Is it a pdf or an Adobe Acrobat pdf?
We just finished an Acrobat in the AEC industry city forum tour and it seemed like we had a recurring question that popped up in every city. It seemed like at least one individual would ask question about a pdf they were having issues with. Most of the time they would have received the pdf from another company and would have problems printing the file or the quality of the drawing they converted to pdf was not up to par. What a lot of users don't understand is that just because it has a .pdf as the file extension does not mean it is created with Adobe Acrobat technology.
So what do I mean a pdf is not an Adobe Acrobat pdf? PDF is an open specification. This means that anyone can download the PDF Reference and develop and application that creates pdf content. We call these clones. I am not going to start the clone debate today, but you can read Rick Borstein's blog it has a great entry on pdf clones.
To know which technology created the pdf it is very simple. You can simply select the Ctl-D on your keyboard or you can choose File-Properties. In the screen shot below you can see the PDF Producer. If you have letters, numbers or anything other than Acrobat, then the pdf was not created using Adobe's Acrobat technology. You can see an Acrobat produced pdf example below.
I like the way Tim Huff describes documents in our industry. He says that your documents are your cash. Based on the deliverables you produce and publish you get paid. It is very difficult to engineer, build or manufacture without documents and drawings. We just finished 6 cities and almost every city had an attendee with a problem file that was the result of a clone. I am going to leave you with this thought. If you calculate the rework and time involved in dealing with the issues caused by the problem file have you really saved anything?
Comments
Maybe Adobe should release a PDF validator. I think in most cases clone vendors - which in the rest of the industry are called ISVs - try to make sense of Adobe's random, incomplete and sometimes incorrect documentation. The fact that the resulting PDFs are garbage is only partly their fault. We've got PDF, XFA and now Mars... not to mention JavaScript and FormCalc for scripting in XFA. One day Adobe wants to control PDF, the next they don't... it's got me looking more closely at Microsoft's work.
Posted by: Robert Arnold Jr. | March 16, 2007 03:48 PM
Jonathan,
you say "We just finished 6 cities and almost every city had an attendee with a problem file that was the result of a clone. I am going to leave you with this thought."
Have you asked all attendees how many are using a clone and never had a problem? And how many are using Acrobat and had a problem?
If you haven't, then I think the assumption you hope we will make is infatuated by your anecdotal experience and background. What company do you work for again? ;-)
Just a thought. Feel free to censor.
Martin
Posted by: Martin | March 17, 2007 03:58 AM
I wonder though if part of the problem isn't Adobe itself, and it's ambivalent attitude towards openness.
In my mind, what I consider a PDF is a pretty simple thing that is an incredibly useful document exchange technology - digital paper, basically. It has become more useful as it becomes easier to not shell out the price of a professional application. My use of PDF has gone up dramatically since Mac OS X began supporting native PDF creation from the standard print window, whereas I've seen PDF adoption crippled at my mostly Windows XP workplace, where everyone has to buy Acrobat in order to make PDFs (because there isn't universal buy-in).
So the problem you describe is of Adobe's own making. By choosing to not make a free PDF-creation component available (similar to the Mac OS X feature), the company created an ecosystem with a big hole in it, and others rushed to fill it.
But because PDF is a closed-source/open spec format, developers have to reinvent how PDFs are created for their application, and so incompatibilities arise.
My guess is this will get worse as the acrobat team piles on industry specific features that are not useful to most customers (like support for AutoCad files), but again I don't think it's right to place the responsibility for total compatibility on developers who are stuck supporting a closed-source format, when Adobe has chosen the strategy it has.
Adobe should consider carefully whether the strategy to have every user pay for even basic functionality is worth undermining the format -- end users don't care about who ruined a technology, they only care when a technology doesn't work.
Then they look for another solution.
Posted by: Peter Hanley | March 17, 2007 01:59 PM
This entry was written to let users know how they could determine the source of the application that created the pdf. When users have issues with pdf unfortunately a lot of users don’t go back to the source they automatically come to Adobe since it has a pdf extension. Validation is not in our business model. If they want the experts then they will make the right choice. I am assuming since you used “we’ve got” you are an ISV/clone vendor, which is fine. As far as microsoft, please do take the time to compare the Quality of what you get with a pdf and what you get with xps. Let me know how the xps ISV works for you, with the functionality you mentioned above.
Posted by: Jonathan Bowman | March 19, 2007 12:05 PM
Hi Martin, This was an Adobe event, not a compare and contrast of every pdf creation tool on the market. Those who attended were excited in learning about how Adobe applications can be used to meet their industries needs not what technology they could choose from. No need to censor, if bad language is not used. We welcome any and all feedback and will always take the high road which is in line with our corporate values. Don’t expect any Acrobat vs. Clone comparison any time soon….. I will be happy to tell you how our technology can meet the industries needs.
Posted by: Jonathan Bowman | March 19, 2007 12:52 PM
Peter, thanks for the feedback. This entry was to really let users know how to tell which technology created the pdf. I disagree with you on the “piling of industry specific features”. The strongest value in pdf is when you take it beyond creation. Let’s take autocad, which you mentioned above. If you print to pdf you get a flat unintelligent file. If you use the PDF makers, you can retain layouts and layers which makes the file intelligent. The user community as a whole is requesting functionality to meet their industries needs. I agree with you about the users, this entry was to educate them on where they could point the finger when the technology doesn’t work.
Posted by: Jonathan Bowman | March 19, 2007 12:57 PM