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Guide to Acrobat PDF format

 

 

 

What is the PDF format.
PDF stand for portable Document Format. PDF is a unique type of cross platform file format developed by Adobe.

PDF is the best choice to share any kind of documents: because PDF is cross platform, navigational, ultra-printable, ultra-viewable and smaller than other conventional document formats. It is a proprietary format developed by Acrobat. PDF documents are designed to be better printed out and read.

 

What is Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat software is an essential desktop tool for sharing information across hardware platforms and software applications, regardless of versions and fonts. Acrobat allows you to convert any document created in any application to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), a standard for electronic distribution thet faithfully preserves the look and feel of the original document complete with fonts, colors, images and layout

Having trouble printing a PDF?
You must upgrade to at least version 3.01 of the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. See “Help with Printing” for upgrade instructions.

Why PDF (our choice)

Microsoft Office is the foremost authoring tool for digital documents. Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations hold the information that makes an EPaper workflow valuable.

That information isn't always easy to obtain. Documents created in one version of an Office application can lose formatting when opened with another version. Sometimes they can't be opened at all. In heterogeneus IT environments, where several computing platforms operate simultaneously, the cross platform pain can be severe. Mantaining document integrity -including exact look and feel- becomes a daunting task.

Once converted to Adobe PDF, Office documents -including E-mail- attachments and documents posted to an intranet -can be read on any major computing platform using the freely downloadable Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Adobe Acrobat helps to exchange documents across platforms while mantaining document integrity. Office documents are converted to compact Adobe portable document format (PDF) files that preserve the exact look and feel of the original document, including formatting, color and graphics.

 

PDF features:

-PDF is Cross Platform: a cross platform file format that represents document independent of the software, hardware and the operating system used to create the file.In simple words, you can read a PDF document in W98 that was created on a Mac that you downloaded from a Web site running UNIX.

 

-Ultra portable: PDF files are based on the Post Script language imaging model. This enables sharp, colorprecise printing on almost printers.

 

-Ultra viewable: on screen PDF files have a precise color match regardless of the monitor used. PDF files allow the user to magnify documents up to 80% without the loss of clarity ib text or graphics.

 

-Smaller: PDF files can be optimized to reduce their file sizes. PDF files for example can be 1/5 of the size of their HTML counterpart.

 

-PDF files can be viewed within Netscape and IE windows. These files can then be saved for off-line use or printed.

 

-PDF files can be byte served over the web to faster access larger amount of information. This process is similar to the process of streaming of video files so you don't have to download the full file before you can use/view it. After grabbing the first part of data, page on demand continues to download the rest of the file. What this means is that a user could after reading the first page jump immediately to the seventh page without having to wait! It's be like waiting a website's home page and your browser would store the rest of the entire site so you could jump to the products page without having to wait for it to load.

-Navigational: objects built into the PDF file format allow users and creators to expand the usefulness of a publication. Such items include:internal and external links, bookmarks thumbnails of each page, article threads, form fields, button for navigation, notes to annotate information, views to allow a user to magnify or reduce a page to fit within the user's computer screen.

PDF Troubleshooting

  1. Try printing one page at a time.

  2. Try printing to a newer printer. (NOTE for Macintosh users: A number of users have reported problems printing PDFs with the LaserWriter Driver version 8.4. We suggest using an earlier or later version.)

  3. Try saving the file to disk before printing rather than opening it "on the fly." This requires that you configure your browser to "Save" rather than "Launch Application" for the file type "application/pdf," and can usually be done in the "Helper Applications" options.

  4. Are you getting Postscript errors on your Mac? A frequent cause is a lack of communication of postscript commands between your computer and your printer. Postscript communication on a Mac is handled by the Control Panel called ~ATM. To see if you have installed ~ATM, go to the System Folder / Control Panels folder and look for ~ATM. If the control panel is not present you will need to install it. If the ~ATM is installed, please check to make sure that you are using the most recent version, v4.0 or higher. You can check the version number by selecting the ~ATM icon and choosing Get info... from the File menu.
    If you do not have     ~ATM installed or need to upgrade to the latest version, you can get this software from the Acrobat web site. If you recently downloaded Acrobat, you may already have this Control Panel on your computer and just need to install it. When you download Acrobat, ~ATM comes along in a folder called Fonts and will be located in the Acrobat folder. Drag the ~ATM icon onto your System Folder to install it.

  5. Are some lines on each page getting cut off?
    Are you running MacOS version 8? The default paper size is "Letter Small." Change this setting to "US Letter" in     File/Page Setup and you should be able to print full pages.


  6. More Questions? See below the FAQ about PDFs

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions About PDFs

  1. I'm trying to read a PDF online, but it is very hard to do.

PDFs are designed to be printed out and read, but if you prefer to read them online, you may find it easier if you increase the view size to 125%.

  1. "I'm having trouble printing PDFs using Adobe Acrobat on Macintosh or Windows. What can I do?"

If you do not have ~ATM installed or need to upgrade to the latest version, you can get this software from the Acrobat web site. If you recently downloaded Acrobat, you may already have this Control Panel on your computer and just need to install it. When you download Acrobat, ~ATM comes along in a folder called Fonts and will be located in the Acrobat folder. Drag the ~ATM icon onto your System Folder to install it.

  1. "Can I use the Adobe Acrobat Reader Plugin?"

The Windows 3.x, Windows 95, and Windows NT versions of the Acrobat Reader Plugin seem to be reliable, however we don't recommend using the Macintosh version. Use the Acrobat Reader application instead.

  1. "Why can't I just check a box next to all the papers I want PDFs for and download them all at once?"

Unfortunately, there's no way to implement a feature like this; Web browsers currently do not support automated simultaneous downloads.

  1. "When I try to print PDFs, I get an error saying Acrobat Reader can't write to the file (i.e., the printer), that the disk is full. What can I do?"

It's possible that your printer doesn't have enough installed memory to handle an entire PDF, especially one that contains a lot of images. Try printing the file to a printer with more memory, or, alternatively, print the PDF one page at a time.

  1. "After downloading, I can't open the PDF file with Acrobat Reader. I get a message: 'There was an error opening this document. Could not repair file.'"

It's probable that the file was incompletely downloaded, or corrupted during the network transfer. Your best bet is to try a fresh download of the file. If that doesn't work, please send us feedback and we'll investigate.