What does it mean to send something back in PDF format?

Answer 1

I'm not sure of the context, but here's how it normally works. First of all, PDF format was created by Adobe to allieviate some of the problem scenarios that I'll describe, below.

The most likely scenario is that one person has a piece of software used perform a task and it gives some sort of output, generally in the form of a report or table, chart, etc. The first person wants to send this output to another person, so that he can view it, or perhaps print it out for distribution.

If the first person just takes his file and sends it, then there could be some problems.

1. If the second person does not have the same software as the first person, then he will not even be able to open at all.
2. He has the same software and can open it, but he doesn't have the same fonts installed on his computer, so the text appears 'messed up'.
3. The saved file has too much information for what really needed to be displayed.

For #1, think if you created a Presentation in Microsoft Powerpoint, and you want to send it to somebody, but they don't have Powerpoint. What do they do? Well in that particular case, Microsoft has provided free viewers which can be downloaded to view Powerpoint files. That's fine, but thats all they can do. Suppose you were wanting the person to print them out as 3 per page handouts. I'm not sure if they can do that from the viewer. Then we may have font issue with even the Powerpoint viewer scenario.

I could go on. Office type programs are just one example. Take other software which a person may have, which may not be as widely distributed, like Quickbooks or some industry specific software (maybe a church or nonprofit has software to keep track of membership and donations). Even if the second person has Quickbooks or the other software, most people do not want to send off their entire Quickbooks file or the entire membership database, just to generate a few reports, so what to do?

Adobe created the PDF format (stands for Portable Document Format), and has a free reader available. They also made the specifications of PDF available. So what the first person would do is have a virtual printer on his computer. He has the information that he wants to send, and chooses to print it. But instead of coming out on paper, a PDF file is created, which embeds all of the font information and all other information to display or print that page on another computer, without the original software.

The format is popular, and there are many reader softwares freely available, other than the one from Adobe, so it has become a standard format to exchange files.