Last week we discussed Mac OS X’s Preview application and its ability to view PDF files. If you’ve spent the last week wondering “what the heck is a PDF file”, you’ve come back to the right place this week. PDF stands for “Portable Document Format”. It was invented by Adobe, the makers of great imaging software like Photoshop and Illustrator, and has become the standard for the electronic distribution of documents.

Before PDF, sharing of documents created with word processor and page layout applications (like MS Word or Quark) was problematic. For example, if the document receiver didn’t use the same word processor or font sets as the document sender, the receiver most likely would see the document differently than the sender had intended.

To remedy this problem, PDF files carry along inside of them fonts, images, graphics, and layout information. When viewed with Adobe’s free “Adobe Reader” software, documents should look the same (and, as importantly, print the same) regardless of computer operating system, installed fonts, or original application used to create them.

So how does one create a PDF file? While Adobe distributes their Reader software for free, their PDF creation software, called Adobe Acrobat, is around $299. Although you can create a document within Acrobat as you would in MS Word, Acrobat is really designed to import work from another word processor or layout tool and prepare it for its journey around the world as a PDF file. If you’re seriously into creating and distributing PDF files, Acrobat (available for Mac and PC) is the only way to go.

Us Mac users, have another, or should I say, an additional, way, to create and view PDF files. See, Apple licensed and integrated Adobe’s PDF technology right into Mac OS X. Anything you can print in OS X, you can “print to PDF”. You’re actually saving your document as a PDF file, but access to the feature is built into “Printing” rather than “Saving”.

Let’s say you have a family newsletter created, of course, in Apple’s Pages layout application, that you want to send to all corners of the world. Select “Print” from the File menu. Look closely at the lower left corner of the Print dialogue box, and you’ll see a “PDF” button. Click the button and select “Save as PDF” from the resulting menu. Name the file, and you’re in business. More on PDF next time.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski