Adobe Acrobat

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Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0 running on Windows XP
Developer:	Adobe Systems
Latest release:	8.0 / November 2, 2006
OS:	Cross-platform
Use:	PDF writer
License:	Adobe EULA
Website:	http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/

Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software by Adobe Systems. These applications use Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) as their native file format. Some software in the family is commercial, and some free of charge. Adobe Reader (formerly called Acrobat Reader) is available as a no-charge download from Adobe's web site, and allows the viewing and printing of PDF files. Acrobat and Reader are a major components of the Adobe Engagement Platform, and are widely used as a way to present information with a fixed layout similar to a paper publication.

1 History
2 Product names
- 2.1 Acrobat product history
3 Criticisms
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

Since the early 1990s, the Acrobat product had several competitors who each used their own document formats, such as:

AnyView from Binar Graphics
Common Ground from No Hands Software
Envoy from WordPerfect Corporation
Folio from NextPage
Microsoft Reader from Microsoft
Replica from Farallon Computing
WorldView from Interleaf

By the late 1990s PDF had become the de facto standard, and the others had become largely historical footnotes. This in turn has led to many more competitors for Adobe Acrobat, both free and commercial.

Today, there are a host of third-party programs that create or manipulate PDF, such as Ghostscript and Nitro PDF. Adobe also allows Acrobat plug-ins to be developed by third parties, which can add extra functions within the Acrobat program.

[edit] Product names

Adobe has changed the names of the products in the Acrobat family regularly, also splitting products up, joining them together, or discontinuing members. This causes much confusion, not only about what product to obtain, but even about what product people have.

As of 2006, the current main members of the Adobe Acrobat family are

Adobe Reader 8 (previously Adobe Acrobat Reader); no-charge software to read or print PDF files.
Adobe Acrobat Standard 8 and Adobe Acrobat Professional 8; commercial (paid for) software to create PDFs and to manipulate them in various ways. Between version 3 and 5 these were one product simply called Adobe Acrobat.
A growing collection of server and specialist products

Adobe Reader 7 running on Debian

Adobe has never created a product called either Adobe Writer or Acrobat Writer, although these names seem a natural opposite to the Reader product. To add more confusion, Acrobat used to include a printer driver called PDFWriter, which is unrelated.

[edit] Acrobat product history

Acrobat Reader 1.0 for Macintosh was originally released 15 June 1993, later for DOS and Windows 3.1. This was not available in single copies and was not initially free. After a while the IRS purchased a right to distribute Reader 1.0, effectively making it seem free to those who obtained it that way.

PDF version 1.0 supported.
Acrobat Exchange 1.0 (included PDFWriter printer driver and Acrobat Exchange application).
Acrobat Distiller 1.0. Created PDF from PostScript (no printer driver at this stage).

Acrobat Reader 2.0 for Windows and Macintosh was released September 1994. Now free.

PDF version 1.1 (and prior) supported.
Acrobat Exchange 2.0, package as 1.0.
Acrobat Professional 2.0, which included the contents of Acrobat Exchange, plus Distiller.
There were 2.1 updates.
Acrobat Catalog was introduced, using Verity, Inc. technology to create searchable indexes to PDF files. Searching required a special version of Acrobat Reader, not free, or Acrobat Exchange.

Acrobat Reader 3.0 was released 1996. The first to display PDF files in-browser, and the first to support form filling.

PDF version 1.2 (and prior) supported.
A free Reader to allow searching was made available, but was not part of the default download.
Acrobat 3.0 – replaced Acrobat Professional 2.1. Included Acrobat Catalog, and a Distiller printer driver.
Updates to 3.01 and 3.02; 3.02 introduced extended forms capabilities and JavaScript.
First release with support for Windows 95 and later. Last release with support for Windows 3.1.

Acrobat Reader 4.0 was released April 1999.

PDF version 1.3 (and prior) supported.
Acrobat 4.0.
Updates to 4.05.
Introduced Distiller Server 4.0, identical to the regular Distiller but with a multi-user license (Windows, Linux, Solaris).
Acrobat Business Tools 4.0 – a limited version of Acrobat.

Acrobat Reader 5.0 was released May 2001.

PDF version 1.4 (and prior) supported.
Acrobat 5.0. PDFWriter removed from Macintosh application^[1]
Updates to 5.0.5. Acrobat 5.0.5 was the first to be able to run native in Mac OS X, but also ran in Mac OS 9.
Distiller Server 5.0.
Acrobat Approval 5.0 – a limited version of Acrobat, mainly sold to people who wanted to digitally sign or save fill in forms.
Acrobat Reader 5.1 – supported the Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions (e.g. forms saving) (which was then under a different name).

