Newsletter

Encyclopedia

Results found for: PDF
 

PDF

(Portable Document Format) The de facto standard for document publishing from Adobe. On the Web, there are countless 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. Whereas PostScript was designed as a language to drive the printer and imagesetter hardware, PDF lets users view and interact with the document. At the commercial printer, the PDF file is converted to PostScript for printing. Some printers also provide native support for PDF. See PostScript.

The "Portable" in PDF - Font Design Freedom
PDFs solved a chronic font 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, quite often, only basic fonts are chosen to ensure they will be available in and rendered properly in every user's computer.

     In contrast, PDF files do not rely on the fonts installed in the computer that displays or prints them. 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 comply with the font license and do not violate copyrights or patents. Most importantly for page designers, they can use all the fonts they have at their disposal and be guaranteed that the page will display and print correctly on any computer with PDF rendering software. 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 Acrobat 7 and Adobe Reader 7, users can make comments in PDF files.

Creating and Editing PDFs
PDF files are created with Adobe's Acrobat software. Acrobat can convert a wide variety of document types on Windows, Mac and Unix to the PDF format. Non-Adobe products are also available for converting to PDF; for example, Jaws PDF Creator from Global Graphics Software (www.globalgraphics.com). Adobe applications such as InDesign and Illustrator, as well as non-Adobe applications, include PDF converters to export content to the PDF format. See PDF/A, PDF/X, PostScript, DjVu and XML Paper Specification.



similar terms
Entries before PDF
PDA phone
PDC
PDD
PDD-63
PDES
Entries after PDF
PDF/A
PDF file
PDF JobReady
PDF spam
PDF Transit
 




Or get a random definition
techweb
copyright THIS COPYRIGHTED DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY.
All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.

Copyright (©) 1981-2007 The Computer Language Company
Inc All rights reserved.
 Featured Jobs
Ascension Health seeking Solutions Development Analyst in St. Louis, MO

National Semiconductor seeking Principal IC Design Engineer in Santa Clara, CA

Taylor Guitars seeking Sr. Web Designer in El Cajon, CA

Covidien seeking Hardware Manager in Boulder, CO

Sierra Nevada seeking Software Engineer in Hagerstown, MD

More jobs on EETimesCareers
 Sponsor