Adobe Acrobat Overview

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PDF Documents can be created from any application (WordPerfect, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PC-TeX, etc.).

Converting a document to PDF is as simple as printing to a special printer driver (either to PDFWriter or to Distiller Assistant). You can also directly save to PDF format in most graphics applications.

Paper Documents can be scanned to PDF with Acrobat Capture. All text in the resulting PDF is fully searchable and editable (touch-up).

The Adobe Acrobat Suite:

• Acrobat Reader
  • This is a free tool that can be used to view and search documents
• Acrobat Exchange
  • This tool looks like Reader, but has the added functionality of modifying PDF documents: deleting and moving pages, adding security options, annotations, links, bookmarks, thumbnails, multimedia (movies and sound) etc. (It is basically Reader with editing plug-ins)
• Acrobat PDF Writer
  • This driver allows users to directly print documents to PDF-format
  • Simple, one-step PDF creation with screen-optimized output (ideal for viewing over the web)
• Acrobat Distiller
  • This application converts PostScript files to PDF
  • The Distiller Assistant functions as another printer driver available in all applications, which creates a PostScript file and then calls up Distiller for automatic conversion to PDF
  • Provides a high degree of control over file optimization
  • Useful for large documents, and those containing complex graphics, especially in EPS format
  • Helpful for use with page layout programs, illustration programs
  • Especially needed in the UNIX environment that does not use printer drivers
• Acrobat PDF Maker
  • Macro package for Microsoft Word
  • puts buttons on Word toolbar for one-click conversion and for job-options dialogue
  • allows choice between Distiller (preferred) and PDFwriter
  • with Distiller, preserves document info, bookmarks, hyperlinks, etc.
• Acrobat Capture
  • Capture allows scanning of large volumes of paper documents and converting them to web-ready format, maintaining all formatting. The full version of Capture is not sold as part of Adobe Acrobat, but is an important tool for power-creation of PDF documents. The Acrobat Suite 3 contains a Capture plug-in though, which suffices for most purposes
• Acrobat Catalog
  • Catalog allows creation of full-text indexes of PDF documents that can then be searched using Exchange or Reader
  • Useful for CD-Rom publication of multiple documents

Last Modified: June 17, 1999 vk