Dictionary
(Portable Document Format) The de facto standard for electronic document publishing from Adobe. On the Web, there are millions of brochures, data sheets, white papers and technical manuals in...
Dictionary
Definition: PDF
(Portable Document Format) The de facto standard for electronic document publishing from Adobe. On the Web, there are millions of brochures, data sheets, white papers and technical manuals in the PDF format.
PDF and PostScript
A superset of Adobe's PostScript, PDF files are widely used for sending documents to commercial printing houses. If the house uses PDF printers or imagesetters, no conversion is necessary. If it uses only PostScript hardware, the PDF files are converted to PostScript first. See PostScript.
The "Portable" in PDF - Font Design Freedom
PDFs solved a chronic problem, in which the target computer may not have all the fonts specified in a document. For a graphic artist, font selection is an important part of page design, but, in the past, only basic fonts were chosen to ensure they were available in every user's computer.
In contrast, PDF files do not rely on the fonts installed in the user's computer. Document designers are free to choose whichever fonts they have at their disposal, and those fonts are embedded within the PDF document. Because the fonts are not distributed for general use, they do not violate copyrights and patents. Most importantly for designers, the page will render correctly on any computer with PDF software; essentially every computer. See PDF/X and font incompatibility.
Rendering PDFs
Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader) is Adobe's free download for displaying and printing PDF files, and hundreds of millions of users have downloaded this software from www.adobe.com. Adobe Reader lets you view and print PDF files, but not create or edit them. Starting with Adobe Reader 7, users can make comments in PDF files.
Create/Edit and Export To
PDF files can be created with Adobe's Acrobat software, which can convert documents from Microsoft Office apps and other popular programs. While Acrobat allows editing of any PDF file, many applications can export (save) to PDF, and there are numerous stand-alone utilities that convert documents to PDF. See PDF/A, PDF/X, WWF, PostScript, DjVu and XML Paper Specification.
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