Portable Document Format
An industry-proven solution to digital document conversion that is quickly becoming the defacto choice is PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT (.pdf) . Documents with nearly any content — text, graphics, photographs ... even movies — can be converted into the cross-platform, user-friendly Portable Document Format. Whether your PC runs on MS-DOS,Windows, OS-2, MAC, or Sun/UNIX, you can distribute your .pdf documents among them all, retaining all of your content, format, fonts, and graphics ... and more!
Beyond cross-platform compatibility, value-added features of .pdf documents include hotlinking within individual documents, and among document collections. For example, you can make your Table of Contents live, to allow you to go to any specific chapter or section of your document with a simple mouse-click. Graphics can be linked to the text that discusses them. Bookmarks allow you to see every page of your document at a glance, and a single mouse-click takes you to any page you choose. The high number of links possible within any one document allows for effortless navigation, no matter what the document's size. The highly intuitive on-screen tools you use to navigate are the same, no matter what the document or who created it.
PDF files are also considerably smaller than the original document. This is because during the conversion process all the font baggage is left behind, leaving only the original font "look." In this way, .pdf documents remain truly WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).
PDF is Web-friendly
PDF documents can be viewed directly within Web browser windows that are fully compatible with Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer (the two most popular, in other words!) Versions 3 or higher by simply downloading and installing the Reader Internet plug-in. Since the relative cross-document hotlinks work unchanged on the Web, you can publish a collection of hyperlinked .pdf files on local drives, CD-ROM, or a Web server, and all links will work in all locations.
Advantages of PDF
- Cross-platform compatibility
- WYSIWYG conversion (including fonts, graphics and colors)
- Hyperlinking and bookmarking
- Word & phrase search
- Small file size
- Create from any source application
- Converted documents remain visually rich
- Viewable within leading Web browsers
- Print single pages, page ranges, or entire documents to your local printer