Adobe Reader 6.0 was released April 2003. No Linux or Unix versions were released.

PDF version 1.5 (and prior) supported.
Acrobat Professional 6.0 – replacement for Acrobat 5.0, with new features. Distiller printer driver renamed Adobe PDF. PDFWriter now gone for good. New version of Catalog integrated and not compatible with earlier products for searching.
Acrobat Standard 6.0 – limited version of Acrobat Professional, including Distiller but lacking features including Catalog, form design, prepress support.
Updates to 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4, 6.0.5 and 6.0.6
Dropped support for Windows 95 and Windows 98 First Edition. Acrobat Professional was Windows NT, 2000, XP only. Dropped support for Mac OS 9 and earlier. First release for Mac OS X.
Distiller Server 6.0.
Acrobat Elements 6.0 – PDF creation only, aimed at the corporate market (minimum 1000 licenses, Windows only)
Acrobat Elements Server 6.0 – client/server version of Acrobat Elements
Technology for "Reader enabling", allowing Reader to save, sign or annotate PDF files if the licensee had enabled the files.

Adobe Reader 7.0 was released January 2005.^[2]

Updates to 7.0.1, 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 7.0.5, 7.0.7, 7.0.8 and 7.0.9.
PDF version 1.6 (and prior) supported.
Acrobat Professional 7.0 – now includes Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7.0 (Windows only) for XML form design (different and incompatible with previous form support) – Ability to embed 3D object information from the .u3d Universal 3D format. First version to include controversial mandatory product activation.
Acrobat Standard 7.0
Acrobat Elements 7.0 (now minimum 100 licenses)
Acrobat 3D (Windows only) – includes all of the functionality of Acrobat Professional 7.0 as well as updated support for embedded 3D, tools for capturing 3D content from OpenGL applications, and the Adobe Acrobat 3D Toolkit for converting CAD documents to PDF objects. Also included is a version of the capture tool for installation on Unix.
Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Mac OS X only for Acrobat. Although Linux, Solaris (SPARC only), HP-UX and AIX versions of Adobe Reader have been released.
Other LiveCycle products include LiveCycle Barcoded Forms, LiveCycle Document Security, LiveCycle Reader Extensions (previously Document Server for Reader Extensions and other names), LiveCycle Forms (previously Form Server), LiveCycle Form Manager, LiveCycle Policy Server and LiveCycle Workflow. Some of these are server solutions intended for large businesses. Only LiveCycle Designer is bundled with Acrobat Professional.

Adobe Reader 8.0 was released November 2006.^[3]

PDF version 1.7 (and prior) supported.
Acrobat 8 Elements (available mid-2007)
Acrobat 8 Standard (Windows only; Macintosh version not produced)
Acrobat 8 Professional
Acrobat 3D Version 8 (available early 2007) (preview available on March 29, 2007 in Adobe Labs)
Acrobat Connect (new in Acrobat family, formerly Macromedia Breeze) – online personal meeting rooms to collaborate in real time for up to 15 participants.
Acrobat Connect Professional (new in Acrobat family, formerly Macromedia Breeze) – Scalable, interactive web conferencing and multiple personal meeting rooms for everyone across an enterprise.
Mac OS X versions are Universal binary and only run on Mac OS X 10.4.

[edit] Criticisms

From Version 3.02 onwards, Acrobat Reader (now Adobe Reader) has included support for JavaScript. This functionality allows the document creator to include code which executes when the document is read. While JavaScript is designed without direct access to the file system to make it "safe", vulnerabilities have been reported for abuses such as distributing malicious code through Acrobat.^[4] On September 13, 2006, David Kierznowski provided sample PDF files illustrating these vulnerabilities. In the most current version of the Acrobat Reader, JavaScript can be disabled using the preferences menu and embedded URLs that are launched are intercepted by a security warning dialog box to either allow or block the website from launching.^[5]

There have been a number of people who consider the software to be too slow to load and use,^[6] so they have developed work around solutions to speed up the software.^[7] The application has been improved by Adobe as the latest version of the software does load quicker; Adobe claims that Adobe Reader 7 users can "Open and save PDF files faster than ever. Adobe Reader 7.0 launches much faster than previous versions (up to 50% faster than version 6.0)".^[8]