An Overview of PDF Software and PDF Viewer Solutions
Dec 24th, 2011 Jaison Hastin
While it may not seem like the most important or integral component of business efficiency and productivity, PDF software can actually make a significant difference in saving time and effort when it comes to Information Technology savings. Since its inception and early success, the Personal Document Format (PDF) has become the de facto standard for document interoperability and compatibility across a wide range of computing platforms and software suites. Easy to use and nearly ubiquitous in the modern office, it has many benefits over competing formats and technologies. As such, it's not hard to explain its near universal adoption throughout the business world.
The primary advantages of using the Personal Document Format to organize information in a convenient storage type are its wide acceptance, ease of storage and manipulation. Data can be quickly and effectively rearranged and reorganized and sent on to clients and coworkers in documents that adhere to a broadly accepted standard of desktop publishing. This allows businesses to worry less about compatibility and more about communicating vital information, ideas and statistics along with any other type of data they may need to pass along. PDFs have truly become the way to share information, documents, e-books and almost every other type of publication.
The PDF format was originally conceived in 1993 by Adobe co-founder John Warnock when the format specification was known as "Camelot". Camelot would eventually develop into the PDF standard. Early versions were less than successful and suffered from low adoption rates due to a variety of competing document standards as well as a lack of features like external hyper-linking. Over time, PDF became the standard for documents featuring plain text as well as two-dimensional vector and raster graphics, logos, images and more.
While initially proprietary in nature, Adobe Systems eventually released the format as a published ISO standard on July 1, 2008. Now, other software designers don't have to pay royalties for creating applications, plug-ins and other software that are based on working with the PDF standard. This has in part led to an explosion in PDF editing and manipulation software that enable a user to perform a variety of actions with such documents. Such software allows people to create, modify and annotate PDFs and incorporate graphics and other media with ease.
There exists a great wealth of superb PDF editing software choices, but a wise criteria for choosing a particular program should involve factors such as speed, file compression and overall features. Those standards should also apply to free PDF viewers. Page reordering, all manner of things like adding and editing bookmarks, images and transforming various image formats between one another are a must and are included with most packages. For instance, the ability to convert between the PDF format into other formats like .DOC or .RTF files is a must.
In addition, editing software should include the ability to minify and compress files into easy to transport format containers. This will save on bandwidth and storage space, which adds up after awhile and can end up costing a significant amount over time. The most important consideration in choosing a sensible PDF editing software program or software suite for viewing, editing and creating PDF documents is that it be simple and easy to use, intuitive, and most of all affordable over the long haul.About the Author:
Learn more about PDF software, tools, and products, including a free PDF viewer, for PDF file creation, viewing, manipulation, imaging, and software development.
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