Before I flag off with my review of Adobe Acrobat 4, I would like to state that Acrobat is really not your average run-of-the-mill product, it’s a concept and it’s essential I explain what it’s all about for the benefit of the folks out there who might be unaware of Acrobat and PDF files.
The Internet ushered in an exciting age of the paperless office, which true to its name, did away with most of the paperwork primarily through electronic documents and email; before e-commerce hit the scene. The concept worked initially, but with the ever changing computer industry, problems soon began to surface. Variations in platforms, databases, spreadsheets, word applications spread over different platforms meant that you could not transmit such documents without being certain about the recipient’s platform and software specifications. HTML emerged largely as a platform independent language, which took care of some of these problems but had its fair share of shortcomings as well. Emailing a HTML document also meant that you had to email the corresponding image files the page utilized and the relevant fonts if you wanted the page to look exotic. Even after going through that entire ordeal there was no guarantee that the page would display on the recipient’s computer just the way it could be viewed on the senders computer.
Even if all the aforesaid bumps were ironed out, there was the serious consideration of security. How do you ensure that your client does not tweak the figures in your spreadsheet you had sent him for consideration? How do you ensure that your publisher does not add his own creative touch in a PageMaker file you want him to print the way it is? More importantly, how do u ensure that the recipient sees the world in your perspective especially so in these politically correct times, where just about everyone harbours his/her own ideas and opinions.
Enter Acrobat and that immediately takes care of all your problems. Acrobat converts documents, spreadsheets, catalogues et all into a format know as the Portable Document Format (or PDF for short). It’s proprietary design helps Acrobat to achieve a lot of things which would otherwise make you rattle your brains to do the same task manually. Let me elucidate with an example. You want to send your sales forecasts to the Accounts department and you don’t want their creative insight in your ideas. All you have to do is make a spreadsheet using a standard package like Excel or Lotus and then instead of sending the original spreadsheet file, you distill it through Acrobat (fancy buzzword for PDF conversion). You could also specify the level access through password protection schemes and allow access for limited annotations (sticky notes, highlight etc) and they could send it back to you with their own suggestions without tweaking the figures.
Acrobat supports an extensive list of various formats (incl. movie formats)and it’s you could just drag and drop your files and let Acrobat take care of the rest. The hyperlinking facility comes in real handy which enables you to download your entire website, distill it through Acrobat and it will work offline, exactly the way it does online. The Acrobat installation comes with a plethora of exotic true type and postscript fonts which you could use to enhance the aesthetical appeal of your work without ever thinking whether your recipient will have those fonts.
I guess some of my discerning reader must be pondering at this point of time ’’that’s all fine and dandy, but you still need a Acrobat reader to view and print PDF documents.’’ The answer is of course you do, but then it’s freely downloadable and it’s often found in any generic computer magazine CD’s. You have to buy the PDF writer though. Using the authoring tools can be a bit troublesome at first, especially if you are not sure of the PDF concept but after a few hours of playing about with Acrobat it seems like child’s play.
Acrobat seldom works alone as it’s not exactly a WYSIWYG editor by itself. It works with collusion with other document authoring tools and you only use the Acrobat program to make annotations, setting up hyperlinks and tasks of that like. After you are through with the formatting, and have ensured all the hyperlinks work the way they should, you use Adobe Catalog to bind the separate PDF files into one PDF.
Acrobat has it’s own compression algorithms and so PDF files aren’t as large as other formats. This is especially commendable when you consider that it does not use local fonts or color schemes.
Phew! Anyhow, I still can’t convince anyone about the virtues of Acrobat unless they use the product and see it for themselves. On a general note, I would like to say that Acrobat sure has pushed ahead our dream of a paperless office significantly.