Chapter 2. Understanding Acrobat Viewers

You know about the free Adobe Reader program you download from Adobe's Web site, but did you know about the other applications you can use to view the same documents you view in Adobe Reader? If you're longing for tools and commands that will let you do more editing on PDF files, you may need to buy one of the commercial Adobe Acrobat products.

This chapter explains the distinctions between the Acrobat viewers and describes some of the features of each, to help you decide which product best meets your needs when working with PDF documents.

What is PDF?

PDF, or Portable Document Format, was developed by Adobe Systems as a publicly available specification used by standards bodies around the world for secure, reliable electronic document distribution and exchange. As the name implies, it's portable, which means that a PDF file created on one computer can be viewed with an Acrobat viewer on other computers and on other platforms. For example, you can create a page layout on a Macintosh computer and convert it to a PDF file. After the conversion, this PDF document can be viewed on a Unix or Windows machine. Multiplatform compliance (to enable the exchange of files across different computers, for example) is one of the great values of PDF documents.

PDF documents preserve document integrity by embedding within the PDF file all design components such as fonts, images, and layout styles. Therefore, a user who views a PDF file does not need any special fonts or linked image files to view and print the document exactly as the original file was designed. Preserving document integrity is beneficial as well as cost-effective, since not all users who view and print files need native authoring applications. In businesses where software purchases are costly, Adobe Reader can reduce software costs tremendously.

The PDF format has become a standard in many industries. Governments and enterprises have adopted Adobe PDF to streamline document management, increase productivity, and reduce reliance on paper. Today, Adobe PDF is the standard, secure format for the electronic submission of drug approvals to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and for electronic case filing in U.S. federal courts. It's also the standard format used for advertising pages, in newspapers and magazines.