david poehlman writes: >ONe big issue is that with each successive version, the platform >availability shrinks. It's down to 2k and nt and xp now with version 7. How sad. I am glad I gave up on the Windows world about 5 years ago in favor of Linux and another open-source variant of UNIX called FreeBSD. If your job simply can't be done without shoveling endless dump-truck loads of cash in to Windows-based solutions that seem to always be one upgrade step behind what everybody else is using, then you don't have much choice, but I think my general frustration level is lower on a daily basis since I wint UNIX. What I have discovered is that the pstotext and ps2ascii utilities in UNIX that can sometimes read PDF documents get stopped cold if either the document is a photographic image or if some of the newer PDF's are formatted a certain way which seems to blow certain internal structures in the PDF reader to pieces. In other words, you try to read something and the PDF2txt or ps2ascii conversion tools will simply exit with an error about a stack or something similar. The PDF documents that turn out to be images simply exit with no errors and not a single readable word. I recently tried to read the data sheet for a SSM2164 variable-gain amplifier chip and was very confused because I got a lot of readable text which was fine, but I couldn't find that all-important pin connection map which tells you which signals go to which pins. A friend viewed the PDF and it turns out that that one part is a small in-set photo or image which is why I couldn't read it. Of course, that is simply the way the person who composed the data sheet elected to build the PDF. I hope the open-source tools grow along with the commercial ones since PDF has a lot of potential if it is done right. The UNIX PS utilities will not only read PDF's but can many times properly read PostScript files and do pretty well except for charts and tables which sometimes get mangled beyond trustworthiness. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group