It's no secret that the most popular typeof document conversion is Doc 2 PDF. But hang on, exactlywhat is PDF, and why is it so widely used? Read on to find out!
PDF stand for Portable Document Format, andPDF files are recognizable because that's their extension: they are .pdf files(e.g. Work_Project.pdf). Portable Document Format was invented by a companycalled Adobe Systems (commonly known as just ?Adobe?) in 1993. The idea behindPDF is that it's a medium for document exchange between parties. So I couldproduce a document using any kind of program, any kind of hardware, and anykind of operating system, Convert to PDF, and send it toyou, in the knowledge that you'll always be able to read it. And how can weassume that you'll be able to read it? Because Adobe's Reader program hasalways been a free download that anyone connected to the internet can get.
It's hard to overestimate what an importantformat PDF is. Without it, the process of sending information to one anotherover the internet would be much more fraught with difficulty, although probablythe truth is that had it not been invented, another company would have inventeda very similar product.
An analogy for PDF is a third language thattwo people who speak different languages can easily adopt to communicate in.English plays this role in many parts of the world, but misses out on the?easily adopted? part of the equation.
Another interesting thing about PDF is thatas of July 2008, it is an open standard that is publicly available and usable.Prior to this it was a proprietary format owned by Adobe. While this is adefinite positive step for users, information technology analysts say that itis very likely that Adobe did it in response to Microsoft's competitor documentstandard, XPS. When Microsoft decided to submit XPS for approval as a openstandard, there was probably little Adobe could do to avoid following suit.
