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Adobe PDF files

Portable Document Format (or PDF) files are highly compressed page description files. They can contain text and graphics, and they can easily be scaled and displayed or printed. Unsurprisingly, PDF is like an improved version of PostScript, also from Adobe, that is tailered to electronic publishing.

Some things to note about PDF:

PDF is ideally suited for the electronic dissemination of print documents. It boast "the look and feel" of paper. Frequently, this make PDF files hard to read on screen.
Like DVI files, PDF files are hard to decrypt and modify. This is good for electronic publishers.
Using Adobe software, PDF files can be created with about the same effort as printing. Thus it is easy to produce PDF version of TeX documents. Again, using Adobe authoring tools, it is also realtively simple to add high quality color graphics to such documents.
Searching PDF files requires special indexing and searching software which must be purchased from Adobe.
PDF addresses the desire for author control over layout, which now seems to dominate the original conception of HTML where the reader controlled many layout features.
Consequently, PDF is limited to links in interfacing with other, more interactive web page elements.

The best source of general information about PDF is available from Adobe.

PDF Readers

Like PostScript, PDF is a proprietary language. Adobe distributes a free viewer for PDF files, called Acrobat. It is available for most computer platforms, and is simple to install.

If you want to redistribute Acrobat from you sight (as you probably would if you had many PDF documents online) you can do so after signing a licensing agreement.

Download the Acrobat reader from Adobe

Adobe is also releasing a beta version of a new reader called Amber. The Amber reader runs as a Netscape plug-in. One of it's main features is the ability to download PDF files a page at a time. This eliminates the experience of downloading a large, multi-page PDF file only to discover you aren't interested after looking at the first page.

Download the Amber reader from Adobe

Creating PDF files

Creating PDF files requires purchasing software from Adobe. At the time this page was written, the main options are:

Acrobat Writer -- a driver that allows you to "print" to PDF files from common business applications like word processors.
Acrobat Exchange -- an authoring tool that allows you to put in navigations links, annotations, etc.
Acrobat Catalog and Search -- tools for indexing and searching PDF files.
Acrobat Distiller -- a PostScript to PDF converter.

These products come bundled together in various groupings. Prices range from $200-$300 at the low end to $1900 at the high end for a single user license. Multi-user licenses are also available at significant discount.

For current product descriptions and prices, consult the Adobe product info page.

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Created: May 05 1996 --- Last modified: May 30 1996