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About PDF:
I think everyone who has been banging around on the internet for
a while has encountered the acronym "PDF" which means,
Portable Document Format. I have never been to a site which offered
PDF files and also had a decent explanation of what PDF is or
how you deal with it. It's almost as though, if you don't know,
that's not our problem. I'm not sure if it's arrogance or lack
of perception on the part of the web masters. In either case,
it leaves many people outside the loop. My goal here is to try
to enlarge the loop for you folks who don't know.
PDF is a methodology and a set of tools, designed by Adobe Systems Inc. All of the tools and the documentation are trademarked and/or copyrighted by Adobe. The goal of this methodology is to simplify and standardize the transfer of documents across differing media and platforms.
By media, we mean the types of carriers we use to exchange information. For example, in this sense, a web page on the internet is a type of media. A CD_ROM is a type of media. A printed book or magazine is another type of media. These things carry information from the creator to the recipient.
By platforms we mean the devices or machines which are used to create and access the documents. Your PC is a platform. It is probably either an IBM type PC or a Mac of some kind. There are other, more expensive, platforms used in the print industry.
So what? Why is it necessary? After all, we have E-MAIL and web pages for communication. Why do we have to muck around with some new technology?
In many cases, the objections are reasonable. For regular E-MAIL, PDF is not at all necessary. For most of us, most of the time, PDF offers little or no benefit. However, if formatting is an important part of your document, PDF guarantees it. That means that what you send or post will appear, exactly as you sent or posted it.
Although lay out is part of formatting, PDF does not deal with just the layout. It also includes the type face, the graphic quality, and the color. If you create a document using Old English, 20 point, bold, red type, you do not want it to appear in Arial, 6 point, normal, black for your recipient. That would undo a great deal of the artistic work you did. Yet, that is exactly what is likely to happen if you simply send your document through E-MAIL.
Formatting is also a problem with posted documents on a website. I know very well that what I post on the Wesoomi website may look different to you than it does to me. There are just too many variables involve to avoid this. I must take that into account, when designing my pages to make sure you will, at least, see an approximation of what I intend. PDF will not help here because It depends on each user having a PDF capability. Since I really want you to see my pages, I must use a technology which I can count on you to have. I know you have a browser and I know it can read HTML code, so, I post my pages in HTML.
So, who used PDF and when. On the internet, PDF will be used by web masters, and others, when they think the formatting of their document is important. When they do this, they usually also offer what they call a plain text version. You can have it either way. Also, they will usually offer a download of "Adobe Acrobat." Sometimes they even tell you what Adobe Acrobat can do.
Adobe Acrobat is the reader part of the PDF tool set. It allows any PDF document to be read and printed. Adobe gives it away free. There are dozens of places on the web where you can find downloadable copies of Acrobat including Adobe's site, "http://www.adobe.com/". It's just a piece of software which comes with a help file and installation instructions.
If you download Acrobat and install it on your PC, you will be able to download PDF files and read them. Sometimes, you will find this convenient. Be sure to get version 4. It's the latest and has some features which were not in previous versions, like improved print handling.
Now, what else do you need to be PDF ready? Not a darn thing! Once you have Acrobat, you can read and mess around with any PDF document. If you get adventurous or get into some kind of publishing, you may want to go a bit further. In that case, you will have to pony up real bucks to Adobe for the whole PDF package. This will include the latest version of acrobat and also a program called Acrobat Distiller.
Distiller is a program which takes files from a variety of sources and converts them to PDF documents. The coolest feature of Distiller is the output capability. It can optimize the PDF files for the intended type of media. It can do print optimized for your desktop printer. It can do screen optimized if you want to view the document on a monitor. It can also do press optimized if the output is to go to a publishing imagesetter for printing magazines and books. If you are really fussy, it allows you to change the settings to suit some particular device.
Most folks will never have a need for Distiller. Since I am
a publisher, I need it and use it regularly. Unless you need it,
let it slide. Like all powerful tools, it's difficult to understand.
However, it is easier to use than many other publishing tools.
Enough said.
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