QandAs: Tech

What is a PDF File?

Answer:
A Portable Document Format (PDF) File, is file

format unique to the company Adobe Systems, but widely used in virtually all fields. Created in 1993, PDF files have become extremely useful and many businesses and websites offer information, brochures, and other written material in this downloadable form.

Adobe’s original program for both creating and viewing PDFs was Adobe Acrobat. The PDF format did not catch on quickly in most sectors, as Adobe Acrobat was not widely available and did not work well with embedded URLs. In addition, slower download speeds in the mid-1990s meant that PDFs took much longer to fully download than a plain text document, such as a Microsoft Word file. There were also similar formats competing with Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Files, such as Envoy (.evy), Common Ground Digital Paper (.dp) and PostScript (.ps), was also created by Adobe.

Over the years, the PDF file has become ubiquitous, aided by the fact that Adobe began distributing Acrobat Reader (now known as Adobe Reader) for free. Now, if you download a document from the Internet, it is likely to be a PDF file. The format has frequent updates in order to improve upon existing versions. PDF files can be used for any two-dimensional creations, including graphics, text, borders, and photos.

Adobe originally created PDF files in a proprietary format, but released the file format as an open standard in 2008. It is now published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as #ISO 32000-1:2008.