Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed primarily for the printing industry by Adobe Systems. Marked documents created in their original format - text or graphic - are converted to.pdf to preserve an accurate visual representation of the file for printing equipment.
How to open a file
The main program for opening files of this format is Adobe Reader (or in the earlier version of Adobe Acrobat) from Adobe Systems. The program can be downloaded for free from the manufacturer's official website. However, it should be noted that the conversion service is provided by the company on a reimbursable basis and works online. To use this service, download the Adobe Reader installation package from the official Adobe website, unpack it on your computer, confirm acceptance of the license agreement and open the document you need by clicking on the "Open" icon in the main program window or by selecting the item of the same name in the "File" menu …
After installing the program on your computer, all.pdf files stored on your hard drive will automatically acquire the Adobe Reader icon as the default program for opening files of this format. Such files will automatically open in this program by double-clicking on the file name in the folder.
Installing Adobe Reader will suffice to read the.pdf files. However, you can do without installing this program if you already have programs such as Corel Paint Shop Pro, Reader or PDF Editor from Foxit, etc. on your computer. You can also view documents of this format in ordinary viewers, such as ACD Systems Canvas. PDF Viewer etc.
Purpose of pdf format
A document can be created in the main program, and there is often a situation when it, made in one version of the editor and transferred to another, could lose or distort the markup information. For example, when you open a presentation file created in MS Power Point 2007 similar to the 2003 program, the embedded text and graphic objects may be displaced relative to each other. In this case, the meaning of the entire graphic composition will be lost. However, the same file in the Windows 95 version of Power Point will not open at all. A similar problem applies to any other program that allows you to combine information in graphical and textual representation.
When it becomes necessary to transmit an accurate graphic "imprint" of a document, it is converted into.pdf format. It is important to remember that all the original information is converted into a graphic format during this conversion. It will be impossible to change such a document in the original editor, since this format does not store any textual information or information represented in the form of vector graphics.
It should be noted that the.pdf format is font type sensitive. So that the file converted to this format is as small as possible without losing markup information, you must use Times, Courier, Helvetica (regular, bold, or italic / italic) fonts, as well as Symbol or Zapf Dingbats in the original document. If other fonts are used in the original document, when converting, they will be automatically converted to one of the specified ones, which may result in resizing of the final file, as well as distortion of information.
Thus, the main purpose of the.pdf format is to be able to transfer documents created with a combination of text and graphic objects from the original editor program to other devices or programs of other versions without changing their graphic representation.
