SimpleX PDF Is Pretty Darned Fun By Derek Currie SimpleX Chapter 3: PDF is Pretty Darned Fun <<Cough>> Cute title, huh? Actually, PDF means Portable Document Format. It also happens to be the native document format in Mac OS X. If you’d like a kewl little demo of its features you should hurry scurry over to Apple’s Mac OS X Theater and checkout their PDF Compositor MooV. If you remember Apple's QuickDraw GX, released in 1994 with Mac OS 7.5, you'll remember it incorporated a Portable Digital Document (PDD) format that provided a universal document format you could share with other GX users. It included all the progressive font and graphics features built into QuickDraw GX. Unfortunately for Apple, Adobe's first PDF format standard had already been released in 1993. PDF was still a fledgling format, incomplete and misunderstood in the computer industry. Despite some stumbles, Adobe swiftly established PDF as the industry default digital document format, and eventually managed to trump all the features of the PDD format as well. Back in the 1980s Adobe created PostScript, an ASCII text based language used to describe entire computer documents so that they can be correctly rendered to paper by a printer. It was a breakthrough in what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) computer publishing. Apple incorporated PostScript into their Laser Printers. As a companion to PostScript printing Adobe created on screen PostScript, called Display PostScript, which NeXT incorporated into their NeXTStep operating system. This gave NeXTStep the unique ability to provide accurate WYSIWYG from screen to printout. But, Adobe charged a licensing fee for Display PostScript that had to be incorporated into the cost of the OS. After Apple bought NeXT, Display PostScript was continued through the Rhapsody project and into Mac OS X Server. You will find the cost of Display PostScript reflected in the cost of Mac OS X Server. In the early 1990s Adobe began work on a new document display standard, designed to work on any computer platform, which became Adobe Acrobat™. The name Acrobat™ reflects the flexibility of file format it used called PDF. After a few years of maturation, PDF became a printed document standard in the publishing industry as well. What makes PDF pretty darned fun? 1) Adobe made the standard free for any developer to incorporate into applications, or operating systems. This means it costs Apple nothing to add PDF into Mac OS X. So long Display PostScript! As a result Mac OS X will cost significantly less than Mac OS X Server. 2) PDF files are 100% cross platform. There is no excuse for anyone not being able to read PDF files. If needed, Adobe provides Acrobat™ Reader for free on every major computer platform. 3) Adobe and shareware developers provide utilities that let you make any printable document, in any original format, into a PDF. 4) PDF can incorporate any font, in any language. You can embed entire fonts into a document. If by chance a font has not been embedded and is not in your computer system, Acrobat™ Reader can use Adobe Type Manager, included with the Acrobat™ Reader, to emulate the missing font. (Note that this feature requires the font's metrics to have been incorporated into Adobe's ATM Font Database file). 5) Readers of PDF files can zoom pages up to 800%. There are tools to allow real time page dragging, page forward, page reverse, as well as instant first page and last page access. Adobe provides this speed by page caching. Pages are also accessible through bookmarks as well as thumbnails. 6) Searching of PDF document content is built-in. 7) PDF files are readable on the Internet in any Web browser, thanks to the PDFViewer plug-in. This allows the development of web pages that call for only knowledge of page layout skills. No understanding of HTML or other code is required. 8) PDF files can be streamed to readers over the Internet, requiring the upload of only the pages a reader requests. 9) Hypertext navigation is built into PDF. You can include links and buttons in documents to other pages in the document, to special note pages, to database fields, to other documents, even to web sites. 10) With the proper viewer and permissions it is possible to append page annotations, copy and paste text and graphics, controlling the entire layout of a page. All these changes can be made without losing the original formatting of the document, making it possible to undo all changes. 11) Because PDF is graphics savvy right down to its PostScript roots, it can extend itself to incorporate any sort of graphic. You can even embed movies and sounds into PDF documents. (I am expecting to see the enhanced ability to manipulate 3D objects and 3D scenes within PDF documents). 12) PDF is scalable image savvy. It understands vector graphics, just like PostScript. This means zooming images and fonts can result in perfect enlargements with no jaggy edges. 13) PDF files can store bit-mapped images at up to 2500 dots per inch (dpi). The graphics will be precisely scaled when zoomed, and can print picture perfect. 14) Modern image and font manipulation, such as skewing and perspective, are built in. This means the days of reading only flat monotonous 2D text and images in documents are over. You can even add effects like drop shadow. 15) PDF can incorporate flexible page sizes, all within the same document. 16) Flexible compression is built into the PDF standard, keeping PDF files small. Web masters happily find that PDF files are considerably smaller than their HTML counterparts. 