Alexander’s Blog

Adobe’s Acrobat Professional along with pretty much every piece of software that Adobe makes is criticized for it’s lack of user-friendliness and intuitiveness. If you are trying to edit a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat Professional by using the TouchUp Text Tool, you may have encountered an error when you try to edit or delete the text. The error you get is:

All or part of the selection has no available font system. You cannot add or delete text using the currently selected fonts.

Frankly, in this case the error is useful as it gives you some hint as to what the problem might be. The problem here is that the font used in the PDF document that you are trying to edit is not one of the system fonts. In order to fix the problem, you need to use a font that is recognized by the system.

Highlight the text you are trying to delete or edit and then right-click and select Properties. Click on the Text tab. You will notice that on the Text tab the Permissions section says “No system font available.” Change the font to a system font. For example, if the text used is Myriad-Roman, from the Font drop-down button change it to MyriadPro-Regular. You will notice the Permissions section now says “Can embed font.” Once you close the Properties window, you sould be able to delete or edit the text as necessary.

If you have been using Ntbackup.exe that came with earlier versions of Windows and now you plan to use the new Windows Server Backup that comes with Windows Server 2008 (WS08), there are several things that you need to keep in mind.

1. The backups require NTFS-formatted volumes.
2. You can backup to hard disks (both internal and external) but the disks must be locally attached.
3. You can backup to DVDs and remote shared folders using UNC in Windows Server 2008.
4. If you plan to use scheduled backups then you will need a separate, dedicated disk.
5. If you back up to an external disk then the disk will be dedicated to backups and you won’t be able to see it Windows Explorer. The idea is that you can remove the external disk for off-site storage.
6. Backing up to tape is not supported in Windows Server 2008 but there is support for tape storage drivers.
7. You cannot back up volumes larger than 2043 GB with Windows Server Backup tool.
8. Windows Server 2008 does not support recovering from backups that were created with the old Ntbackup.exe. However, Microsoft is offering a new version of Ntbackup.exe for people who want to recover data from the old backups that were created using Ntbackup.exe. Keep in mind that this “special” version of Ntbackup.exe is only for recovering backups that you created with previous versions of Windows and you cannot use them to create new backups in Windows Server 2008. For more information on this special version of Ntbackup.exe called Windows NT Backup - Restore Utility click here.

Several years ago I was teaching a class at a local training center. One of my students, who worked for the Help Desk department at a large enterprise in Seattle, was blind. At the end of the week the student wanted to take the exam associated with the course. This required that a custom screen-reader software be installed on the computer where the exam was installed. We called Prometric who administers the exams for Microsoft. Prometric is a company that is well-known in the Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) community for their lousy service. So it was no surprise when they said they can’t really help because they don’t know what to do. Then we called Microsoft to see if they can help us accommodate the blind student so he could take the exam. Microsoft said we need to call Prometric because they are the ones who are responsible for the exams. We eventually ended up working a solution and the student was able to take the exam. The student missed the exam by only one question……ouch! That was very disappointing. But he was the only student bright and daring enough in that class to dare take the exam at the end of the week.

So when I read about this screen reader called WebAnywhere it caught my eye. I don’t know if it would help in the situation that I described above but it seems to be a great tool for the blinds to access the Web.

WebAnywhere is a Web-based screen reader for the Web developed by University of Washington computer science graduate Jeffrey Bigham. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and enables blind people to access the Web from any computer that has a sound card. Check out this link to go directly to WebAnywhere.

With WebAnywhere there is no need to purchase any software. Best of all, WebAnywhere will run on any machine, even heavily locked-down public terminals, regardless of what operating system it is running and regardless of what browsers are installed.

If you are looking into WebAnywhere, you might also be interested in this white paper.

Okay, so you know all about World Wide Web (WWW) or else you won’t be reading my blog but have you heard about World Wide Telescope (WWT) from Microsoft Research? Microsoft defines WWT as “a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.”

WWT is a single Web-based program that connects to data residing on multiple servers across the Internet and presents it in a seamless, interactive way. There are lots of things you can do in this application. To get started you might want to take advantage of one of the many guided tours. While you are in the tour you can pause the tour and come back later to rejoin where you left off.

Microsoft is providing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities. Click here to access the WWT homepage then click on the Download icon in the upper right hand corner, or you can click on the Experience It link to get to the Download link. If you are into astronomy, you’ll absolutely love WWT.

TIPS

1. You must use a browser that has JavaScript enabled (such as Internet Explorer) and the Adobe Flash Player plug-in installed. If you don’t have the Flash Player installed you will have the option to download it when you access the WWT homepage.

2. Once the application is installed you can access it in Windows Vista under All Programs, Microsoft Research.

3. Use the mouse to navigate around the galaxy by clicking and dragging. For example, if you view earth, you can click and drag to spin the earth until you get where you want then use your wheel mouse to quickly zoom in or zoom out.

4. If you are an advanced user and want to select one of the many telescopes, you must download and install the 5MB ASCOM platform and a telescope driver to control your telescope. The ASCOM Initiative is a loosely-knit group of astronomy software developers and astronomy device manufacturers devoted to vendor-independent plug-and-play control.

NOTE: I noticed that on my Internet Explorer page the page freezes after 99% content is loaded. I have to hit the refresh key (F5) to get it to 100% and access the Web site. The application is pretty buggy and don’t be surprised if WWT application crashes and you can’t get out of it. In that case run Task Manager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC) and on the Processes tab kill the process WWTExplorer.

Windows Server 2008 offers both Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway) and Terminal Services RemoteApp (TS RemoteApp) features. Although they both offer Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) over HTTPS, the main difference between them is that TS Gateway allows you to publish the entire desktop while TS RemoteApp publishes only the application.

For example, if you have a need to allow one of the vendors access to an application on your network so the vendor can support it you might want to consider TS RemoteApp in Windows Server 2008 as a solution. You can simply publish the application on a Windows Server 2008 in the DMZ, or behind an ISA firewall, without having to worry about setting up Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) for the vendor. As an administrator, you can use the TS Gateway to have full, secure access to the entire desktop.