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Acrobatic Network: PennNet, Acrobat, and the Web at Penn

By Kendall Whitehouse

Like many students, you may have had difficulty obtaining the latest edition of Penn Printout. Do you know when and where new issues are delivered? By the time you finally get the new issue, are computing courses already filled?

With all the technology available at Penn, why not make an electronic version instantly available campus-wide? Although the current issue is available on PennInfo, it contains only text - why not publish it electronically and retain the fonts and graphics of the printed version?

Although these seem like simple requests, until recently it was surprisingly difficult to create richly formatted documents in both hardcopy and electronic form, particularly for environments that include both Macintosh and Windows users. But no longer.

Information Systems and Computing (ISC) and Wharton Computing and Information Technology (WCIT) are working together to deliver fully formatted electronic versions of publications across campus and throughout the Internet. The pilot phase of this project - the ISC/WCIT Electronic Document Initiative - will deliver Penn Printout to computer labs, ResNet dorms, and University offices using a combination of new technologies, including the Mosaic World-Wide Web (WWW) browser and Adobe Systems' Acrobat document display technology.

Acrobat and Mosaic in the labs

Many campus computing labs have agreed to help us distribute Penn Printout electronically by installing the necessary software on their Macintosh and Windows-based workstations. While all labs may not have the software installed by the time you read this, most should have it available soon.

To read the electronic versions of the Printout from one of these labs, all you need to do is start up Mosaic, select Penn Printout from the Hotlist menu, and then click on the latest issue. If Acrobat viewing software is installed, you'll see a fully formatted Penn Printout -- along with hypertext navigation and full-text searching tools. See "Basic Acrobatics" in the sidebar for a few tips on how to use Adobe Acrobat.

If you're a student in a ResNet dorm, faculty, or a staff member with an Ethernet connection to PennNet, you can also view the online Penn Printout. You'll need Mosaic (or a similar Web browser) and Adobe Acrobat configured to launch automatically from Mosaic (see "Getting started on your own" in the sidebar).

Acrobat & WWW: The best of both worlds

Using Acrobat together with the World-Wide Web builds upon the unique strengths of these two new technologies. The Web provides a way to distribute information worldwide across the Internet. Although the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) supported by Web browsers like Mosaic can provide a richer presentation than traditional Internet tools, it doesn't offer the typographic sophistication of most printed publications.

Acrobat is a new technology from Adobe Systems that displays electronic documents with all the typography, graphics, and images of a printed publication. Acrobat files - also known as PDF or "Portable Document Format" files - can be generated directly from PostScript files or from within a Windows or Macintosh program using a special printing tool. Once a document is converted into Acrobat (PDF) format, it can be displayed using an Acrobat viewer on Macintosh, Windows, DOS, and UNIX systems.

Acrobat's knack for displaying complex documents, combined with the World-Wide Web's ability to deliver files across PennNet and the Internet, make an unbeatable combination for electronic document distribution.

Sidebar 1: Getting started on your own

Windows and Macintosh Mosaic clients are available from ftp.upenn.edu in the /pc and /mac directories.

Through an agreement with Adobe Systems, Acrobat Reader is available to the University community at no charge. Check the two locations above for Acrobat Reader software. The Acrobat software is also available from the Computing Resource Center (3732 Locust Walk) -- you must bring unformatted disks with you when you pick up the software (four double- density disks if you're a Macintosh user, three high-density disks if you're a Windows user). For instructions on configuring Acrobat Reader to work as a Mosaic "helper application," search PennInfo (keyword "acrobat").

Once you have your software installed and configured, type one of the addresses (URLs) listed below into the Open URL... dialog box under Mosaic's File menu. Penn Printout's address is:
http://www.upenn.edu/pennprintout
Wharton computing documentation is available at:
http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/compinfo.html

Sidebar 2: Basic acrobatics

Once you're in Acrobat, there are several ways to browse a document. You'll probably want to select "Fit Width to Window" from the View menu to display the largest view of the document that will fit on your screen. Then click the scroll bar to move through the document.

If you see a yellow "sticky" note on the page, double-click to read it. Also look for hypertext links within the document. These may be indicated by a box around the "hot area" or by a change of type style, but they are often "invisible." You can always spot a link, however, by noticing when the cursor changes to a pointer when you move it over a hot area. Click on this hot area to follow the hypertext link.

To retrace your steps, click the "back track" button from the tool bar. If you're looking for specific information, you can search for any word in the document using the search tool. If you prefer to read the document in hard-copy, you can print the pages you are interested in to any locally attached printer - however, if you're in a computing lab, first review the lab's printing policy.