17) Authors of PDF files have total control of their file's security. A PDF file can be specified to prevent content copying, printing or even reading without approval from the author. Encryption/decryption features can be specified as accessible on only one specific user's computer! This is terrific for copyright maintenance in the growing eBook market. Imagine an author being able to provide text, graphics, and even a soundtrack and movie inside an electronic book, served over the Internet, accessible only to readers who have purchased the rights to access it on their particular computer. eBook piracy is dead right out of the starting gate. 18) PDF is color management savvy. This means you can embed a color environment profile into your document which can be translated wherever the document is read or printed to make certain the document colors are accurate. 19) PDF documents can contain printing workflow information, meaning that you can designate what pages are printed on what printer on a network with what specifications. You can even include web server viewing instructions. 20) You can index and catalogue PDF documents, critical in any Electronic Document Management (EDM) system. You can include database fields that self-verify before their data input is submitted to a database. PDF documents can even reference and visualize changing images and data, such as an employee photo database or current stock prices. 21) PDF readers are backward compatible with previous PDF features. There is no such thing as an out-of-date PDF document and never will be. The result is a format that will be as useful tomorrow as it is today. 22) PDF is a standard developed and managed by Adobe alone. This is a good thing as it insures reliability. PDF is not some pseudo-standard which some company like Microsoft will screw up to their own advantage. In other words, PDF will not go the route of goofy nonstandard HTML, JavaScript, Java and XML that work only on one machine or in one application. Any PDF savvy application can read any PDF file. PDF also does away with the need to have a plethora of applications to read a chaotic mess of different file formats. You can turn any type of document into a PDF, share it with anyone, and know its going to be read and used as you intended. The only drawback of the PDF standard is that we all depend on Adobe to keep it growing with the needs of the computer community. Some people may believe an Open Source standard would be preferable. But let me stick out my neck and give you some flame bate to contemplate: Open Source is a slow, innately profitless system to those who contribute, and has difficulty maintaining direction or momentum. Adobe profit from PDF, if only through sales of their excellent Acrobat™ application family, and therefore have a financial incentive to keep it top notch. So far so good IMHO. At least Adobe have had the grace and wisdom to make the format public and free. Conclusion: PDF makes Mac OS X WYSIWYG from screen to printed page. This is a godsend to both the average computer user and the high end publishing professional. It is a unified document standard that every computer user will find useful into the distant future. DupleX The obvious question from the last chapter of SimpleX, covering the Mach kernel, is where does Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Dr. Avie Tevanian, fit into the history of Mach? (Thanks for asking Ryan!) You can access Dr. Tevanian's Apple bio but it does not tell you much. There are rumors that Avie actually 'invented' Mach. No, he did not. Technically it was invented by Richard Rashid. However, Avie was a student who worked very closely with Dr. Rashid at both the University of Rochester on the RIG project, and at Carnegie Mellon University on the Accent and Mach projects. Avie was a contributing or lead author on a number of Mach publications, all available at the CMU web site. He was a Mach consultant to NeXT in its early days and formally joined the company in 1988. He eventually became the Vice President of NeXT Engineering. Avie joined Apple in 1997 when they bought NeXT. If you would like to do your own PDF research you will find there are scores of sites on the Internet. Here are a few suggestions: <http://www.pdfzone.com/> At PDFzone you will find the latest PDF news, as well as plenty of tools and information. Be sure to check out their showcase page. <http://www.planetpdf.com/> Planet PDF is another great place for PDF resources. I particularly recommend the Planet PDF Forum (formerly AcroBuddies) at <http://forum.planetpdf.com/>. There are a couple third party programs that allow you to create your own PDF files. PrintToPDF is a $20 shareware program that works very much like Adobe Acrobat™'s PDFWriter printing extension. You can find it at <http://www.jwwalker.com/index.html> You can download a demo of EZ-PDF, a $79 commercial PDF creation program, at <http://www.acquiredknowledge.com/SW/EZ-PDF.html> Adobe has a wealth of Acrobat™ and PDF information at their own web site. The best place to start is <http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/>. You will find there a collection of FAQs, white papers, links to further PDF information sites, as well as the latest version of Adobe Acrobat™ Reader. Watch there for the latest news on Acrobat™ 5.0, expected late this year. * Watch for Chapter 4 of SimpleX when we will actually get hands on with Mac OS X Beta! You can get ready by ordering your own CD copy after September 13th at Apple's Mac OS X Site .