PDF (Portable Document Format) is the de facto standard for
the electronic transmission of documents with complex typography and
images.
Virutally any document for which PostScript can be produced can be
converted to PDF. This includes almost all word processors and desktop
publishing programs.
The result is platform-independent; it's not necessary,
for example, to have the fonts used to create the document in order
to read it.
PDFs are small compared to other ways of storing documents in files.
PDFs can be downloaded using a Web browser and can be viewed using Acrobat Reader, which is available free of charge for all popular platforms. In Acrobat Reader, it's easy to move between pages. You can zoom in and out, copy-and-paste text and images, and search for words and phrases. You also can print a document.
Despite the comparative compactness of PDFs, large documents, especially
with images, necessarily result in large files. If you have a slow link to the Web --
such as a modem -- it's usually best to download an entire PDF while
nothing else is going on and view it later. And, unlike Web pages, PDF
documents generally do not show on screen until they're complete.
How to download, rather than view over the Web, depends on your browser
(and its version). For example, in recent versions of Netscape, if you click
and hold on a link, you'll be given a menu (which button to click
depends on the platform; if you have a three-button mouse, try the
right button). Pick Save Link
As. You'll get a dialog box asking where you want to save the file.
Once you okay that, the downloading will begin (in the background) and
you can do other things.
For Internet Explorer, right click on the link and choose Save
Target As from the pop-up menu to select a place to store the
file.
You can download
Acrobat Reader from here.
For more information about PDFs, try these FAQs at
Intel and
Teleport.
e-mail: ralph@cs.arizona.edu
home