say, page 9 or 11. And you can forget about trying to collaborate on compli-
cated page layouts using Word, OOo Writer, WordPerfect, or any other doc
file format. PDF was made for this.
PDF to analysts in 1991. With a gleam in his eye and a silent nod to the ana-
lysts who had written extensively about the Font War that had nearly been his
undoing, Warnock introduced PDF as if it were already a standard and read
a statement that has since become the PDF manifesto: "Imagine being able
to send full text and graphics documents--this means newspapers, magazine
articles, technical manuals, and so on--over electronic mail distribution net-
works. These documents could be viewed on any machine, and any selected
document could be printed locally. This capability would truly change the
way information is managed."
encapsulating the font, graphics, and page layout information in a standard
format everyone could use. Indeed, by 1996, PDF had become a standard in
the high-quality pre-press and color printing industry. But why not provide a
format that people could edit ? I asked Warnock this question back in 1991,
and he pointed out that the leading page layout programs, namely Aldus
PageMaker and QuarkXPress, used proprietary formats, and these companies
would never agree to cooperate at the editable document level. If they had
agreed back in 1991, the Word doc format would not be so ubiquitous. By
1992, I was using PageMaker to compose a newsletter, sending it to the printer
as PDF and exporting it to the Word doc format whenever I needed to spin
off an article for a magazine that required Word doc submissions for addi-
tional editing.
in this scenario, a blessing, because you can distribute a PDF and know that
the text can't be altered or copied without your knowledge--you can even
digitally sign the PDF so that readers can verify its authenticity. With a track
record of more than a decade, PDF has been adopted by governments and
enterprises around the world to reduce reliance on paper. You already use it
today to file your U.S. income taxes. It's the standard format for the electronic
submission of drug approvals to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and for electronic case filing in U.S. federal courts. It is also the stan-
dard format used for advertisements in newspapers and magazines.
used to create it and regardless of what fonts you have in your system. PDF