A Publishing Tool for use with Adobe Acrobat
(V10 upwards)
Running under WindowsTM Operating Systems
Issue 3
March 2022
This publication contains proprietary information that is protected by copyright. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced or translated without the prior written consent of Mapsoft Computer Services Limited. The information contained in this publication is subject to change without notice. Considerable effort has been made to ensure that this manual is free of inaccuracies or omissions, but Mapsoft Computer Services Limited assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear herein.
Mapsoft Computer Services Limited shall not be liable for any direct, incidental or consequential damages of any nature, or losses or expenses resulting from the use of this material.
Adobe and Acrobat are trademarks of Adobe Systems Inc which may be registered in some jurisdictions.
Microsoft is a registered trademark and WindowsTM and Windows NTTM are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
Mapsoft is a registered trademark of Mapsoft Computer Services Limited.
Other brand or product names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
1998 -2021 by mapsoft computer services limited. All rights reserved in all countries.
15 Erme
Court
Leonards Road
Ivybridge
Devon PL21 0SZ
United Kingdom
Tel:
+44 (0) 2032
900473
email: support@mapsoft.com
BookMarker is a very powerful publishing tool which allows you to create a hierarchical list of bookmarks for a PDF document, based on the structured level of headings within that document. The bookmark hierarchy will match the heading hierarchy used within the document.
BookMarker creates bookmarks by taking advantage of the different font sizes used within a document. Typically, most large documents are organised by chapter, section, sub-section, sub-sub-section etc. Thus, the obvious bookmark list for such documents is one based on those different hierarchical document headings. Different size fonts are usually used to distinguish different levels of heading from each other and from the surrounding text. Most well-structured documents use larger fonts for higher level headings and their smallest font for body text, as illustrated in the example below.
You supply information about the different levels of heading (font, size, style etc) that you wish to be used in the creation of the bookmarks. The BookMarker tool will then scan the document and pick out the different levels of heading based on information you supply. It then automatically creates a hierarchical set of bookmarks based on the headings it has found.
You can choose if all bookmarks or only level 1 bookmarks should display in the
BookMark Pane within Acrobat when a document is first opened.
The following diagram shows a set of sample bookmarks created using the BookMarker tool
When setting up a bookmark, do not select either text that was drop-shadowed or a font that was globally changed in the previous application. BookMarker will not create bookmarks for such text.
In order to create bookmarks for a document, you must first identify the actual font settings that have been used for those heading levels within that document which you want to convert into bookmarks. Only once you have identified each heading level for which you wish to create bookmarks can you go on to create the bookmarks themselves.
You do not have to create bookmarks for all the different heading levels found within a document. For example, if a document goes down to four sub-section levels you may choose to use only three levels or possibly only two levels of heading when creating your bookmark list.
It is important that the headings follow a hierarchy in the original document in order for the bookmarks to be created correctly
For example:
A level 4 heading should be preceded by a level 3 heading, which in turn should
be preceded by a level 2 heading and so forth. Failure to do this can result in
bookmarks labelled Unknown being created.
These can be deleted manually although they can be avoided altogether by
following the above format
To create bookmarks for a single document:
1. Open the document for which you wish to create bookmarks.
2. Select Plug-Ins > Mapsoft >BookMarker ... from Acrobats main menu.
3.
The
BookMarker dialog box now appears.
4. Enter the page range for which you wish bookmarks to be created in the From Page field and its associated To field. By default bookmarks will be created for all pages within the document that contain headings that match the criteria you are going to select using this dialog box.
5. Set the margins (and their units) in the Margins fields. Only text that matches the font and size criteria specified in this dialog box and lies within the margins specified here will be used in the creation of bookmarks. Any text matching the specified font and size criteria but lying outside these margins will not be used. This is useful, for example, if page footers or headers (which you would be unlikely to want to include as bookmarks) contain text with the same attributes as those used for bookmarks.
6.Next, set the Levels properties of the highest level headings within your document for which you wish to create bookmarks. To do this fill in the Font, Size, Threshold and View fields.
qSimply
select a first level heading within your document using Acrobats Text
Select Tool, (not the TouchUp Text tool) then click the Add button in the BookMarker dialog
box. This will automatically populate both the Font and Size fields with the relevant font and size
information for the
selected text.
Alternatively, if you know the relevant font information you can type this
information in manually. First, type in the details of the font used for first
level headings into the Font field and the size of that font into the Size field (in points), For
example, if the top level headings within a document are
18pt Helvetica, Bold, type Helvetica, Bold into the Font field
and 18 into the Size field.
qNext, type the height
tolerance that will be used when searching for fonts into the Threshold field. Text with a font size lying
within the tolerance range specified here
will all be considered as a match. If no tolerance level were to be set, only
text matching the font size exactly would be matched.
This is a particularly useful feature as when a document is converted from a
word processing package into a PDF document, or if a paper copy is scanned in
and converted to PDF using Adobe Acrobat Capture, font sizes are often not
converted exactly. They frequently have small discrepancies in size. For
example, a heading originally defined as having a font size of 18 points within
a word processing package could be converted as 18.19 or 17.98 points (or
another similar size) within Acrobat. If you were to set a threshold level of .2 then BookMarker would
recognise both these font settings as 18pt and these
sized headings would all be converted into bookmarks. Otherwise, if no
threshold level were to be set, bookmarks would not be created for these
headings, as BookMarker would only select text with a point size (in this
example) of exactly 18 pts.
qNext
select the magnification at which the bookmarks should be displayed once they
are created. Click on the arrow in the View field to select the option
you require, for example Fit View.
See the section BookMarker Options later in this
chapter for full details on all the options available here.
7.
Click Add to set this particular
level of bookmark, as illustrated below.
