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MAIN PAGE                  WHAT IS PDF?            ALL PDF SOFTWARE          PDF LINKS & PDF LINKS

WHAT IS PDF?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. As the name implies, it is a data format that can be used to describe documents. Adobe, the developers of PDF, market software to create, edit and visualize PDF files. Because the specifications of the file format are publicly available, a lot of other companies develop software for PDF as well. In prepress, PDF is used more and more as a format to exchange data between applications.

This introduction to PDF covers the following subjects:

• What can I do with PDF?
• What does a PDF file look like?
• How do I open PDF files?
• How do I create PDF files?
• What are the advantages of PDF?
• Surely there must be disadvantages as well?

PDF can be used for:

• creating electronic documents. PDF is as close as you can get to 'the paperless office'.
• exchanging data. More and more applications can read PDF files. Advertisements are often exchanged as PDF files.
• archiving data. There are tools on the market that allow you to index PDF files so you can create and search an electronic library of PDF files.
• interactive documents. PDF can be used for electronics forms in which the filled-in data can be stored in a data base.

PDF files usually have a .PDF extension. On Macintosh computers, this is not really necessary but since PDF files can easily be exchange between different computer platforms it is a good idea to always use the .PDF extension.

Their icon looks like this:

Both on Macs and PCs, you will not see this specific icon if no application is installed that can handle PDF files. Nowadays most systems come with the necessary Acrobat Viewer application preinstalled.

The easiest way to view a PDF file is by downloading the free Acrobat Viewer application from the Adobe web site. Acrobat Viewer is usually also included on the CDs that come with many computer magazines.

        I created a separate page that goes into more detail on this subject .

More and more applications, like Corel Draw 9 or Adobe InDesign, have an 'export to PDF' option.

For applications that do not have this option, you simply print your document to a PostScript file and then use a separate application like Adobe Acrobat Distiller to convert the print file to a PDF file.

The Adobe Acrobat application (formerly named Exchange) can then be used to jazz up the PDF file and add multimedia stuff, hyperlinks, bookmarks or other stuff. 

 What are the advantages of PDF?      

PDF has a unique number of advantages:

• It is a cross platform standard. This means that somebody can create a PDF file on a Unix workstation and you can open it on a Mac or PC and still see the document just like it was intended to be viewed.
• PDF files can be device independent. This means that a PDF file can be printed on a cheap ink jet printer as well as on an expensive imagesetter. This does not necessarily mean that the output will be optimized for each device. A lot depends on the way the document is created.
• PDF files are compact. PDF supports a number of sophisticated compression algorithms as well as a clever file structure to keep the file size of PDF files down to an absolute minimum.
• PDF files can contain multimedia elements like movies or sound as well as hypertext elements like bookmarks, links to e-mail addresses or web pages and thumbnail views of pages.
• PDF supports security. The creator of a PDF file can set various security options. It is possible to lock a PDF so it can only be opened with a password. It is also possible to forbid changing the content of a PDF or disable the option to print a PDF file.

    Surely there are disadvantages as well?    

Of course there are some disadvantages to PDF as well.

• PDF is a proprietary file format. Adobe defines its specifications and then publishes them. In the past, Adobe has tried to turn PDF into an ISO-standard to push its acceptance in the market. The industry has responded with a request to move the definition of PDF to an independent organization so it could truly become an open standard. Ever since, Adobe seems to have given up on the ISO-thing :-) at least for the basic PDF-specs. There are some subversions of PDF like PDF/X-1 that may still get ISO-certified because they are defined by an industry consortium rather than by Adobe.
• PDF tries to be everything to everybody, meaning that it may not be as efficient for a specific task than a tool optimized for that task. You can use PDF on the Internet but in most cases an HTML document may be more efficient. You can use PDF to exchange small graphic elements like ads, drawings or pictures but more prepress applications can handle the EPS file format. You can use PDF for archiving data but sometimes extensive layout features like kerning may prevent hits when searching for a key word.
• PDF is geared towards visualizing documents. It will not preserve the logical structure of a document.
• PDF files are not meant to be edited. Small changes can be made to a PDF file but it is virtually impossible to add complete blocks of text or images to an existing PDF file.