The main start of the PDF that we all know and love today came in 2001 with the release of Acrobat 5 and PDF 1.4. Overall, the PDF was finally able to function more efficiently for a variety of users rather than only those that used prepress. In 2003, Acrobat 6 and PDF 1.5 came out for the public to use.
The Portable Document Format (PDF) was created in the early 1990s by Adobe Systems, introduced at the Windows and OS|2 Conference in January 1993 and remained a proprietary format until it was released as an open standard in 2008.
Technical reasons speaking for PDF:
• Integrity of contents. PDF has the means to ensure that the content the user sees is the content the creator created.
• Integrity of presentation. PDF contains ALL the resources needed to display the content in the way it has been intended, no matter on what kind of device.
• Created right, PDF provides the most compact form to achieve the two points above
• Easy to implement active elements, together with the built-in Acrobat JavaScript, allowing to create interactive documents (such as smart forms). In fact, PDF provides the least expensive platform to create fully functional application prototypes.
Aside from the technical advantages, there were very important early adopters (who actually paid Adobe a considerable amount of money for making Reader free): NIH and IRS.
A little advice to the poster of the question (which contains quite a bit of post-bovine grass): Have a look at ISO 32000.
And to the last question: No. I would say, it was even despite the popularity of other software (PDF/Acrobat had a rather slow start, compared to other software).
The ease of production is one of the main reasons for the PDF format's current popularity. The great majority of applications allow you to save your current file as a PDF, allowing you to easily copy, share, and transfer the PDF file.
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
Answer:
The main start of the PDF that we all know and love today came in 2001 with the release of Acrobat 5 and PDF 1.4. Overall, the PDF was finally able to function more efficiently for a variety of users rather than only those that used prepress. In 2003, Acrobat 6 and PDF 1.5 came out for the public to use.
The Portable Document Format (PDF) was created in the early 1990s by Adobe Systems, introduced at the Windows and OS|2 Conference in January 1993 and remained a proprietary format until it was released as an open standard in 2008.
Technical reasons speaking for PDF:
• Integrity of contents. PDF has the means to ensure that the content the user sees is the content the creator created.
• Integrity of presentation. PDF contains ALL the resources needed to display the content in the way it has been intended, no matter on what kind of device.
• Created right, PDF provides the most compact form to achieve the two points above
• Easy to implement active elements, together with the built-in Acrobat JavaScript, allowing to create interactive documents (such as smart forms). In fact, PDF provides the least expensive platform to create fully functional application prototypes.
Aside from the technical advantages, there were very important early adopters (who actually paid Adobe a considerable amount of money for making Reader free): NIH and IRS.
A little advice to the poster of the question (which contains quite a bit of post-bovine grass): Have a look at ISO 32000.
And to the last question: No. I would say, it was even despite the popularity of other software (PDF/Acrobat had a rather slow start, compared to other software).
Answer:
The ease of production is one of the main reasons for the PDF format's current popularity. The great majority of applications allow you to save your current file as a PDF, allowing you to easily copy, share, and transfer the PDF file.