PDF Hacks

Credits

About the Author

Sid Steward works with publishers to make PDF do what they need. Sometimes, the solution is simply a script; other times, it is an entire document conversion workflow. He is a dreamer, a contrarian, and an idealist, all of which help him devise good solutions to interesting problems. His heroes include Bjarne Stroustrup and Vern Giles.

Contributors

The following people contributed material or expertise to this book:

• Simon St.Laurent (http://simonstl.com/) is an editor with O'Reilly Media, Inc. Prior to that, he'd been a web developer, network administrator, computer book author, and XML troublemaker. He lives in Dryden, New York. His books include XML: A Primer, XML Elements of Style, Building XML Applications, Cookies, and Sharing Bandwidth.

• Michael Fitzgerald is principal of Wy'east Communications (http://www.wyeast.net), a writing, training, and programming consultancy specializing in XML. He is the author of Learning XSLT (O'Reilly), XSL Essentials (John Wiley), and Building B2B Applications with XML: A Resource Guide (John Wiley). Mike is the creator of Ox (http://www.wyeast.net/ox.html), an open source Java tool for generating brief, syntax-related documentation at the command line. He was also a member of the original RELAX NG technical committee at OASIS (2001-2003). A native of Oregon, Mike now lives with his family in Mapleton, Utah. You can find his technical blog at http://www.oreillynet.com/weblogs/author/1365.

• C. K. Sample III maintains 3650 and a 12-inch (http://3650anda12inch.blogspot.com), a weblog discussing the use of a 12" PowerBook G4 and a Nokia 3650. He is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University, focusing on 20th-century American and British literature, as well as 20th-century world literature, biblical studies, and critical theory. C. K. (Clinton Kennedy; no relation) works in Fordham's Department of Instructional Technology and Academic Computing as the Technical Supervisor for the Fordham Graduate Center's North Hall Labs in Tarrytown, New York. His first "computer" was an Atari 400, and his first Mac was a PowerBook 5300CS. Originally from Jackson, Mississippi, C. K. currently lives in Bronxville, New York, with his fiancée, Kristin Landgrebe, and his pet Eclectus parrot, Misha, who just turned two years old.

• Darren Nickerson is a long-time member of the HylaFAX open source community and the founder of its online portal: http://www.hylafax.org. He is employed as a senior sales and support engineer at iFAX Solutions, delivering HylaFAX-based fax solutions to businesses worldwide.

• Ross Presser manages a small printing company's Windows network and develops humdrum in-house applications in several flavors of Visual Basic. During the few hours he is allowed to relax, he voraciously reads all kinds of text and kicks back to the music of Jimmy Buffett. He and his Parrothead wife live in southern New Jersey ("the part that has less pollution and more taxes").

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my family and friends for their support, encouragement, and patience. I especially would like to thank my wife, Linda, for bravely adapting to my life of adventure. A special thanks goes to Chris DiBona for suggesting I write a book and then introducing me to Rael Dornfest.

Many thanks to Tim O'Reilly and the fine folks at O'Reilly Media who conceived PDF Hacks and then worked with me to create the excellent book you are holding. In particular, I am most grateful to Rael Dornfest for his keen oversight and to Simon St.Laurent for taking my manuscript in hand and turning it into a book.

A special thanks goes to Eric Tamm (http://www.erictamm.com) for allowing me to use his book, Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound (Da Capo Press), in my examples. Visit http://erictamm.com/tammeno.html to download his book, or purchase the print edition from your favorite bookstore.

Thanks to Scott Tupaj for going through the code and double-checking the technical details. Thanks also go to Raph Levien, Edd Dumbill, Scott Tupaj, Marsha Steward, Stan Shoptaugh, Paula Morrison, and Mike Sherman (http://www.svwh.net) for their ideas, their careful review, and their thoughtful feedback.

Many thanks and deep gratitude go to the folks behind C++, STL, GCC, GCJ, and Debian.