PDF is a "standard" in the same sense that Word is a standard.
Fascinating. You must know something that I don't, because I hadn't heard that Microsoft was releasing the complete specs to the current Word file format. I'm glad to hear that this is changing, if you are correct.
It is a proprietary product owned and controlled by a single company (in this case Adobe) which has won wide acceptance in the market by virtue of its technical capabilities combined with great marketing.
Oh I see. You don't really have any inside information about Microsoft opening up Word. You're just wrong. We use the word "standard" in many ways. One of them means "common" or "in wide-spread use." In this sense, Word is a standard. Another means "open, published, and completely specified". In this sense, which is the sense I was talking about, PDF is a standard, and Word is not. Period.
Maybe you are confusing PDF with Acrobat? PDF is a standard. Acrobat is a product. Confusing them is like confusing the Alphabet with a Typewriter.
As a matter of fact, the Acrobat reader is bundled with most new PCs and has been for quite some time.
We were talking about writers. All Macintoshes ship with a PDF writer. Windows machines do not. And of course this is because open formats like PDF are a threat to Microsoft's Office monopoly.
By the way, Adobe isn't concerned that Macs can create PDF files. They LIKE that. Adobe makes its money from PDF by selling Acrobat, which is very sophisticated and supports the complete PDF standard, while Macs write the "PDF Drawing Model" which doesn't include all of the fancy features like hyperlinks, interactivity, JavaScript, and so on, that Acrobat supports.
Dave |
