[Overview]
PDF (Portable Document Format) was conceived by Adobe in 1992, launched
in June 1993 with Adobe Acrobat software, and perfected over 15 years
as the global standard for distribution and viewing of information. It
"lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on
any computer system and share it with anyone around the world.
Individuals, businesses, and government agencies everywhere trust and
rely on Adobe PDF to communicate their ideas and vision." (excerpt from
the website) Adobe Acrobat gives the tools to create and view PDF files
and is available in many languages and for many platforms (Macintosh,
Windows, Unix, etc.). Ten years later, over 500 million copies of
PDF-based Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader, until May 2003) have
been downloaded worldwide. Approximately 10% of the documents on the
internet are available in PDF.