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Citation Software News
December 18, 2003
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Holiday Greetings from Citation Software!
The variable-data-publishing experts
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We've been very busy here at Citation Software, and it's been quite awhile since
we've published an issue of our newsletter. Like us, you're probably busy
too, so we're going to keep this short!
Here is an overview of what we're covering in this issue of Citation Software News:
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Who we are and what we do
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Invalid address & phone data costs your company time and money!
Wouldn't it be great if you could validate address & phone
data that's collected by your custom application or entered into the forms on your Web site
BEFORE the data gets into your
database? You can — and it's affordable and easy!
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What if you could have easy-to-use, server-based software
that runs on almost any platform and allows your programmers to build PDF books
on the fly — or populate PDF forms on the fly — or watermark PDF documents,
add page numbers or arbitrary text,
encrypt, decrypt, linearize, split, or merge PDF documents on the fly? All of this is possible
with the server-based PDF-creation/manipulation software that we offer!
And, you can save 15%-50% on this great software now through January 31, 2004.
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Save money on software bundles for Adobe Acrobat imposition
plug-ins and pre-press plug-ins
(Quite Imposing, Quite Imposing Plus,
Quite A Box Of Tricks, and Quite Revealing). These great products allow you to
work from within Adobe Acrobat to create booklets quickly and easily; they also
let you save money
on click fees by doing 2-up imposition; and in addition, you can use these products
to erase existing
page numbers, add your own page numbers, add images,
do color conversions and
image compression, check for font problems and color problems, and much more!
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Free upgrades are available for Quite Imposing, Quite Imposing Plus,
Quite A Box Of Tricks, and Quite Revealing.
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Julie Shaffer and Leonard Rosenthal have differing points of view about
using Macintosh Panther OS X to create "press-worthy" PDF files.
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Creating PDF forms is easy with Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional.
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Find out how NOT to lose your PrintShop Mail dongle or
ImpozeIt dongle — it's worth thousands of dollars!
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Who we are and what we do
Our company, Citation Software, provides services and products related to
electronic-publishing technology, particularly on-demand-publishing technology
and variable-data-publishing technology. We offer consulting, development,
integration, and technical-writing services; we sell "off-the-shelf"
software products; and we operate a Web-to-print portal
that allows you to set up a variable-data-publishing system without buying any
software and without investing any time in training.
If your company needs to develop a variable-data-publishing workflow but
you're not sure how to go about it, give us a call at 508-436-2543.
We can provide guidance and advice to get you started. This initial telephone
consultation is offered FREE OF CHARGE.
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Want to validate, correct, standardize, and enhance
the address & phone data that's collected by
your custom application or entered into the
forms on your Web site — BEFORE the data hits your database?
AddressObject, PhoneObject, and Data Quality Web Service let you do real-time
validation, correction, standardization, and enhancement of address/phone data for the USA and Canada.
AddressObject is a Component Object Model (COM) solution for
Windows and Linux that
can be integrated with your custom applications and your Web sites. It allows you to ensure that
address information is valid. It can break an address down into its component parts, correct misspelled
city names and street names, append nine-digit ZIP codes and Delivery Point Codes, identify non-existent
addresses, and much more. All this helps you to protect against waste and excess shipping and mailing costs.
A free demo version of AddressObject is available — call Citation Software
508-436-2543 to get your free demo. Pricing varies depending on volume.
Phone Object (available for Windows only) is a COM solution
that allows you to add telephone area code and prefix verification and correction to your
custom Windows program or Web site. Use it to enhance telemarketing effectiveness by eliminating
re-dialing and the downtime associated with invalid phone numbers. Pricing varies depending upon
your specific requirements.
Data Quality Web Service allows you to do
validation, correction, standardization, and enhancement of address & phone
data without purchasing, installing,
updating, or maintaining any software! It relies on XML technology and the Internet to provide
you with an easy solution for secure, on-line data verification, no matter what platform you use.
To utilize it, you simply create an XML document and send it to one of the Data Quality Web servers — it quickly
standardizes, corrects, and enhances the address and phone number and sends the information
back to your automatically.
Data Quality Web Service is very affordable. The table below shows how much you'll pay.
| Records
per year |
Your cost
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| 7,000 |
$500.00 |
| 15,000 |
$750.00 |
| 50,000 |
$1,500.00 |
| 120,000 |
$2,900.00 |
| 600,000 |
$4,900.00 |
| 1,200,000 |
$5,900.00 |
| 5,000,000 |
$6,900.00 |
| Unlimited |
$8,900.00 |
A free 30-day trial of Data Quality Web Service is available. To arrange your free 30-day trial,
call Citation Software at 508-436-2543.
Citation Software also offers software solutions for address validation, correction, standardization, and
enhancement for many other countries in addition to the USA. Call for details.
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Save money now through January 31, 2004 on server-based, multi-platform software
solutions for creating and manipulating PDF files.
Now through January 31, 2004, you can save 15%-50%
when you purchase multi-platform, server-based
software for dynamic PDF
stamping,
merging,
splitting,
form-filling,
encryption, decryption, linearization, page numbering (including Bates numbering),
page counting,
and other PDF-manipulation tasks. You can also build dynamic Tables of Contents.
