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PDF Mapping - Michael Bufkin
The use of PDF for mapping applications began soon after the first Acrobat products went on sale. Indeed,
in his seminal 1991 paper that defined the concept of PDF, “The Camelot Project”, John Warnock, then
president of Adobe, envisioned a file type that would allow authors of documents to distribute their work in
a format that could be accurately displayed and printed on almost any computer or digital printer, including
“military maps and complex map collections” [1].
With the advent of the Internet, the advantages of providing users and customers with a single, self-
contained file that could be used to display maps which had previously been available only as paper or as
complex, proprietary files was obvious. Today, almost all federal, state and local governments are
providing mapping data to the public in PDF form, and many commercial map-making enterprises are
delivering their map documents in PDF format.
In this Chapter
Working with maps in PDF presents its own challenges and issues. In this chapter you see how to identify
these issues and discover means to solve them in discussions and case studies provided by a leader in the
PDF mapping field:
x Producing a PDF version of a map from a variety of different types of source material can result in a
number of issues, depending both on the source map and the intended use of the PDF map.
x Map PDF files can use the same Acrobat security and navigation features as other types of PDF file.
x Geo-registration is a technique used to embed map projection and coordinate transformation
information directly in the PDF.
x Geo-coding is used to associate a latitude and longitude of an address to a bookmark action that zooms
to a specific location on a map that has been defined as a PDF coordinate.
x PDF maps may be simple maps, intelligent maps, or map systems using a complex navigation structure
for organization and use; best practices are defined for each category.
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