Datasheet

throughout the book, I’m referring to Acrobat Professional for both Windows and Macintosh and Acrobat

Standard for Windows users only. Where the two programs differ in features, I point them out. I also men-

tion when a feature is only available in Acrobat Professional.

There are distinctions between the Acrobat Standard product (Windows) and the Acrobat

Professional product in terms of tools and commands. Most editing tasks can be handled in

either viewer; however, Acrobat Professional does provide more editing features than Acrobat Standard.

Throughout this book I delineate the differences and point out when an Acrobat Professional feature cannot

be accomplished in Acrobat Standard.

Adobe Acrobat (either Standard or Professional) in version 8 is the upgrade from Adobe Acrobat 7

(Standard or Professional) and both viewers are the subject of the remaining chapters of this book. Acrobat

is the authoring application that provides you tools and commands for a host of features outlined in the fol-

lowing chapters. If you haven’t yet purchased a copy of Acrobat, either the Standard version (Windows

only) or the Professional version (Windows and Macintosh), you might want to look over Chapter 2 and

observe some of the comparisons between the viewers. If fewer tools and features suit your purpose, you

might find the Standard version satisfactory — but remember, Acrobat Standard is available only on

Windows in version 8. Although some of the features differ between the viewers, they both provide many

features for editing, enhancing, printing, and working with PDF documents.

Acrobat is an authoring application but it has one little feature that distinguishes it from almost any other

authoring program. Rather than starting from scratch and creating a new document in Acrobat, your work-

flow usually involves converting a document, created in just about any program, to a Portable Document

Format (PDF) file. Once converted to PDF you use Acrobat to edit and refine the document, add bells and

whistles and interactivity, or prepare it for professional printing. In addition to the Acrobat program,

Acrobat Professional ships with companion programs such as Adobe Acrobat Distiller and Adobe Acrobat

Catalog, and Adobe LiveCycle Designer (Windows only). Acrobat Standard ships only with Acrobat

Distiller. These companion products are used to convert PostScript files to PDF, create search indexes, and

author XML-based forms.

For information related to Acrobat Distiller see Chapter 10. For more information on Acrobat

Catalog, see Chapter 6. For more information related to LiveCycle Designer, see Chapter 35.

Acrobat solutions are greatly extended with other supporting programs from Adobe Systems and many dif-

ferent third-party vendors. If Acrobat can’t do the job, chances are you can find a plug-in or companion

program to handle all you want to do with a PDF file.

For information related to Acrobat plug-ins and companion products see Chapter 2.

What Is PDF?

PDF, short for Portable Document Format, was developed by Adobe Systems as a unique format to be viewed

through Acrobat viewers. As the name implies, it is portable, which means the file you create on one com-

puter can be viewed with an Acrobat viewer on other computers, handheld devices, and on other platforms.

For example, you can create a page layout on a Macintosh computer and convert it to a PDF file. After the

conversion, this PDF document can be viewed on a Linux or Windows machine.

Multiplatform compliance (to enable the exchange of files across different computers, for example) is one of

the great values of PDF documents.

CROSS-REF

NOTE

Welcome to Adobe Acrobat

Part I

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