The sequence is intended to reflect developments in Acrobat and PDF. If you still need to find out about PDF for pre-press, make sure you visit Digital Solutions on the 21st. The latter two meetings move on to the online uses of PDF through the structure in the recent versions of the file format.

Digital Solutions is intended mainly for an audience of production professionals using digital technology for printing. Some people attend who work as buyers of print and other forms of communication, such as IT. Recently Adobe have expanded their intention with PDF to include organisations as well as creative professionals. The structure in PDF files allows links to XML and databases. Online use of PDF documents has been expanded to include forms through improved server software. Reader Extensions allows specific PDF files to appear to use the full Acrobat software even though the user has Adobe Reader. So forms can be saved for example. This is a new approach following Business Tools and Approval, which were tried before without much popularity. For e-government applications it is not realistic to expect citizens to pay for the infrastructure. So the server software is more likely to work out.

The Defra project is one of the first e-government projects in the UK to use Reader Extensions. For people working in print this will be an interesting window on what is possible, and also a reference for what may happen later with production information and the Job Definition Format. The JDF now includes some of the specification that was the Portable Job Ticket in the original PDF. Printers may use a combination of XML and PDF for the JDF aspects of workflow. It will be useful to understand the potential of PDF forms.

Some print organisations will be able to support databases and the use of digital assets for other media as well as hard copy. The structure in PDF files makes it possible to re-flow the content or re-design the page for different devices. This may appear to be a technical issue only, but there are implications for how publishing is organised. The talk from David Brailsford will be a link between the now standard use of PDF for print workflows and the online future opened up by software on the server.

Will Pollard

Future Meetings of the Acrobat User Forum

These issues will be part of the discussion at small meetings later this year. These will look at forms and data in more detail. There will be an Adobe webcast for financial analysts on October 27th that will include more information on plans for server software.