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Apple PDF
Authored by: prodok on Feb 18, '03 06:19:24PM

Actually, the PDF specification have been published, and you are free to create your own PDF viewer. There are a few things concerning Transparency which are apparently patented by Adobe, but besides this, you could go on. The problem is, however, that PDF is a pretty complex format, and creating a viewer is a major project.

It is some kind of a pain that there is no Distiller for OSX, but I am confident that with the next major release of Acrobat, there will be a Distiller. So far, it has always been with Adobe products that with the "next major release", OSX capability was introduced. The bad thing with Acrobat is that the development cycles for Acrobat and for OSX happen to be pretty badly out of synch.

Another thing to be aware of. Acrobat is NOT a tool for editing the PDF "base plane". For this, you go to the source document and recreate the PDF, or you use some specialized plug-ins or applications, such as PitStop by Enfocus or Solico by OneVision. Acrobat is used -- as an editing tool -- for the overlaying planes (links, annotations, forms, etc.). So, you use Acrobat to add value to your documents. On these levels, you can create amazing stuff, particularly when you start using the built-in Acrobat JavaScript programming language. Considering this, Acrobat is actually quite a cheap tool.

Max Wyss.



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