PDF - the Portable Document Format

Adobe created the PDF (Portable Document Format) format as a way to deliver Optimized Postscript to the masses. The development of the free 'Adobe Acrobat Reader' was a major push into digital convergence. Adobe had distributed 250,000 free copies of Acrobat Reader before Microsoft had identified that it's Internet Explorer browser should be bundled with their Windows operating system.

With the PDF format, we were first able to guarantee that documents would appear the same on all platforms. It was the first proprietary digital format capable of printing out elegant print designs, typography and highly graphic layouts in a true cross-platform manner. Prior to Acrobat, the only way computer output devices were able to achieve these imaging results, was by natively using the Postscript format with machines that appropriately licensed the scripting language.

Today PDF is considered an open standard, and developers have created many different 'free PDF reader' products that compete with Adobe's Acrobat Reader. There are also several different subsets of the PDF standard that have been introduced. Some of these include PDF/X (printing and graphic arts - ISO 15930), PDF/A (document archiving - ISO 19005, PDF/E (engineering - ISO TC171), and PDF/UA (universally accessible PDF files).

These links will allow you to dig a little deeper into the world of PDF:

Adobe Systems - www.adobe.com

Planet PDF - www.planetpdf.com

PDFZone - www.pdfzone.com