The use of the Portable Document File (PDF) format in the distribution of documents via Web sites continues to grow.  Many of the resources available from the Government Printing Office (GPO) are being distributed in PDF. Journal publishers are beginning to utilize PDF to distribute their subscriptions, creating servcies such as Academic Press' IDEAL^® service.

   The advantage PDF offers Web creators is that it allows documents created within any desktop publishing package to be viewed in the original typeset design.  PDF documents retain their original look and feel - complete with text, graphics, photos, and color - on Macintosh, Windows, or UNIX computers.  PDF allows Web authors to retain control over typefaces and fonts within documents, something which takes extra coding with HTML.

   The primary tool used to write PDF documents is Adobe Acrobat ^®. This product enables the Web author to "print" files from common applications such as word processors and spreadsheets into PDF.  They can even be scanned in using Adobe Capture. These two products make the creation of PDF files a fairly easy task.  PDF files are then saved with the MIME extension of .pdf

   In order to view PDF documents the customer needs to have a product called Acrobat Reader, available free of charge for all computing platforms.  The advantage of newer plug-in versions of Acrobat is that the integration within a Web browser allows PDF files to be viewed seamlessly within the browser window.  The newer versions of this software also allow the patron to begin viewing the first pages of document as it continues to download.

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