Created by Adobe in 1993 for documents exchanging, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008 and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008.

 

Why it happened?

 

Because we need a document format with small size, high security and Cross-Platform feature. We need to change the way for handing out files, the traditional way Create-Print-Handout files leading to many problems like wasting paper. PDF, as a “text + image” format, can retain all elements from the original document so you don’t need to worry about if the special font can be displayed on others computer as normal. And, with an excellent compression, the size of PDF file is very small for conveniently transmitting via Internet. If the PDF file is needed to print on paper or not depend on user’s need thus we can save lots of papers. After the Encryption, you can protect the PDF files from edit, copy and print. And the PDF files can be viewed only with a free Adobe Reader no matter if the operation system is Windows, Mac or Linux. There are many other tools can instead.

There are two readers can be used instead of adobe reader.

Foxit Reader, the size of the application is less than 2 M, and there is no need to install it because it is green software but Foxit reader cannot run at Mac OS.

Sumatra PDF, a free, open source, light-weight (923K) PDF reader for Microsoft Windows.

 

Everything has two coins. Although PDF has tons of advantages, you may find that once you have created a PDF file it is very difficult to edit it. The principle is done it at one time. Furthermore, to quote some information in PDF files, you need to type the information letter by letter. If you want to edit PDF files but cannot afford the Adobe Acrobat, the PDF edit tools below may help you.

 

Nitro PDF to Word, the free online PDF to Word converter, can convert your PDF files to word then you can edit the text in the word file.

Adream PDF to Word, a newbie of the PDF related tool. Have 30% discount in April, just $19.95.

PDFill, a free PDF editor, can open, view, edit and save PDF files.