Month: October 2020

It’s Greek To Me: Case Study for PDF Image Only Files

We recently received a unique support question that illustrated a real-world case where the PDF Image Only file save option saved the day. Here was the issue our customer came to us with:

I am trying to help my wife who is teaching ancient Greek language classes online. The problem is that there is no standard universally recognized font for ancient Greek – they all render the language in different ways. And ancient Greek is quite different from modern Greek. She can create documents on her Windows PC using one of a number of specialized TrueType (TTF) fonts. And she can convert documents to Unicode for pasting into web content and/or she can print or export Unicode documents to PDFs. For most of her students these processes are successful. However some students see only gibberish. She has no control over the various platforms her students are using, Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android, Chrome, etc.

By Hesiod / Houghton Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Is there a way Win2PDF can handle this situation? The best option would be if she could print/export her multi-page documents to non-searchable, graphics only PDFs.

For this case, the solution was easy. Win2PDF can create multi-page image only PDFs that render the TTF fonts as graphics. It’s just a standard Win2PDF file save type the user can select when printing.

While this particular customer was able to make the conversions using other programs, this was the easiest method since it was just a single step to save the PDF file.

When we recommended this solution to the customer, he gave us the following reply:

While the Covid-19 pandemic lasts and much teaching is being done online, you might want to share this information with university departments of Classics and Religious Studies and theological colleges (and other academic institutions that teach archaic languages for which there are no universally standard means of rendering them as computer-created text). My wife cannot be the only university instructor with this problem.

Consider it done.

NEW! Win2PDF “Send to Slack” Plug-In

One of the requests we get is how to take some action after a PDF file is created, and do it automatically. The most common example is to take the PDF file and attach it to a new email message. While Win2PDF has supported this feature since the beginning, many customers want to expand this capability to integrate the PDF files with other applications. And since these processes may be unique to each customer, we’ve expanded our support into a flexible new feature called Win2PDF Plug-Ins.

A Win2PDF Plug-In is simply a small customizable program that can be created, modified, or installed that will give the user an option to take some action with the PDF file after it has been created.

Here’s one example we’ve created for our own internal software development team using the Slack business communication platform. When we download and install the Win2PDF “Send to Slack” Plug-in, it allows our users to check a box on the Win2PDF file save window and automatically send the PDF file into a specific channel in Slack.

Slack allows teams of users to share comments, images, files, etc. in different channels. [A slack channel is simply a topic-based message board that allows any team members who are subscribed to that channel a way to share and exchange information related to that topic. Examples might be channels like #features or #support or #sales.]

With this Win2PDF “Send to Slack” Plug-In installed and configured, it gives our Win2PDF development team an easy way to share PDF files without using email, and they will all be archived in a common channel for all team members. There are a few one-time steps to configure this Win2PDF “Send to Slack” Plug-In to work with your specific Slack workspace and channel.

This is just the first of many Win2PDF Plug-Ins we have in development, and we’ll also be providing more details in future posts on how users can create their own Win2PDF Plug-Ins, or modify ones that we’ve created.