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From: Judy Zappacosta on 6 Jul 2010 08:15
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:07:22 +0800, Man-wai Chang wrote:
> Why not use file hosting services?

Good suggestion, but, I use a well-reasoned approach to everything.

It's my conscious decision NOT to use file hosting services.

I can't count the number of times I've searched a forum to find a reference
to a file that is on a file-hosting service that is now defunct (either the
users' login or the service itself).

If I consciously post the file to the forum, as long as the forum itself is
alive, all the files I posted to that forum will also be alive. So, by
design, all "my" forum posts are archived properly.

In addition, most forums allow you to search the archives of uploaded
files, so, this way, a single search also searches the archived documents;
but that is only a secondary benefit.

The primary reason for posting a file to a forum with a forum post is to
keep it all together for posterity.

For the record, it was miserable obtaining PDFSam because of all the
clickware that was trying to execute as I downloaded the installation
progam (I never was able to figure out why the PDFSam zip file installation
never downloaded so I was forced to use the sub-optimal exe installation
method) - and it was miserable installing Java because of all the phoning
home that had to be analyzed and because of the ancilliary startup TSRs and
sesrvices that will need to be disabled.

I haven't checked my services (next task after every install) to see
if/what Sun/Oracle installed new services ... I fully expect to have to
disable a few.

It's amazing how badly designed programs cause us all this grief just to
keep our systems operating smoothly. Sigh.
From: Judy Zappacosta on 6 Jul 2010 08:26
On Tue, 6 Jul 2010 12:15:34 +0000 (UTC), Judy Zappacosta wrote:
> It's amazing how badly designed programs cause us all this grief just to
> keep our systems operating smoothly. Sigh.

Sure enough ... besides:
jqsnotify.exe is trying to connect to the Internet ...

There is also a "Java Quick Starter" service which slows down the system
just so that it can "Prefetches JRE files for faster startup of Java
applets and applications".

Path to executable:
c:\bin\os\java_rte_v6u20\bin\jqs.exe -service -config
c:\bin\os\java_rte_v6u20\lib\jqs.conf

I changed the "Startup type" from "Automatic" to "Manual".

Does anyone know if this service is required to run PDFsam? (It doesn't
sound like a required service; only Java is required, but, it's muuuuuch
better to run Java only when PDFSam is used than to waste resources running
it every day when it's never needed for anything other than PDFsam).

From: Judy Zappacosta on 6 Jul 2010 08:32
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:24:36 +0800, Man-wai Chang wrote:
> I have seen forums/newsgroup servers that banned attachment larger than
> 500Kbytes. But these restrictions could be defeated by splitting the
> files into trunks of 500Kbytes.

That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to do with PDFsam! :)
My forum limit is 1000Kbytes for PDF files.
They raised my limit because I'm such a prolific poster who backs up
everything with documentation (they even gave me a forum award for being
the best and most detailed poster of the year).

> BTW, expiration of hosting could be a good thing if you think the other
> way. :)

I understand, but, please realize I'm not your average poster. All my data
is backed up with research, so, MY research is worth keeping! :)

So far, PDFSam hasn't worked yet (and I'm not happy that they force us to
do all this work just to get it installed and running but I've seen worse
.... muuuuuuuch worse!).

At least I'm moving forward on testing PDFSam out.
From: Judy Zappacosta on 6 Jul 2010 08:47
On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:26:25 +0800, Man-wai Chang wrote:
> Wait... how about Google Docs?

Again, good suggestion, but, you must not yet know how BAD Google-anything
is from the standpoint of them selling you out for money!

I abhor almost anything Google because of their lack of privacy concerns.
While I love their search engine, certainly I'd never save anything on
their servers and I'd NEVER run any search while "logged in" on any google
account (such as gmail).

BTW, when I started up PDFSam now via the menu item:
Start -> Menus -> Sandbox -> PDFsam

The shortcut ran the program: C:\sandbox\pdf\pdfsam\pdfsam-starter.exe
, yet again, things started phoning home ... only this time it was Java
phoning home:

javaw.exe is trying to connect to the Internet
Application: javaw.exe
Remote: 62.149.140.73 - TCP
Port: http(80)

Which, of course, I blocked permanently (why does Java need to phone home
when I run PDFsam anyway?).

