What Is PDF?

Date First Published: 20th September 2023

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Computer Software

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 4/10

CONTENTS

Advantages and Disadvantages Of PDF
Security Of PDFs
History

Learn about what PDF is in this article.

Stands for Portable Document Format. PDF is a universal file format used to save and display electronic documents, like word processing documents, presentations, databases, forms, webpages, and more. Due to its compatibility with most devices and applications, it is one of the most commonly used file formats. In most cases, PDFs are created from existing documents instead of from scratch by exporting them to a PDF.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of PDF

The advantages of PDFs are:

It is a highly compatible format that can be opened by most web browsers and applications. No special PDF readers are required to open PDF files.
It guarantees consistency of files. A PDF file displays the exact same content and layout no matter which device, operating system, or software application it is viewed on.
File sizes are usually smaller than other formats, like Word and PowerPoint because they can easily be compressed. This makes them more suitable for sharing.

The disadvantages of PDFs are:

Once saved as a PDF, it is very difficult to edit since the content and layout of the document are preserved and protected. This means that PDFs are unsuitable for storing documents during development. If a document needs to be edited after it has been saved as a PDF, the user must return to the original program used to create it, make the changes there, and save it as a PDF again.
Some older versions of software cannot read PDF files. Different types of PDFs may require different ways of working with them.
They are not usually mobile-friendly. PDF files usually have a fixed layout, meaning that documents designed for desktop computers with bigger screens will be too large to fit on mobile devices with smaller screens and require users to horizontally scroll to read the document.

Security Of PDFs

Since PDF is a widely used format, it has been targeted by attackers to create security threats. Although most PDFs do not carry malware, it is possible for a PDF file to contain malware if the PDF reader has vulnerabilities. Outdated PDF readers that are no longer maintained by the developers are much more vulnerable.

PDF files can also be password-protected to prevent them from being viewed and edited by others without the correct password, protecting documents with sensitive information.

History

The PDF file format was introduced by Adobe in 1992 as a standard to present documents with text formatting, images, and vector graphics by a wide range of application software, hardware, and operating systems. The goal was to enable anyone to capture documents from any application, send electronic versions of these documents anywhere, and view and print them on any computer.

Adobe made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. PDF was a proprietary format owned by Adobe until it was released as an open standard on 1st July 2008, and published by the International Organisation for Standardisation as ISO 32000-1:2008.