Wow, (over) 30 years of the PDF. I use them daily. From the linked article:
"The concept of PDF - Portable Document Format - actually began with the Camelot Project in 1990. And Camelot itself would be nothing without the very backbone of the idea, PostScript, which started all the way back in 1985, and kickstarted the desktop publishing software revolution.
Back in those days, cross-platform compatibility was a nightmare, which led Dr. John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe, to initiate that project. Its goal was simple in its concept but ambitious in its execution: create a format that would enable anyone to send any document electronically to anyone else, and that person would be able to read and even print it with its formatting perfectly preserved.
...to us jaded computer users nearly at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, this may sound like nothing to be excited about, but back in the 80s and 90s, which was the personal computer’s infancy, this was a big deal.
...back then, you couldn’t be sure which software someone would be usi
... show moreWow, (over) 30 years of the PDF. I use them daily. From the linked article:
"The concept of PDF - Portable Document Format - actually began with the Camelot Project in 1990. And Camelot itself would be nothing without the very backbone of the idea, PostScript, which started all the way back in 1985, and kickstarted the desktop publishing software revolution.
Back in those days, cross-platform compatibility was a nightmare, which led Dr. John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe, to initiate that project. Its goal was simple in its concept but ambitious in its execution: create a format that would enable anyone to send any document electronically to anyone else, and that person would be able to read and even print it with its formatting perfectly preserved.
...to us jaded computer users nearly at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, this may sound like nothing to be excited about, but back in the 80s and 90s, which was the personal computer’s infancy, this was a big deal.
...back then, you couldn’t be sure which software someone would be using. You wouldn’t even know which fonts were installed on their machine. If you used one that wasn’t in that other computer’s repertoire, it could at best mess up your document’s formatting. To make matters worse, there was the Mac/Windows divide which was often viewed as a deal-breaker. Many remained convinced a file created on one type of computer could not be opened on another."
https://www.techradar.com/features/30-years-of-pdf-the-file-that-changed-the-world
#PDF #PDFs #TechHistory #1980s #1990s #Adobe #fonts #DesktopPublishing #Apple #Windows #tech #history #publishing
