| Product: |
Adobe Acrobat 4.0 in general |
| Date: |
17.06.00 (47 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: High quality output
Disadvantages: Harsh competition from HTML...
What is PDF?
It stands for Portable Document Format and is actually a Post Script document printed to file.
Post Script is the highest quality output that you can have on print, and as you would have guessed this is what the printing industry is heavily using.
It is a vectorized format that was invented by Adobe in the 80's and got boosted by the DTP revolution with Macs and Aldus Pagemaker. It thus ensures a high quality output on paper, far from the lower quality dotted prints.
Adobe decided to create a virtual PS (Post Script) format not really for the web but for people who wanted to share documents without any loss of quality.
On top of this, it was cross platfrom and PDF is supported not only on Mac and PC but also on Unix...what else can you ask!?
Basically it is really easy to produce, you just have to print to file your document whether it is designed in Quark Xpress, Adobe Pagemaker, or MS Word. Acrobat will do the rest...it is as swift as this! With the new Adobe InDesign package, you just go to File/Export to PDF...it is so easy it has lost its charm!
What you need to read the now ubiquitous PDF format on the web is the Acrobat Reader that you can quickly download - for free on Adobe website:
http://www.adobe.co.uk/
I started producing PDF with Acrobat 3 and have to say that Acrobat 4 really got impressive...easier to output with drag and drop technology from your lay-out application to the Acrobat window, higher security with digital signature, and Color Module Management (New ICC profiles)
I reckon it has a great future especially with the Web, eventhough it is faced with hard competition from other formats such as HTM or XML which can still be lighter!
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