ABCs of PDF

NEW YORK -- In a general session at Seybold New York, here April 21-25, called "PostScript & PDF Evolution: Is PostScript Your New Legacy System," executives from Adobe Systems and other output systems suppliers discussed whether the Portable Document Format -- PDF -- can supplant PostScript, the page description language invented by Adobe and used by most imaging systems in the last decade.

James King, principal scientist in the Advanced Technology Group at Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., moderated the session and discussed his company's efforts in PostScript and PDF.

"We invented PDF as an alternative to PostScript because of the sequential nature of PostScript," King said. He went on to explain that in PostScript, the file must be processed in a specific sequence, with directories at the beginning of the file and the rendering of a page done in order.

"PDF doesn't care where things are in a file," King said.

In addition, PDF is more compact that PostScript. As one panelist said of a hypothetical eight-page brochure, "It's 500 megabytes of PostScript; it's only 300 megabytes of PDF."

King went on to explain his company's work on the next generation of PostScript, PostScript 3 (previous versions were called "Level 1" and "Level 2"; Adobe has trademarked "PostScript 3" in an attempt to differentiate its products from what others will have to call "Level 3").

One of the key benefits of the new version of PostScript will be that it will improve the "user experiences," as King said. Adobe will be working with the resellers of PostScript 3 to improve the drivers and error messages that PostScript raster image processors return to the user.

Back in the PDF discussion, David Kew, a Chicago-based consultant to pre-press shops, said, "For $400 [PDF] is the best deal going."

In the future, Kew said, PDF will handle virtually all aspects of workflow management; users will "see a wave of tools coming your way" to achieve this goal.

John Harrison, from Agfa Gevaert of Mortsel, Belgium, agreed but disagreed with Kew.

"We're at 1985 with workflow," he said, referring to the early days of PostScript. "Eleven fonts and all that."

Nonetheless, Harrison said that with PDF, "You can send a file back and forth -- it can go downstream and they can add value, and it can go back up and it can be worked on or viewed."

See also Seybold successes: New York move; melds print, new media

See also The Web isn't free

A web special from THE COLE PAPERS, May 1997, Copyright (c) 1997, All Rights Reserved.