PDF file version with metadata from phpMyFAQ

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pt20100201
Posts: 134
Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:11 pm
Location: Porto . Portugal
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PDF file version with metadata from phpMyFAQ

Post by pt20100201 »

Suggestion: PDF file version with metadata from phpMyFAQ

Dear Sirs

Recent OS versions (and external search engines) use metadata information present in files (besides its contents) to find results to user queries.

If the metadata (subject, keywords …) is generated by the file author the probability of obtaining more accurate matches is higher (and partially controlled by the file creator).

phpMyFAQ generate this kind of information (used in several situations), and has a bundled PDF file creator.

In many cases (on the Internet and on personal computers), PDF-files fields used for this purpose are empty.

It would be a nice feature for phpMyFAQ to automatically generate a PDF version with information on those fields.

This would be a distinctive aspect because some software (even commercial one) doesn’t implement it in a friendly/automatic way.

Kind regards
2010-02-08
Pt20100201
Thorsten
Posts: 15560
Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2001 11:14 am
Location: #phpmyfaq
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Re: PDF file version with metadata from phpMyFAQ

Post by Thorsten »

Hi,

do you have a specification for this for me? This should be possible very easily.

bye
Thorsten
phpMyFAQ Maintainer and Lead Developer
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pt20100201
Posts: 134
Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:11 pm
Location: Porto . Portugal
Contact:

["specifications"] Re: PDF file version with metadata from..

Post by pt20100201 »

Dear Thorsten Rinne

Our apologies for the delay (this year we don’t have the time we wished to spend on our FAQs / phpMyFAQ).

Is this the information ("specification") you wanted? or we posted in the wrong forum?
If this isn’t the intended information please tell us what you need.
  • PDF-file field / Web page metadata or phpMyFAQ record information
  • Title
    As on the web page window (“title” on HTML META tag is truncated) - FAQ question.
  • Author
    The FAQ record author, the FAQ site publisher or both – depending on the organization's policy: perhaps through an option on the configuration page?
  • Subject
    “Answer in FAQ – PDF version”
    or
    “Answer to the FAQ: ” + text of the question + “ (PDF version)”
    (this alternative is perhaps to long).
  • Keywords
    Keywords in the HTML META keywords (FAQ keywords)
    (or FAQ record's tags if no keywords available).
If possible, the PDF Creation Date (or Modification Date) should be equal to the FAQ’s record.

PDF files may contain other metadata (visible or not – e.g. Dublin Core: more about DC on another post).
The applicable metadata (and mapping) depends on the PDF version used.

phpMyFAQ creates v.1.7 PDF files.

PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1:2005 ) is one of the proposed long term preservation formats for archive. It is based on the PDF v.1.4 and is:
  • readable by older software;
  • “simple”: it doesn’t implement unnecessary features for this purpose (PDF version of text FAQ content).
    However, it doesn’t support all kind of metadata (e.g. all DC terms – more on this subject on another post).
We have used on the past some free command line tools for batch processing PDF and PNG files (these tools are not PHP-based as TCPDF – used by phpMyFAQ): (there are GUIs for them: The annexed file ( pt20100201-examples-20100215.zip ) contains some examples and screenshots applied on one of our FAQs.

Note: some may want to create barcodes in the FAQs to encode information references (e.g. for mobile phone recognition). TCPDF is able to produce barcodes but other tools are freely available and implement more symbologies, e.g.:

Barcode Writer in Pure Postscript (by Terry Burton)
http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/
(there are some bindings for other languages and a web interface (this one at http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/generator/
).


Kind regards
2010-02-15
Pt20100201
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