Portable Document Aassistant PostScript formatting technology that attempts to provide a viable way of exchanging documents across operating systems and different types of software. The of the best known PDA option is the Acrobat tools from Adobe Corporation that gives rise to PDF documents in Protable Document Format file extensions. Acrobat also provides other utilities such as the Distiller tool that translates PostScript files into a PDF format, the Exchange tool that facilitates insertion of hypertext linkages, the PDF Writer containing printer drivers, and other utilities. For a review of Acrobat, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/wwwsoft.htm . Also see Cross-platform .
I have been playing a little more with Version 4 of Adobe Acrobat. The most common way to generate an Acrobat PDF file is to create a document in a word processor (say a DOC file) or a spreadsheet (say a XLS file). With Adobe Exchange installed, you can simply save a second copy of the document as a PDF file. In the past, I pretended there was a glass barrier in which the original images were behind the glass (and could not be modified with Adobe Exchange) versus Acrobat Exchage things that you could do in front of the glass (such as add annotations, hyperlinks, bookmarks, audio, video, etc.). Prior to Version 4, any changes in content of the file behind the glass could not be made using Adobe Exchange. Version 4, however, allows certain types of changes such as "touching up" words, insertion of pages, and renumbering of pages. However, most serious modifying and editing of text or data are still best accomplished by returning to the word processor or spreadsheet program. For example, if I added text in a sentence I could not get the longer sentence to easily wrap around and adjust the lines for the added text. Have any of you found a way to make such text wrappings automatice in PDF text editing?
Version 4 of Adobe Acrobat (particularly the Adobe Exchange module) certainly makes it easier to publish web documents in PDF form rather than HTML or dome other DTD. Version 4 is a significant upgrade. The main advantage is that the original document produced on a word processor or spreadsheet program does not have to be edited and touched up in the same manner that an HTML conversion often requires fixing up and images. For example MS Word tables and Excel tables do not have to be fixed up in a PDF file, but these tables almost always have to be fixed up following a conversion to a HTM file. Images do not have to be stored in separate files like they do for HTML documents. Another advantage arises in that the hard copy printout of the PDF file is nearly perfect in terms of looking just like the original DOC or XLS printout.
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