Introduction

Last week, the publishing industry convened in Amsterdam for the first Seybold PDF Summit. The event more or less coincided with the launch of Acrobat 6.0 - as well as with the 10th anniversary of the first release of the software and file format by Adobe.

It seems to be the fate of Adobe Acrobat and the Portable Document Format (PDF) to inspire solutions for which it has not been initially conceived. For John Warnock, who was the initial driving force behind Acrobat, the software was mainly conceived for the enterprise: he used to present it as a grown-up version of ASCII, conceived to allow viewing and printing of formatted documents on a variety of platforms. Sure enough, immediately after it’s release in 1993, the publishing industry snatched up the new technology - only to discover that the PDF format did not support some very basic attributes for professional printers.

The rest, as they say, is history. PDF moved along to become a strong standard in a variety of fields, has inspired a flurry of third-party developments as well as a number of industry initiatives and committees.

Exit the standard…

The one thing PDF is less and less, however, is a standard, “ a fixed, customary, or official measure (as of quantity, quality, or price)” to stick with Merriam Webster’s Dictionary.

Just counting the versions of the file format initiated and supported by Adobe itself, the picture becomes ever so slightly confusing. When you add the assorted industry initiatives and standards-for-the standard proposals, such as PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3, or the Certified PDF initiative driven by Enfocus, it is getting outright confusing, at least for an outsider.

But then again, the variety of things achieved with the PDF format is properly mind-boggling. While Adobe 10 years ago may not have imagined the use of PDF in a prepress workflow, it is likely that the current Adobe product team had not envisaged that PDF could be the base for a complete packaging workflow, carrying along the necessary CAD data as well as VRML renderings to show the folding sequence of a cardboard container within the PDF document. (The Esko-Graphics FastLane for Packaging solution demonstrated at the Seybold PDF summit is one of the more impressive examples of the potential PDF holds these days. See Interesting Developments.)

Enter the Platform?

The reality is that PDF has by far outstretched the kind of functionality and service one could (or should) expect from a simple file format. To place PDF alongside EPS and TIFF-IT in terms of potential and/or usefulness is like comparing a spaceship with a bicycle. You wouldn’t really expect the same functionality - but then again, a space-ship is a wee bit more complex to service…

PDF has proven over and over that it can deliver a confounding variety of services to an increasingly vast array of market segments. The growing number of file format dialects and standard proposals around PDF shows the richness of the market. This abundance is not going to go away - quite to the contrary.

But let’s face it: this also means that we have to stop treating PDF simply as a file format. Our understanding of the technology has to evolve: we have to acknowledge that PDF has become a vessel, a building ground. A starting point rather than a solution… Only once we have fully completed this change in attitude will we start to endorse it as what it is today.

So say goodbye to the standard - and welcome to the platform…

June 16, 2003

©2003 Pfeiffer Consulting

Interesting Developments

Some of the more interesting developments demonstrated at the Seybold PDF summit in Amsterdam:

Esko-Graphics showed a PDF-based version of it’s packaging workflow, allowing the CAD reference data as well as VRML representations of 3D aspects of a project to be included in the PDF file of a project.

Enfocus launched the new release (version 3.0) of Pitstop Server which runs natively on Mac OS X, as well as the web-service CertifiedPDF.net, which is an on-line resource providing support for the company’s Certified PDF initiative.

In a completely different market segment, Mimotek demonstrated its solution for structuring, viewing and repurposing newspaper content through XML embedded in PDF data.


PDF Resources on the Web

Planet PDF

PDF Zone

http://www.prepress.ch/ (Stephan Jaeggi is an internationally renowned specialist on PDF in Prepress. This is his website)

PDF+Print 2.0 Bernd Zipper’s book on PDF and print issues, published by Seybold Publications.