What do you use for PDF Generation?

[Shlomo Perets]

Fred,

You wrote (in response to Rebecca Officer's message):

>That hit count is deceptive because of the way the search was
>specified. The search returns all pages that include the word
>"Document" or the word "Settings", not just the ones that have
>inappropriate metadata strings.
>
>Use the search specification
>     "Documents and Settings" +pdf
>for a more relevant search result. (A quick visual scan of a
>hundred or so result listings showed that all of them included
>a pathname that included the user's login name, which was not
>the case with the broader search.) But even this narrower search
>returns more than 2 million hits, including more than 200,000
>documents that deal with some aspect of computer security!


Thanks for your clarification!  I updated the search phrase so that it 
yields less results.
I actually did not pay attention to the specific number of millions... When 
I see so many hits I assume that many thousands (at least) of files serve 
well to demonstrate the point, after irrelevant hits are ignored.

In any case, this is just one possible search string out of several. 
Additional variations include:
C:\Docume~
C:\Program Files\
Printing C:\
Print Preview - C:\
(with different drives) etc.

These variations depend on the specific PDF creation route used (authoring 
tools, drivers, settings), and show that file path may be added to PDFs 
even when no metadata is added explicitly (and even when simply printing to 
.ps).

My recommendation is therefore to always check/adjust the document 
properties of the PDF file before distributing it, regardless of how the 
PDF is created.


Shlomo Perets

MicroType, http://www.microtype.com
Training, consulting & add-ons: FrameMaker, Structured FM and Acrobat