Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe's own PDF editor, Acrobat (which costs several hundred dollars) has a wide
range of functionality, over and above that of the free Adobe Reader. This includes:
• Printing to PDF, and conversion from PostScript to PDF.
• Conversion to and from Microsoft Word and Excel.
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR), producing a PDF file which looks exactly
like the scanned document, but has searchable, editable text.
• Reordering, rotating, and editing pages and contents.
• Preflight and print publishing tools.
• Building PDF forms.
• Creating and validating PDF/A and PDF/X.
• Adding encryption and digital signatures.
There are many commercial third party plug-ins available for Adobe Acrobat, providing
extra functionality.
Editing with Preview on Mac OS X
Preview, the standard PDF Viewing program on Mac OS X, also has editing facilites,
which tend to be underused since they are not prominent in the interface.
Preview can annotate PDF documents, highlight and strike through text, crop pages,
add text, add hyperlinks, delete and rearrange pages, and merge PDFs.
Preview deals with a wide range of documents, and manages to preserve functionality
it doesn't understand when editing other aspects of the file.
PDF and Graphics Documentation
This topic was written to fill a conspicuous gap in PDF literature. Here, we list other
sources of information and documentation.
ISO 32000 and the PDF File Format
The
PDF Reference Manual
was published as a topic until PDF version 1.6. Now, alas
(but perhaps fittingly, given its subject matter), it is only available as a PDF document.
PDF version 1.7 was ratified as an ISO Standard in 2008 (Standard number ISO
32000-1:2008). The ISO charges almost 500 US Dollars for a PDF copy (by download,
or on CD-ROM). Luckily, Adobe continues to provide the PDF Version 1.7 Reference
electronically. This is an approved copy of ISO 32000-1:2008. In particular, the chapter,
section, and subsection numbers are identical.
