| ent"> | | | | It’s hard to overestimate what an important |
| It’s no secret that the most popular type of | | | | format PDF is. Without it, the process of sending |
| document conversion is Doc 2 PDF. But hang on, | | | | information to one another over the internet would |
| exactly what is PDF, and why is it so widely used? | | | | be much more fraught with difficulty, although |
| Read on to find out! | | | | probably the truth is that had it not been invented, |
| PDF stand for Portable Document Format, and PDF | | | | another company would have invented a very similar |
| files are recognizable because that’s their | | | | product. |
| extension: they are .pdf files (e.g. Work_Project.pdf). | | | | An analogy for PDF is a third language that two |
| Portable Document Format was invented by a | | | | people who speak different languages can easily |
| company called Adobe Systems (commonly known | | | | adopt to communicate in. English plays this role in |
| as just Adobe’) in 1993. The idea behind | | | | many parts of the world, but misses out on the |
| PDF is that it’s a medium for document | | | | easily adopted’ part of the equation. |
| exchange between parties. So I could produce a | | | | Another interesting thing about PDF is that as of July |
| document using any kind of program, any kind of | | | | 2008, it is an open standard that is publicly available |
| hardware, and any kind of operating system, | | | | and usable. Prior to this it was a proprietary format |
| Convert to PDF, and send it to you, in the | | | | owned by Adobe. While this is a definite positive step |
| knowledge that you’ll always be able to read | | | | for users, information technology analysts say that it |
| it. And how can we assume that you’ll be able | | | | is very likely that Adobe did it in response to |
| to read it? Because Adobe’s Reader program | | | | Microsoft’s competitor document standard, |
| has always been a free download that anyone | | | | XPS. |
| connected to the internet can get. | | | | |