How would you like a tool which would enable you to view or print a text or graphics file on your computer, even if you didn't have the application software with which that file was created? What if that tool was so small it only took up about 20% of a floppy disk, so that you could include it with files you wanted to pass on to others? What if everybody else was using it and you could get a licensed copy for free? Sound pretty good? Well, Adobe Systems is hoping so, because they are promoting the distribution of Adobe Acrobat Reader 2.0 to fill this niche.
You can download an Adobe Acrobat reader from the internet on several sites and share it freely with your friends. You will also find it distributed with a number of other software packages and possibly bundled with the preinstalled software on the next computer you buy. As you might guess, Adobe is trying to make this a standard way of distributing electronic information so that they can develop a market for the companion products which you can purchase to generate and edit portable document files (PDF's) from your existing applications or from scanned images. Although Adobe is not the only company shooting for this market, they appear to be far ahead of everybody else.
Both private and public organizations have jumped on the PDF band wagon, including several federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Defense. The impetus for this kind of software is obvious, it enables organizations with large volumes of paper documents to create, maintain, and distribute information electronically. In fact, with the aid of bookmarks and cross document links, these electronic versions are more efficient to use and store than paper documents. In those instances where paper documents are also needed, the process can be done concurrently. The formatting for PDF files is done through a conversion that uses Adobe's patented postscript language, which has itself become a standard in document printing. This process is faster and less expensive than conversion to Standard Generalized Markup language (SGML) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) formats.
The ability to display documents the way the author or designer intended plus strong hyperlinking capability is a major selling point to companies who want to use this product to display their information on the World Wide Web, and an Adobe Acrobat reader is included in the newly released Netscape Navigator 2.0 web browser software. This technology is also advantageous for companies to use on their own networks or on CD ROMs for a wide range of uses from catalogs and schedules to technical manuals and employee handbooks, all of which require wide distribution and constant revision. At the present time PDF is making a serious challenge to SGML for publishing and HTML for the Internet. This also represents a reversal of control back to the originator of the document rather than in the hands of the end user. Want to find out more about the world of electronic commerce and communications? Sign up for an ECRC course. If you want to find out more about PDF, check out this web site: http://www.adobe.com/.