The problem that still arises is that Word documents still use a modified version of the Rich text Format which is dependant on relative font sizes, presence of fonts, and occassionally linked files while the PDF format is essentially a printed page in electronic format.
That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as an explanation but, unfortunately its the best I can come up with right now. When you print a document it is converted into a format the printer understands (usually PostScript but IIRC MacOSX actually uses PDF) and you create a PDF from a document in essentially the same way, run through a program called the Acrobat Distiller that converts the Document to a PDF as though you were printing the document but the output was intercepted and made into a document before it reaches a printer.
What you then get is a relatively compact file that will appear the same on everyone’s screen regardless of what fonts they have and what resolution they are running at and will always print the same to almost every printer currently in use.
I am a printer. Acrobat is a godsend. The ‘P’ in pdf stands for PORTABLE.
YESTERDAY I had a Word file from a client. I opened it on 6 different machines before it even started to look like something rational and usable. Word defaults to the machine/platform on which it is installed.
A pdf can be emailed, appended, batted from PC to Mac and back and still survive intact.
It’s not ‘the idea that was in the right place at the right time,’ it was the idea we’ve been waiting for. Acrobat (pdf) is the future of cross-platform/cross-application/cross-implementation documents.
I do not work for Adobe. I’m just glad they thought of this format.
Your points are well taken - again, some of you are heavy professional users of Acrobat, so you see all its great features. I’m at best a casual end-user. And I understand the importance of portability - yes I tend to be a blinkered Windows user because that’s what I use 99% of the time, but I know there are plenty of people out there using Macs, Linux and other.
I don’t think the slowness thing is a computer power problem - I’ve had the same experience on state-of-the-art PCs with tons of processing power, memory and video memory, as well as a powerful video card. It is perhaps related to the sluggishness of some Internet connections or more likely (I’m using cable, around 1.5 mbps) the slowness of certain websites. I still don’t see why the browser has to become unresponsive when rendering the file though - this doesn’t happen even with huge HTML files.
One bug I noticed that causes this (but it’s not always the problem): occasionally Acrobat will prompt you to “phone home” to check for a new version. Unfortunately, the dialog box asking if it should check for a new version is not displayed with the “foreground” attribute, meaning it pops up (invisibly to the user) behind the browser. Since it’s a modal dialog, the browser is (as far as the user is concerned) locked up and unresponsive. I discovered this accidentally when I minimized the browser once using the “show desktop” button.
The problem with that is it’s a Windows program. I use Linux and can open a pdf fine. I could email it to my brother who uses MacOS 9 and he’d be able to view it as well. Sure there are other programs out there (some free, some not) can can open word files but most if not all of them screw up something in the layout (not to mention the fonts issues). PDFs have none of these problems.
As for the slowness: Yea, they can be a little slow to open but usually not too bad. The reason for it, IIRC, is that PDF format is based on postscript so the file needs to be rendered on the screen (blue triangle here, red box with a 15 degree angle there). That’s why, if the pdf is made correctly, it scales so well.
Ahh yes, the Acrobat plugin used with a browser is TERRIBLY slow, even when the document is fully downloaded. One should also save the .pdf to disk, and then open it with the standalone Acrobat (Reader of full version).
I still feel anyone that complains about viewing slowness needs to take a look at the actual file size & parameters and not blame the PDF concept. If I make a PDF page from a 30MB, 2048x1280 image without downsampling or compression, it renders slowly. But if I downsample the image to 512x320, and squeeze it to 500K with medium JPG compression, it will display very fast. If done artfully, the end user will notice very little difference in the quality.
Of course, if you are the end-user, you are at the mercy of what is handed to you. If PDF file creators rely on automatic & default settings, that’s what ya get, but there’s nothing in the the PDF file design that REQUIRES a large file or slow rendering.
Stockton: it seems you & I arrived at the same decision to use PDFs from the opposite point of view – me, having to supply printers/service bureaus with renderable files, and you, having to work with them. If we were working together, we’d get along jes’ fine. I feel vindicated!
BTW – anyone remember “Common Ground”? It was another attempt at solving the portability problem. Whatever happened to that?
Or amarinth can try an alternate pdf viewer like ghostscript/ghostview. With ghostscript you can also create PDF files for free (it’s an open format) instead of having to pay money for Adobe’s “Distiller” product, which isn’t worth it.
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That won’t do much good for someone who doesn’t use Acrobat. With ghostscript you can convert a PDF to PostScript which can then be send straight to the printer.
Actually, how does that work? I was under the impression that the security on a PDF file was integral to the PDF file, not linked to a specific renderer. If I create a PDF file with a certain security level, does this mean I can use a different renderer to bypass the security?
Not sure, but I have a feeling that one can create a rendered/parser that can be configured to disregard the security measures. That’s entirely possible with an open format like PDF. If anyone can point me to a non-printable PDF on the Internet, I’ll download it and transform it into PostScript just to confirm.
According to this link, ghostscript can only do that as long as the pdf is not password protected.
According to this link, there are some patched versions that will even deal with the encrypted versions.
It seems that most of the “protection” options are simply tags in the file that tell the renderer not to do certain things - don’t print, don’t allow copy and paste, etc. If the renderer doesn’t honor those tags, then you are home free.
It appears that ghostscript honors the “protection” tags when there is a password involved - which I think also implies encryption.
I’ll step in and point out that PDF is the standard graphics format for Mac OS X (of course the OS supports just about everything else).
PDF is great and I’ve been a believer in them since Acrobat 2 on Windows 3.11.
Just to clarify everything here, there is
(1) the PDF file format that’s open and royalty-free (hence Apple’s change to PDF from display-PostScript)
(2) “Adobe Acrobat Reader” which is the sometimes-clumbsy, free program most people have.
(3) Adobe Acrobat (proper) which is the PDF editor (you can say generator if you want, but it’s really…)
(4) Acrobat Distiller, the thing that converts PostScript into PDF. If you “print to PDF” you’re really just printing to a PostScript driver, which is then being converted to PDF.
As said above, Ghostscript is a good means to convert PostScript to PDF, and your Windows installation has all kinds of already-included PostScript drivers you can use paired with the “Print to File” function. On *nix systems Ghostscript is pretty-much a standard tool for all kinds of PostScript transformations.
The Mac can generate PDF automatically, although I find the use of Distiller gives me better professional results. Mostly for my purposes, the built-in PDF is good enough. Acrobat is still required for tables of contents and page manipulation and so on, though.
Important question: As much as I love the use of PDF’s, I firmly don’t believe in mixing my browser with any other piece of the operating system or other standalone programs. Soooo… how the hell do I stop Mozilla from showing PDF’s in the browser? I’ve removed the plug-ins, changed the MIME-types, and done everything I can think of to have the “Save…” box come up instead of having Acrobat open in my browser. Yes, I know I can right-click and Save As…, but I typically don’t pay attention to the format of the links I click (especially Google results) that I’m always suprised by the damned in-browser Acrobat.