Writing for the Web: A Primer for Librarians

by Eric H. Schnell

Portable Document Format (PDFTM)

   The use of the Portable Document File (PDFTM) 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 PDFTM. Journal publishers are beginning to utilize PDFTM to distribute their subscriptions, creating servcies such as Academic Press' IDEAL® service.

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

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

   In order to view PDFTM documents the patron 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 the integration within a Web browser allows PDFTM 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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Page Updated: December 11, 2001