[.ca] Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible (ISBN 0470050519)

Good reference - Poor Readability and Layout:
I've used the Adobe Acrobat PDF Bible books since version 6 as course text to teach Adobe Acrobat to a variety of professionals and adult learners just starting out in PDF creation. I've come to rely on Ted Padova's excellent knowledge of Adobe's universal application. Where the past editions were well presented and, for the most part, fairly well structured in their page layout, sadly this one is very poorly produced. The type suffers from an illegible point size, sometimes bordering on the ridiculous. Upon closer examination between the e-book and hardcopy versions, the type legibility further suffers from poor tracking and leading adjustments, combined with a "washed-out" appearance, due to some type being rendered in a grayscale screened value. Reference images suffer the same fate and a thinner, more porous paper stock "thins" the type by ink / paper absorption. The fake, stone embossed chapter headings and reference cues certainly do not add clarity to the formatting and structure of this reference book. It is also unfortunate that Chapter 26 on Security fails to mention, as an advisory note, the growing problem of "cracking" software which 'unlocks' secured PDFs. Although still a good reference book, I could not recommend it as a course text until many of the issues outlined above are addressed.