The Mac Observer

Skip navigational links

You're viewing an article in TMO's historic archive vault. Here, we've preserved the comments and how the site looked along with the article. Use this link to view the article on our current site:
Adobe Moves to Make PDF a Formal Standard

Adobe Moves to Make PDF a Formal Standard

by , 12:35 PM EST, January 29th, 2007

Adobe plans to turn over the Portable Document Format 1.7 specification for approval as a formal ISO standard. PDF is already the de facto standard for cross-platform document exchange, and after it receives final approval will become an official standard, as well.

The specifications will be submitted to the Enterprise Content Management Association so that any potential issues can be addressed before presentation to the International Organization for Standardization. Once approved, the standardized PDF specification will be available to companies that want to incorporate it into their own products.

Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe, commented "By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness. As governments and organizations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organization will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years."

Adobe already allows developers to create PDF-compatible products, but in 2006 reached a stand-off with Microsoft over the use of the technology in the new version of Office for Windows. Microsoft later pulled its built-in PDF support from the Office suite.

By creating an official PDF standard, Adobe will likely be able to avoid run-ins like the one it had with Microsoft in the future. The change could also potentially allow Apple to add enhanced PDF features into upcoming versions of Mac OS X.

Digg!

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:Tiger Posts: 1018 Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Subject: still can't replace a word processor

PDF is useless when it comes to word processing and publication prepress. It's great for sharing images and forms, but don't try creating in it. Ick.

Close Name:Edison Carter Posts: 228 Joined: 10 Aug 2006
Subject: You can't

Quote
Tiger wrote:
PDF is useless when it comes to word processing and publication prepress. It's great for sharing images and forms, but don't try creating in it. Ick.


You can't really create in PDF. I love PDF, my printer loves to receive PDF because of the embedded fonts and all of that, but yes even fixing a typo or homophone is a bit of a chore. If I have the original document I usually make the edits there and then distill a new PDF.

Has anyone here upgraded to Acrobat 8? If so how do you like it? I have the Acrobat 8 Reader, but am still using Acrobat 7 Pro. I think that I will wait until CS3 and get the whole shebang.

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

If you have the right tools like Pit Stop Pro even text edits aren't to hard to do.
It would be nice if returns were added tho.

Close Name:Biff Posts: 1479 Joined: 08 Apr 2004
Subject:

This is great news for electrinc document archival! Thats really what PDF is for. It's essentially an output format. Complaining that its not well suited to editing is like complaining that print-outs are hard to edit. That's not what they are for.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: I edit Printouts...

I Use Faber-Castell 2.0!

Close Name:Edison Carter Posts: 228 Joined: 10 Aug 2006
Subject: An edit

Quote
Guest wrote:
I Use Faber-Castell 2.0!


Shouldn't that be "I use a Faber-Castell 2H"

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

Quote
Edison Carter wrote:
but yes even fixing a typo or homophone


Is that a pink phone that rings by playing "It's raining men"?

Close Name:Rainy Day Posts: 607 Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Subject: Zoom!

Quote
Edison Carter wrote:
Quote
Guest wrote:
I Use Faber-Castell 2.0!

Shouldn't that be “I use a Faber-Castell 2H”


Ha ha! Too funny! I’ll bet that goes over the head of 80% of the folks here, though.

Close Name:Edison Carter Posts: 228 Joined: 10 Aug 2006
Subject: Homophones destroy the institution of page layout

Quote
Guest wrote:
Quote
Edison Carter wrote:
but yes even fixing a typo or homophone


Is that a pink phone that rings by playing "It's raining men"?


Words that that are pronounced the same, but have different meanings:

To, too, and two are homophones. A spell checker usually will not flag them, but they often find their way into a document.

Eye tolled the sexton and thee sexton told the belle.

Close Name:Edison Carter Posts: 228 Joined: 10 Aug 2006
Subject: Editing with a pencil

Quote
Rainy Day wrote:
Quote
Edison Carter wrote:
Quote
Guest wrote:
I Use Faber-Castell 2.0!

Shouldn't that be “I use a Faber-Castell 2H”


Ha ha! Too funny! I’ll bet that goes over the head of 80% of the folks here, though.


Actually for all I know Faber-Castell 2.0 is a software package:)

I started this career back in the early '60s setting movable type in a composing stick. It was a small shop that did mostly business cards, stationery (not "stationary" which would be a homophone), posters, brochures, forms, and such, not books, magazines, newspapers. We did use pencils to edit, nowadays I like to use the comment feature in Acrobat, easier than reading someone's scribble.

Comment on this Article


You cannot edit your comments.   You cannot delete your comments.

Comments are currently closed. Please email the author instead.


Recent Headlines - Updated November 21st

Fri, 7:07 PM
Games - Soccer Sim Championship Manager 2010 Released for Mac
6:47 PM
Games - EA Publishes Original Monopoly for iPhone
6:15 PM
News - Original Apple I on Ebay for $50K, w/Letter from Steve Jobs
6:11 PM
Games - New iPhone Games: Secret of the Lost Cavern Ep 1, New DJ Nights, More
5:47 PM
Games - Star Trek D-A-C Game Headed to the Mac Next Month
4:57 PM
Product News - TidBITS Releases “Take Control of Syncing Data in Snow Leopard”
4:26 PM
John Martellaro's Blog - Particle Debris (week ending 11/20) Stationery Pads Go Poof
2:59 PM
Free on iTunes - Musée du Louvre, Art Lite, SketchBook Mobile X and More.
1:50 PM
Deal Brothers - Acer P215H bmid 21.5” Widescreen LCD Monitor:  $139.99
11:24 AM
TMO Appearances - Jeff Gamet Shares More Holiday Gift Ideas on MacJury
10:43 AM
Product News - Cocktail 4.5 for Leopard Adds QuickLook Cache Clearing
10:06 AM
News - Hack Enables Mac OS X 10.6.2 on Netbooks

The Mac Observer Reader Specials

  • __________
  • Buy Stuff, Support TMO!
  • Podcast: Mac Geek Gab
  • Podcast: Apple Weekly Report
  • TMO on Twitter!