Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe Systems Incorporated Map Index Search How to Buy News Products Solutions Studio Support About Adobe
Adobe Systems Incorporated [Navigation Bar]
Main Topics
Adobe PDF

    Developer Resources

PDF icon

  PDF Reference Manual
(PDF: 187 KB / 6 pages)
  Acrobat SDK
  Adobe PDF Documentation

 
    Newsgroups
  Acrobat Talk
  PDF Connection

 
    Resource Sites
  Planet PDF
  The PDF Page
  PDFzone
  PurePDF

 
    Related Products
  Adobe Acrobat
  Adobe Acrobat Reader
  Adobe Acrobat Capture
  Adobe PDF and Printing

 

 

About Adobe PDF

Adobe(R) Portable Document Format (PDF) is the open de facto standard for electronic document distribution worldwide. PDF is a universal file format that preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed exactly as intended by anyone with a free Adobe Acrobat(R) Reader. You can convert any document to PDF, even scanned paper, using Adobe Acrobat 4.0 software.

PDF is the ideal format for electronic document distribution because it transcends the problems commonly encountered in electronic file sharing.
 

Common Problems
  PDF Solutions
 
Recipients can't open files because they don't have the applications used to create the documents.
  Anyone, anywhere can open a PDF file. All you need is the free Acrobat Reader.
 
Formatting, fonts, and graphics are lost due to platform, software, and version incompatibilities.
  PDF files always display exactly as created, regardless of fonts, software, and operating systems.
 
Documents don't print correctly because of software or printer limitations.
  PDF files always print correctly on any printing device.
 
 

  PDF also offers the following benefits:
  PDF files can be published and distributed anywhere: in print, attached to e-mail, on corporate servers, posted on Web sites, or on CD-ROM.
  The free Acrobat Reader is easy to download from our Web site and can be freely distributed by anyone. More than 40 million people already have it.
  Compact PDF files are smaller than their source files and download a page at a time for fast display on the Web.
  Using Acrobat 4.0 software, bookmarks, cross-document links, Web links, live forms, security options, sound, and video can be added to PDF files for enhanced online viewing.
 
What's the bottom line? If you share documents electronically, you should be doing it in PDF.


| Home | Adobe PDF |

  Send Adobe your feedback!

Copyright © 1999 Adobe Systems Incorporated.
All rights reserved.
Legal notices and trademark attributions.
Online Privacy Policy.