Use these solutions to create invoices, data sheets,
legal documents, and even entire books — the sky's the limit!
Save 15% when you purchase one production
license for any of the products that are on sale.
Save 20% when you purchase two or more production
licenses for any of the products that are on sale.
Save 50% on developer licenses that are purchased in
conjunction with production products.
The products on sale are described below.
These products run on
many platforms, including AIX, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, HP-UX, and Windows.
Free trial versions are available.
To obtain your free trial software, or to arrange a purchase,
contact Citation Software at 508-436-2543.
We accept American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa.
APCrypt
APCrypt is a command-line
application that allows a programmer to
encrypt, decrypt, and linearize PDF files.
It supports all of Acrobat's standard security features.
The regular price for APCrypt is $495.00 USD — but you'll
get it for less if you buy on or before January 31, 2004.
Click here to get more details.
AppendPDF
AppendPDF is a command-line application
that allows a programmer to create a PDF file
from lists of several PDF files
and/or lists of page ranges within PDF files.
You can extract specified pages or page ranges.
You can create dynamic Tables of Contents, and
you can also enhance the resulting PDF documents
in various ways.
The regular price for AppendPDF is $995.00 USD, but you'll get it
for less if you buy on or before January 31, 2004.
Click here to get more details.
AppendPDF Pro
AppendPDF Pro is a command-line application that can
be used by a programmer to create a dynamic, production-quality
book-publishing workflow. As with AppendPDF, above,
you can extract specified pages or
page ranges from a PDF file or from a collection
of PDF files to create your new document. AppendPDF Pro
also allows you to add text or JPEG images to
your new document, add dynamically generated
page numbers
(including Bates numbering), add a cover page,
create Table of Contents pages with hyperlinks,
and much more.
The regular price for AppendPDF Pro is $3,995.00 USD, but you'll
get it for less if you buy on or before
January 31, 2004.
Click here to get more details.
FDFMerge
FDFMerge is a command-line application
that allows a programmer to populate form fields on a PDF form
with:
and save the completed form on a
server.
You can also do cropping; control text color and justification;
control word spacing, character spacing
and line spacing; use bar-code fonts;
linearize and encrypt the completed files, and much more.
The regular price for FDFMerge is $2,995.00 USD, but
you can buy it for less if you buy on or before
January 31, 2004.
Click here to get more details.
FDFMerge Lite
FDFMerge Lite is a less-expensive version of FDFMerge (above).
FDFMerge Lite is a command-line application that allows a programmer to populate form fields on a
PDF form with FDF (Forms Data Format) data
and XFDF (XML Forms Data Format) data and save the completed form
on a server. You can also linearize and encrypt the completed
files, and much more.
The regular price for FDFMerge Lite is $995.00 USD, but you can buy it
for less if you buy on or before January 31, 2004.
Click here to get more details.
SecurSign
SecurSign is a command-line application
that allows a programmer to apply standard Acrobat Security
features and digital signatures to PDF
documents dynamically.
The regular price for SecurSign is $2,495.00 USD, but you can buy
it for less if you buy on or before January 31, 2004.
Click here to get more details.
StampPDF Batch
StampPDF Batch is a command-line
application that allows a programmer to add text and JPEG Images
to a single PDF file or to multiple PDF files.
You can use StampPDF Batch to put watermarks
such as "Confidential" or "Draft"
on the pages of your PDF documents.
You can also use StampPDF Batch to add
PDF document names,
revision numbers, date/time stamps,
page numbers (including Bates numbering),
contact information, or any text.
StampPDF Batch allows you to have a great deal
of control over the attributes of the text and
graphics that are being added to your file.
For example, when you are adding text
you can specify the font name,
font size, position, angle (i.e., orientation),
color, word wrapping (on or off), and more. And
when you are adding a JPEG image, you can specify
a scale factor to render it at a size other than
its original size.
The regular price for StampPDF Batch is $2,995.00 USD, but you can buy it
for less if you buy on or before January 31, 2004.
Click here to get more details.
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Save money on software bundles for Adobe Acrobat imposition
plug-ins and pre-press plug-ins
We're now offering discounted product bundles for
Quite Imposing,
Quite Imposing Plus,
Quite A Box Of Tricks, and
Quite Revealing.
Quite A Box Of Tricks &
Quite Revealing Bundle
$389.00 USD
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These two products would cost you $479.00 if purchased separately.
Buy the bundle and save $70.00!
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Quite Imposing Plus,
Quite A Box Of Tricks, &
Quite Revealing Bundle
$979.00 USD
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These three products would cost you $1054.00 if purchased separately.
Buy the bundle and save $75.00!
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These great products allow you to
work from within Adobe Acrobat to create booklets quickly and easily; they also
let you save money
on click fees by doing 2-up imposition; and in addition, you can use these products
to erase existing
page numbers, add your own page numbers,
add images to your
pages, make pages larger or smaller, move the contents of pages up/down/left/right
by a specified amount, do color conversions and image compression, deal with hairlines,
identify font problems and color problems, and much more!
