|
Adobe
Acrobat
An
electronic document distribution system, Acrobat
consists of three major parts:
- Acrobat
Exchange
An application and collection of utilities used
to crate Acrobat files. Exchange, the
application, is very similar to the Acrobat
Reader (see below) but lets you add, delete and
reorganize pages of the document.
Documents are usually created using another
application such as a word processor or page
layout program, and then exported to Acrobat
format using the Acrobat PDF Writer. This is a
printer driver that creates Acrobat files
instead of printing to disk.
- PDF
Files
This is the Acrobat file format. PDF files can
be edited using Exchange, and displayed and
printed using Acrobat Reader.
- Acrobat
Reader
Utility that can open, display and edit PDF
files. Users must download the Reader from
Adobe's website (though it is also often
distributed on disk with other
applications.)
Whether the user can copy text from a document,
or print a document can be defined by the
documents author in Acrobat Exchange. There is
also a web browser plug-in which can be used
with Netscape and I.E., and will displays a PDF
file within the browser window.
Pros:
There are several electronic document systems,
and Acrobat is probably the most popular. It works
well with a variety of other applications, and the
resulting files are fairly well compressed. The
document format is cross platform. Printed quality
is exceptional.
Cons:
Many users don't want to download the utility.
Reading documents on screen is often not as easy or
pleasant as reading on paper. For best performance
you should format a document for either electronic
use or for printing (Acrobat doesn't support
multiple formats of the same document, so you
either produce one document that isn't perfect for
screen and printing, or you produce two
documents.
|
|
Mar
1, 1999 Open Text Corporation has
introduced Livelink Forms for Adobe
Acrobat. Livelink is a scalable,
collaborative knowledge management
application for intranets. The Livelink
Forms--Adobe Module will be offered as an
optional module to Livelink, a
collaborative knowledge management
application. The Module is shipping now
and priced at $25,000
<www.opentext.com>
|
|
|
June
12, 1998 MacWEEK reports on Apple's
announcement that Adobe's PDF file
format will be used as the native
image-file format in Mac OS X (10) instead
of the PICT format.
<www.macweek.com
news item "Adobe
hails PDF in
X">
|
|
|
|
|
|
PDF
Publishing
A publication of Electronic Publishing.
They also offer a PDF
conference.
|
last
updated: 3/01/99
|
|
