PDF Full Form
What is the full form of PDF?
The Full
form of PDF is Portable Document Format.
What is PDF?
The
Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the most popular file formats
developed by Adobe Inc. (previously Adobe Systems Incorporated) in 1993 for
presenting documents, including formatted texts and graphics, in a special way that
does not depend on application software, hardware, and operating systems.
In other
words, this is one of the finest means by which one can easily view, navigate,
print, or forward all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image
independent of the application software, hardware, and operating systems.
PDF files
are usually created using Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat Capture, or analogous applications.
PDF files
are particularly beneficial for copy-edited or type-set documents like magazine
articles, product brochures, or flyers in which one desires to exactly preserve
the original design of the texts and graphical elements online. A PDF file may
be made up of single or multiples pages, or images, each of which one can easily
zoom in on or out for better reading and viewing experience. One can also go to
previous or next pages using page forward and backward options.
Technical elements of PDF
PDF files
may comprise of various contents in addition to flat text and images. The
contents cover a diverse range that includes logical structuring elements,
interactive elements like annotations and form-fields, layers, rich media
(including video content) and three-dimensional objects, and numerous other
data formats. The PDF specification also offers options for encryption and
digital signatures, file attachments, and metadata to allow workflows, which
requires these features.
The PDF file
system is a combination of three technologies.
A subset of
the PostScript page description programming language, which is used to create
the layout and graphics.
A
font-embedding/replacement system that helps in embedding the used fonts to
travel with the documents as a portable object.
A
structured storage system to combine all these elements and other accompanying
contents into a single file, with data compression whenever required.
Advantages of PDF
The integrity of visual elements
The PDF file
system is created to display the same content and layout independent of the operating
system, device, or software application used for viewing.
Supports interactive contents
The PDF
format permits one to assimilate several types of content – text, images, and
vector graphics, videos, animations, audio files, 3D models, interactive
fields, hyperlinks, and buttons. All of the elements can be integrated within
the same PDF file and structured as a report, a presentation, or a portfolio.
Portable
PDF helps
mobility and portability. One can view a PDF file anywhere using free or paid
tools like Adobe acrobat reader, Foxit PDF reader, etc.
Secured
PDF file
format offers options to set up different levels of security to protect the
content and the whole document, such as watermarks, passwords, or digital
signatures.
Allows file compression
While PDFs
can hypothetically contain an unlimited amount of information, they can easily be
compressed into a smaller file size that helps in sharing with full control
over the level of image quality.
Disadvantages of PDF
Difficult to edit
PDFs are
hard to edit and it is sometimes even harder to extract information from the
PDFs. It is easier to edit files in other formats than in PDF since PDF files need
to be edited in specialized programs.
Hard to copy elements
It is also
problematic to work with text in PDF files. It is often very difficult to even
copy a fragment of a PDF file, as the texts are also perceived as a picture.
Web page integration
PDF files
are not always fully integrated into Web pages. Only when the user has an Adobe
Reader or other PDF reader plug-in installed, PDF files can be viewed within
the Internet browser. But, without pre-installed plug-ins, one has to download the
file and view it in a separate application.
Various types of PDFs
Although one
can easily create a PDF using the same click and select methods every time, how
one inputs the information to generate them can vary a lot. It generally affects
how certain viewing and converting functions work.
There exist
two types of PDF namely native PDFs and scanned PDFs. A native PDF is a PDF that
is created from an electronically processed document. A scanned PDF is one that
is generated by scanning a physical paper document using a scanner.
Comments
Post a Comment