Differences between version 7 and previous revision of PDF.
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Newer page: | version 7 | Last edited on Saturday, November 15, 2003 1:35:37 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
Older page: | version 6 | Last edited on Thursday, August 14, 2003 12:36:15 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
@@ -1,10 +1,18 @@
PDF is an [Acronym] for __P__ortable __D__ocument __F__ormat. Invented by [Adobe].
-PDF is an open standard.
-You
can generate PDFs using Adobe
's commercial AdobeAcrobat and view them with AcrobatReader
([free] but not [Free]
). You can use [LaTeX]
(pdflatex(1) or LaTeXpdf
are good places
to look
) to make good quality PDF files
. xpdf(1) and GhostView are [Free] programs
that you can use
to view
PDF files if you don
't want to use Adobe's closed-source reader
.
+[
PDF] files are good for distributing certain types of documents because:
+# They
can't be trivially changed by the receiver
(compared to emailing MicrosoftWord documents
)
+# Because it is a true page description language, the same document should display the same on any viewer
. (Word documents
are notorious for displaying differently on different machines, depending on the version of MicrosoftWord in use, the fonts available
to the machine, and the type of printer that computer is using as the default printer.
)
+# It is an open format, adhering
to a published standard
. This means
that you are not at the mercy of a company that
can change the file format forcing you
to upgrade software.
+# There are viewers capable of displaying and printing
PDF for many platforms, and because it is an open standard, viewers can be written for any platform that doesn
't yet have one
.
-PostScript files
can be easily turned into
PDF with the ps2pdf
(1
) command
(which is a wrapper around GhostScript
).
+The PDF format was specified by [Adobe], the same company that helped introduced
PostScript and Type1 fonts.
+
+You
can view
PDF documents
with AcrobatReader
([free] but not [Free]
).
+xpdf
(1
) and GhostView are [Free] programs that you can use to view PDF files if you don't want to use Adobe's proprietary closed-source reader. [KDE] has kghostview and [GNOME] has gnome-gv, both of which are front-ends to GhostView/ghostscript.
+
+You can generate PDFs by using Adobe's commercial AdobeAcrobat, see our [CreatingPDFs] page
.
[Apple]'s [MacOSX] uses PDF for rendering images (and the user interface), which is why you can have true transparent windows on their [OS].
-PDF is arguably a version of PostScript and is certainly a decendant
of it in some ways. Calling PDF something other than PostScript II was probably actually a very good idea, since there are already enough different forms of PostScript around.
+PDF is arguably a version of PostScript and is certainly a descendant
of it in some ways. Calling PDF something other than PostScript II was probably actually a very good idea, since there are already enough different forms of PostScript around.