate Fix It!

by Kevin Siegel

You've got three text buttons on a slide. The text on each of the buttons is different (One says "Repeat this lesson," one says "Take the Next Lesson," and the last one says "Close the lesson.") You'd still like the buttons to be the same width. So there you go, manually resizing each button until the sizes look about right. There… that wasn't so bad. Oh, did I mention you have a similar problem on 20 other slides.

I know what you're thinking… this is a problem that really isn't a problem. You're such a Captivate stud that you show the properties of the widest button (you can right-click an object and choose Properties to display its properties) and head straight for the Size and Position tab. You adeptly change the Width and Height of the button and, before clicking OK, use the Apply to All option to make all of the buttons in the project the same size. Nice! Good for you! On to another, more complex problem you go…

Oh, did I mention that the text buttons on each of those 20 slides vary from slide to slide. Some have a few words, some just one. Using the Apply to All option to make the buttons all the same size, project-wide, just wouldn't be appropriate in this instance. Dohhhh! So what's a developer to do? Read on…

Here's the challenge: you'd like to make the buttons shown in the picture below match the size of the widest button. Here's a quick way to do it without manually changing the size of any of the buttons, or using the Apply to All option.

Three buttons... two need resizing

Select some buttons (or other slide objects… you can perform this procedure on just about anything).
Right-click the objects and choose Align > Resize to Same Width.

And Bam, all three buttons are the same width! Keep in mind you could have also selected Align > Resize to Same Height or Same Size.

The images are all the same size now

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Worried about your class canceling? You'll be happy to hear that IconLogic never, ever cancels classes (even if there's just one student registered).

March 12, 2010

Acrobat 9: Image-Based Watermarks

by David R. Mankin

A while back I wrote about Acrobat's watermark feature. At that time, I created the watermark by typing the word DRAFT in the watermark creation dialog box.

There's another type of watermark possible in Acrobat 9–an image-based watermark that will allow you to have your company logo display on each page. The image watermark can be bold or subtle, and can appear on whatever pages you choose.

To insert an image-based watermark, choose Document > Watermark > Add.

Select File as the source and browse for your desired image file. (Accepted file formats are .pdf, .bmp, .rle, .dib and .jpg.) In my example, I selected a PDF file that I made from a coat-of-arms image. In the preview pane, you will immediately see a preview of the image and it will seem rather harsh. Not to worry. The image comes in with an opacity setting of 100% by default. For images, I like to dial the opacity percentage down to around 20%. Depending on the dimensions of your image file, you may opt to scale it to each targeted page. (In my example, I have it set to scale to 80%).

Add an image watermark using Acrobat.

There are other options with which you may want to try such as image rotation and behind versus on top of page. By clicking the Appearance Options link, you can further tweak the watermark to show or not when the document is printed, and/or displayed on screen.

Appearance Options

If your document has varying page sizes, you can opt to keep the watermark's position constant or not. You can even specify coordinates to place your watermark in a specific location on your pages.

If you need to apply this new custom watermark to more than your current PDF, you can click the Apply to Multiple button to select other files to include.

Didn't know Acrobat could do that? Don't feel bad. There are dozens of tricks and features that most folks don't know about. Sign up for my live, project-based online Acrobat 9 Professional class to learn lots of neat and useful tips, tricks and techniques that will make your PDF files stand out and be noticed.

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March 11, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4: Gimme Some Space!

by Lori Smith

If you have played around with Captivate 4's Advanced Actions features, you have surely discovered that you can add two items together such as myCount := myCount + 1 or myBossSalary := mySalary + mikeSalary.

But, did you know that you can also add words together (concatenate)? You can certainly have an assignment statement of the type: fullName := firstName + lastName.

If your student inputs Biff and Bifferson to firstName and lastName in a couple of text entry boxes, your fullName will end up being the sum of those two. Cool, yes? Well, only if you like your fullName to be displayed as BiffBifferson. Gee, that's a bit annoying… it's one long name and hard to read. You might try to add a space in the middle by doing something like:

fullName = firstName + <space>

fullName = fullName + lastName.

But I can tell you right now, that it won't work. Try adding slashes, single or double quotes… still a no go.

I have a little trick I call the Spacer object. The Spacer object is a Text Entry Box that contains a space character.

First, create a variable named spacer (via Project > Actions > Variables).

New variable called Spacer.

Next, create a text entry box on the first slide of your project and stick it up in a corner so no one can click it or fill it in by accident. Then, set the initial value to a blank space and check the retain value field.

Text entry box with initial value set to a blank space.

Associate the variable spacer with the text entry box.

On the Options tab, set the rest of the text entry box's settings as shown below:

Text entry box options

Now that you have a space handy, you can go back to your action and enter the following:

fullName := firstName + spacer

fullName := fullName + lastName

The result when fullName is displayed via a Text Caption will appropriately be "Biff Bifferson."

This is just a little something I like to have handy when I'm working with advanced actions in Captivate. Like this little tip? Want to learn more about Captivate's Advanced Actions? Join me online as I lead you through a 3-hour course focusing on Captivate's Advanced Actions.

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About the Author: Lori Smith is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Adobe Captivate. Lori has a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from MIT as well as a Master's in electrical engineering from George Mason University. She has been working in the field of software engineering for more than 20 years. Lori will be teaching our Adobe Captivate 4: Advanced Actions online, instructor-led class.

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Worried about your class canceling? You'll be happy to hear that IconLogic never, ever cancels classes (even if there's just one student registered).