Format: Adobe Portable Document Format
Published as: .pdf
A file format created by Adobe Systems, initially to provide a standard form for storing and editing printed publishable documents. The format derives from PostScript, but without language features like loops, and with added support for features like compression and passwords. Because PDF documents can easily be viewed and printed by users on a variety of computer platforms, they are very common on the World Wide Web. The specification of the format is available without charge from Adobe.
PDF files typically contain brochures, product manuals, magazine articles — up to entire books, as they can embed fonts, images, and other documents. A PDF file contains one or more zoomable page images.
Since the format is designed to reproduce page images, the text traditionally could not be re-flowed to fit the screen width or size. As a result PDF files designed for printing on standard paper sizes are less easily viewed on screens with limited size or resolution, such as those found on mobile phones and PDAs. Adobe has addressed this by adding a re-flow facility to its Acrobat Reader software, but for this to work the document must be marked for re-flowing at creation,
[6] which means that existing PDF documents will not benefit unless they are tagged and resaved. The Windows Mobile (aka Pocket PC) version of Adobe Acrobat will automatically attempt to tag a PDF for reflow during the synchronization process using an installed plugin to Active Sync. However, this tagging process will not work on most locked or password protected PDF documents. It also doesn't work at present (2009–10) on the Windows Mobile Device Center (the successor to Active Sync) as found in Windows Vista and Windows 7. This limits automatic tagging support during synchronization to Windows XP/2000.
Multiple products support creating and tagging PDF files, such as Adobe Acrobat, PDFCreator, OpenOffice.org, iText, and FOP, and several programming libraries. Adobe Reader (formerly called Acrobat Reader) is Adobe's product used to view PDF files; third party viewers such as xpdf are also available. Mac OS X has built-in PDF support, both for creation as part of the printing system and for display using the built-in Preview application.
Later versions of the specification add support for forms, comments, hypertext links, and even interactive elements such as buttons for forms entry and for triggering sound and video. Such features may not be supported by older or third-party viewers and some are not transferable to print.
PDF files are supported on the following e-book readers: Mobipocket, iRex iLiad, iRex DR1000, Sony Reader, Bookeen Cybook, Foxit eSlick, Amazon Kindle (1, 2, International & DX), Barnes & Noble Nook, the iPad, PocketBook Reader, Bebook Neo and the Kobo eReader.
PostScript
Format: PostScript
Published as: ps
PostScript is a page description language used in the electronic and desktop publishing areas for defining the contents and layout of a printed page, which can be used by a rendering program to assemble and create the actual output bitmap. Many office printers directly support interpreting PostScript and printing the result. As a result, the format also sees wide use in the Unix world.
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