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Get your free upgrades for Quite Imposing, Quite Imposing Plus, Quite A Box Of Tricks,
and Quite Revealing
Citation Software serves as a reseller for Quite Software's
family of Adobe Acrobat plug-ins for Windows and Macintosh.
Quite Software has released updated versions of all of its plug-ins.
If you own one or more of these products, you can get your upgrade(s) for free.
We recommend these upgrades for all users. There are no new features, but
some bugs are fixed, and the upgrades are needed for working with
Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard or Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional.
(The upgrades also work with Adobe Acrobat 4.x and 5.x.)
To download the upgrades that you need, click the links below:
Quite A Box Of Tricks for Macintosh
What is it?
Quite A Box Of Tricks for Windows
What is it?
Quite Imposing for Macintosh
What is it?
Quite Imposing for Windows
What is it?
Quite Imposing Plus for Macintosh
What is it?
Quite Imposing Plus for Windows
What is it?
Quite Revealing for Macintosh
What is it?
Quite Revealing for Windows
What is it?
Just download and install the updated software and your existing license will be valid.
If you are not familiar with these products, you might want to check them out.
You can try all of them out for free! To do so, just click the links above
(the "upgrades" are actual full product installers).
When you download and install the software at the links above, the software
will work for you even though you haven't purchased it and don't have a
license yet (it will function in "demo mode," which means that it will either
put a big "X" on each PDF page that is created, or it will operate for a limited
period of time).
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Julie Shaffer and Leonard Rosenthal have
differing points of view about using Macintosh Panther OS X to
create "press-worthy" PDF files
Julie Shaffer of Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (GATF) says
that if you create PDF files the intuitive Mac way (by clicking the "Save As PDF"
button in the Print dialog box that comes up when you use a Mac application), the
files that you get are not "press-worthy." She goes on to state
that there is a way that you can make "solid" PDFs in the Mac OS X Panther
environment without using third-party PDF-creation solutions such as
Distiller and JAWS, but you can't do it by clicking the "Save As PDF" button.
But Leonard Rosenthal of PDF Sages rebuts this, making the point that Ms. Shaffer
did not define the meaning of "press-worthy" when she made her remarks —
and he goes on to say that if you assume that the standard
for "press-worthy" is PDF/X compliance,
you can in fact create press-worthy
PDF files by using the "Save As PDF" button, without using any
third-party PDF-creation software.
Who's right: Ms. Shaffer or Mr. Rosenthal? Get all the details of this lively debate
by clicking here to
get Shaffer's point of view and by clicking here
to read Rosenthal's rebuttal.
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Creating PDF Forms is easy with Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional
If you've used Adobe Acrobat 4.x or 5.x to create
PDF forms, you know that it's a bit of a clumsy process,
and you might have become
frustrated at times because of the limited support for formatting.
Acrobat 6.0 Professional changes all that — new features in Acrobat 6.0 Professional
make it easier to create PDF forms and give you a richer palette of formatting options.
Here is some basic information
about just a few of the forms-related improvements that Adobe has
included in Acrobat 6.0.
Alignment
When creating PDF forms with Acrobat 4.x or 5.x, one of the big challenges was
ensuring that the fields on your form had a consistent look. Basically, if you
wanted a group of form fields to be the same width and/or height, you had to
just keep tweaking the width and height of each form field until you got it just right.
This was a tedious and time-consuming endeavor. But with Acrobat 6.0 Professional,
you have rulers, guides with "Snap-to," and measurement tools that facilitate
this — so you can create good-looking PDF forms much more quickly.
New and improved Pan and Zoom tools make it easy to do close-up inspections and
fine adjustments.
And, there is even a Table tool.
Rich Text Formatting
Acrobat 6.0's Rich Text formatting tools give you much more text-formatting
power than what was available in Acrobat 4.x and 5.x.
Free 30-day Tryout
Adobe is offering a free 30-day trial version of Acrobat 6.0 Professional.
To take advantage of this offer, go to
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/tryout.html.
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Here's a tip for making sure you don't lose your PrintShop Mail dongle
or ImpozeIt dongle
If you've purchased the PrintShop Mail
solution for variable-data-printing or the ImpozeIt
solution for automated imposition, what you actually bought was a dongle, or hardware key, that allows the
software to function in "production mode" (you can use it for real work) as opposed to
"demo mode" (you can experiment with it but you cannot use it for real projects).
If you inadvertently
misplace the dongle, you won't be able to use your PrintShop Mail/ImpozeIt software for actual projects at all!
Here's a tip for making sure that you'll always be able to find the dongle. Purchase an inexpensive key ring
that beeps when you clap at it, and attach the key ring to the dongle with a rubber band — or you could
even glue the key ring to the dongle. Then, if you come into the office one day and can't seem to find the dongle, just
clap and the dongle will beep at you!
One such beeping key ring is the "Key Finder," available for $9.99 USD at
http://www.asseenontvandmore.com/bfineloyokea.html.
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