Interestingly, IP 62.149.140.73 resolves to: webx63.aruba.it
person: Susanna Santini
role: ARUBA NOC
address: Aruba S.p.A.
address: Piazza Garibaldi 8
address: 52010 Soci - Arezzo
address: Italy

Now, why would Java be phoning home to Susanna Santini anyway?

Meanwhile, jqsnotify.exe (again) tried to connect to the Internet also,
even though I (thought I) permanently blocked it. Why do they try to sneak
around our well-minded protections and phone home so much anyway?


From: Judy Zappacosta on 6 Jul 2010 09:51
> On Tue, 6 Jul 2010 12:15:34 +0000 (UTC), Judy Zappacosta wrote:
>> It's amazing how badly designed programs cause us all this grief just to
>> keep our systems operating smoothly. Sigh.

To test PDFsam, I went to a copyright free PDF archive:
http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp

I downloaded the 2.5KB 967 page "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsk:
http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Crime_and_Punishment_T.pdf

To test the intuitivity of PDFsam, I didn't read any instructions (bad
idea)!

First, I did a drag-and-drop onto PDFSam of
C:\sandbox\tmp\pdfs\Crime_and_Punishment_T.pdf

Nothing happened. Drat!

Then, I tried to do a "File->Open" from PDFsam; but there is no file open
command. Looking at the five icons that exist, none of them seem to do a
basic file open.

So, intuitivity lost and I flipped through the tutorial for just-in-time
training, which said a page or three in "click the Add button" to read in a
file. OK. I killed the tutorial and looked for this elusive "Add" button.

The first button in the PDFSam GUI is "Save environment".
The second button is "Load environment".
The third button is "Save log".
The penultimate button is "Clear log".
The last button is "Exit".

Not good. So they must have the Add "button" somewhere else.

Clicking on the open folder icon below the buttons, labeled "pdfsam 2.2.0"
didn't show up buttons; neither did clicking on "plugins" below that. But,
clicking on "Split" below that, DID finally show an Add button in the right
box of the PDFsam GUI.

So, I hit that (somewhat hidden) "Add" button to select my file:
C:\sandbox\tmp\pdfs\Crime_and_Punishment_T.pdf

I wanted to set the file size just UNDER 1,000 KB (e.g., 999 KB) but the
only nearby options in the PDFSam Split pulldown were 500 KB and 1MB, I set
the split options in that right box gui to:
Split at this size = 1MB

I set the Destination folder to "Same as source" and then pressed the "Run"
button hidden way down (after scrolling) at the bottom of the PDFSam Split
Gui.

When it was 100% done, I expected PDFSam to open up the folder but it
didn't so I went there manually to look at the results.

There were three files:
C:\sandbox\tmp\pdfs\Crime_and_Punishment_T.pdf 2,509 KB
C:\sandbox\tmp\pdfs\1_pdfsam_Crime_and_Punishment_T.pdf 1,043 KB
C:\sandbox\tmp\pdfs\651_pdfsam_Crime_and_Punishment_T.pdf 532 KB

Drat! The "1MB" option is 43 kilobytes too large for the forum I think.
Maybe it will work (I need to test), but it really would be nicer if I
could specify the size at 999 kilobytes instead of 1MB (yes, I know why
they are off slightly).

Anyway, the program seems to have worked, and it worked well. It was
intuitive enough (all programs have some startup costs) and easy enough to
use. So far, it might be ok that the program has limited split size
options. Worse case, I'll have to split files into 500 KB sizes which will
double the number of uploads unfortunately, and that would be a big
drawback if the forum limit of 1000 kilobytes does not allow 1043 KB.

Summary:
Nice program. Not as bad as many others for download and setup. Has a java
requirement that is unfortunate. Is not at first untuitive but ends up
being easy enough to use. Is fast enough. Is usable but the ability to
select your own specific file size is lacking.











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