About the Pdf file format
- Name
- Portable Document Format File
- Extension
- Format
- Binary
- Category
- Document
- Developer
- Adobe Systems
- Description
- The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a versatile file type designed to present documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Created by Adobe in the 1990s, PDF files can encapsulate text, fonts, images, and even interactive elements like hyperlinks, forms, and multimedia content. This format is widely used for its ability to preserve the original formatting of a document, ensuring that it can be viewed and printed as intended across different platforms.
- MIME Type
- application/pdf
- Sample
- sample.pdf
- Wikipedia
- .pdf on Wikipedia
The Portable Document Format file (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe to present documents including text formatting and images. The documents are viewed autonomously regardless of the application software, hardware, and operating system. This has hugely contributed to the popularity of sharing documents in the PDF format.
Based on a PostScript language, each PDF document contains a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document. It comprises of the texts, fonts, vector graphics, raster images, and other information needed to be displayed. It was standardized as ISO 32000 in 2008 and therefore made royalty-free for its implementation.
Besides flat text and graphics, PDF files may contain other contents such as logical structuring elements, interactive elements like annotations and form-fields. They may also store layers, rich media (with video content), and 3-D objects using U3D or PRC, and other data formats. Its specification also provides for encryption and digital signatures, file attachments, and metadata for workflows requiring these features.
PDF files were first made available and free of charge by the Adobe Systems in 1993. Initially, PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows and competed with formats such as DjVu, Envoy, Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica, and Adobe’s PostScript format. It was a proprietary format controlled by Adobe until its release as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization.
