 |
Introducing ED with PDF
Many companies have tried creating electronic documentation (ED) software. Apple gave
us DocViewer, Farallon tried Replica, Green Mountain Software tried DocMaker. Most have failed for two simple
reasons. The first and most important is that we no longer live in an isolated computing environment. Some
people use Windows or OS/2, some Macintosh, others Unix; many use a variety of operating systems. A practical
ED system needs to work seamlessly on all platforms.
The second reason is that the creation process for electronic documentation needs to encompass existing
work practices, otherwise someone has to learn a new method. PostScript is the power underlying most quality
DTP packages, and this is one reason why Adobe's ED technology will has prospered. (The other is that Adobe
has developed a version of its software for most platforms concurrently, and has shipped its Acrobat Reader
application as a kind of "freeware" through a wide variety of routes.) Adobe's ED technology is
called Portable Document Format (PDF); its reader application is called Acrobat Reader. PDF files are cross-platform
compatible so few platform-specific alterations need to be made to the files before shipping them. PDF files
can contain text, fonts, pictures and colour, but also more importantly the growing collection of other
elements that make up an electronic document - movies, sounds and music, hypertext and interdocument links.
The Acrobat Reader application displays the document on all computers in the same way as the document
appeared in its original form. This document cannot be edited, but can be printed even if the end user does
not have the fonts used in the file loaded on their computer. Many people use PDFs to transfer documents
that need to be proofed remotely but which by using other techniques (like sending a QuarkXPress file with
associated images and fonts) would take too long and still not display correctly. But there are other uses
for PDF files, not least of which is the ability to create software manuals (for example, see the Illustrator
6.0 manual), electronic magazines, newspapers and other long documents and place them on the Web, or email
them as one would a printed magazine.
Adobe has also joined forces with Netscape who has developed a plugin for the Navigator Web browser
to display PDF pages in the browser window. With such ease of access to the Acrobat Reader application (you
can get a copy from Adobe), documents that can be displayed on most
computer platforms, a growing band of other companies fighting to develop an industry standard for ED software
and an increasing preference for nonpaper products, I imagine we will be seeing enormous enahancments to
Adobe's Acrobat Reader and the PDF documentation system in the future.
Written by Geoffrey Fletcher
Previous > Contents > Next
|
|
