Adobe Reader is a software designed to securely view PDF documents. PDF stands for Portable Document Format and its biggest advantage is the fact that it has cross-platform compatibility. You can open a PDF file on a Linux computer, or Windows, or even on your mobile phone if it has Symbian. This format was created in 1993 by Adobe Systems, but because it was hard to make it popular in the beginning, Adobe decided to start releasing Adobe Reader for free, in order to beat the competition of other formats such as Common Ground Digital Paper, Envoy. Nowadays, PDF is the standard for printable documents and it’s widely used for publishing e-books. PDF has undergone a lot of changes and updates, eight in total, corresponding to the number of Adobe Reader versions, with 8.0 being the latest one.
A PDF file contains vector graphics (for shapes and lines), text and raster graphics (for photos). The latest PDF versions support hyperlinks inside the document, forms, JavaScript and there all types of plug-ins that can extend its functionality even further.
There are several advantages that have contributed to the popularity of PDF. It supports full-text search in the whole file. It produces files with smaller size, so you can upload your files on the Web without worrying about download times. The ability to optimize PDF files is another advantage. The navigation trough the documents is made really easy thanks to the clear interface, more on which you can read in this article.
A great benefit associated with Adobe PDF is the fact that such files look and print exactly as intended across a wide variety of platforms. The Adobe Reader software is free and easy to download from the official website or at . Over the past years, it has gained tremendous popularity with more than 200 million downloads. Hence, it’s the most effective way of distributing documents to a broad audience across a broad range of operating systems.
An inside look of a PDF file reveals that the structure consists of – header, body, cross-reference table, and trailer. The header holds the version of PDF. The body is the document itself with all objects that carry information, like fonts, images, words, etc. The cross-reference table is filled with pointers to all the objects in the PDF file. The trailer contains pointers to the xref table and to key objects contained in the trailer dictionary.
In order to create PDF files, you need Adobe Reader, but if you don’t want to spend money on this software, you can download PDF creation program, and there are plenty of them available online. Adobe Acrobat though, is the most comprehensive tool allowing a single user to create and interact with PDFs. You can create files by scanning paper documents, which the software will renter as text, so you will be able to search trough it, or even edit it. Digital source of information are also an option. The paper-to-digital conversion is made possible with Adobe Capture, available in Personal or cluster Edition.