8.Repeat
steps 6 and 7 for the second level of headings within your document, then the
third level and so on, until you have defined the criteria to be used for all
the levels of bookmarks you wish to create.
As you add each new level it will appear in the box to the right of the
BookMarker dialog box. Each new level will be nested below the previously
defined one demonstrating the hierarchy the bookmark list will follow when it
is created:
If you change any of the page range or margins settings for an existing level, these values are automatically modified for all other bookmark levels.
You can remove a heading type from the bookmark list by selecting the Level representing that heading type from the right-hand box in the BookMarker dialog box, and then clicking Remove. Any sub-levels nested below that level of bookmark will automatically be incremented by one level.
9.By default the Expanded check box is selected which ensures that all levels of bookmark will be shown in the Bookmarks pane when the file is first opened. If you do not want all levels of bookmark to be shown, simply de-select this checkbox for those levels of bookmark that you do not wish to be shown when the file is initially opened.
If you de-select this checkbox for a level make sure you also de-select any lower bookmark levels too. For example, if you de-select expanded view for level 3 headings, you would also have to de-select it for any level 4 headings, level 5 headings and so on. If you fail to do this your collapsed view will not work properly. We suggest that you work back up through the levels to ensure you achieve the desired effect.
10. By default, the Keep Existing Bookmarks checkbox is selected which retains any existing bookmarks that might already exist in the document. De-select this checkbox if you wish to discard existing bookmarks.
11. Optionally, enter a name in to the Name Configuration field and click its associated Save button to save your bookmarker definition for later reuse with other files, or for use with Mapsoft Automator.
12. Click OK to create the hierarchical list of book marks.
BookMarker will now scan the currently open document to find all occurrences of text that match the font criteria you selected and will automatically create a set of hierarchical bookmarks from the text it finds. These bookmarks will be displayed in the panel to the left of your document within Acrobat. A bookmark will be created for each individual match found. The bookmarks will be nested to show the hierarchy of the headings from which they have been formed. You should check this bookmark list carefully a bookmarks will be created for any text within your document that matches the specified font, size and style so it is possible that some bookmarks you do not want may be created. You can easily delete any unwanted bookmarks using Acrobats standard Bookmark > Delete Bookmark(s) functionality.
If BookMarker selects text that contains special characters, Acrobats word search engine may not map some of those characters exactly when creating the bookmarks. This is illustrated by the following examples:
Original Text |
BookMark created in Acrobat Versions 5 and 6 |
Ireland in www.europe.com Europe |
Ireland in www. europe. com Europe |
Cork@uuc.ie as a Location |
Cork@ ucc. ie as a Location |
Irish (Fiscal) Incentives. |
Irish ( Fiscal) Incentives. |
Some Financial $ Projections |
Some Financial $ Projections |
In each case the differences in layout between the original text and the generated bookmarks are not great. In terms of bookmarks themselves this is little more than a visual annoyance. You can of course rename such bookmarks using Acrobats standard Bookmarking Renaming facility.
If you intend to use Mapsofts TOCBuilder publishing tool to generate a Table of Contents for your document from this set of bookmarks, then these effects can be more of a problem. In this case you would definitely need to edit the bookmarks to ensure they are correct.
To save a particular BookMarker configuration, simply enter a name for it into the Configuration Name field, then click the Save button. This makes this particular definition available for re-use in another session of BookMarker. It also makes it available for use with Automator, Mapsofts unique automation tool which allows you to bookmark multiple files in batch mode or to use BookMarker in conjunction with other Mapsoft publishing tools.
Once saved, you can delete any existing BookMarker configurations you no longer require simply by selecting the appropriate one from the drop-down list in the Configuration Name field and then clicking the Delete button.
The following options can all be set in the BookMarker dialog box:
From Page |
The first page for which bookmarks are to be created. By default, this is the first page of the document. |
|
To |
The last page for which bookmarks are to be created. By default, this is the last page of the document. |
|
Margins |
Specifies the Top, Bottom, Left and Right margins within which the BookMarker is to operate. Any text lying outside the margins specified here will be ignored by BookMarker even if it matches the rest of the criteria set. This is useful for (for example) excluding Headers and Footers from the BookMarker operation. |
|
Units |
The
units of measurement to be used in calculating the positions of the Margins.
These can be: |
|
Level Properties |
Allows
you to set the properties for each heading level for which bookmarks are to
be created. BookMarker will use the criteria you specify here when selecting
text to be used as bookmarks: Inherit
Zoom,
the same zoom and position in the document window is used to display the
bookmarks target text, as was used when the bookmark was originally created |
|
Expanded |
Controls whether bookmarks are expanded or not within the BookMark pane when the document is first opened. If this option is selected (the default) all bookmarks are shown in the BookMark pane within Acrobat when the PDF file is first opened. If you de-select this checkbox for a particular level of bookmark then lower of bookmark will be collapsed in the Bookmark view when the document is first opened. |
|
Retain Existing Bookmarks |
Controls whether or not any existing bookmarks that might exist in the file are retained. These are retained by default. |
|
Name Configuration |
Allows
you to save the current bookmarker definitions for later re-use with other
files or for use with Mapsofts Automator tool. Enter a name for the current
definition into this field and then click Save. |
|
Add |
Adds the current Level Properties definition as a new level of bookmark. |
|
Remove |
Removes the currently selected bookmark level from the hierarchical list of bookmarks and automatically increments all sub-levels by one to ensure no gap is left in the hierarchy. |
|
Modify |
Allows you to edit the currently selected bookmark level. |
|
OK |
Commences
the bookmark creation process. The document is scanned to find all headings
matching the criteria specified in the BookMarker dialog box, and a
hierarchical list of bookmarks based on that information is then created. |