Although PDF (Portable Document Format) was introduced to the world in June 1993 as a way to reliably view, print, and share information, it was first conceived by John Warnock ten years earlier. John Warnock’s vision for graphics and print technology led to his authoring of the scripting language that, when used to print up a document, would retain the formatting. This language, called Adobe PostScript was released in 1984, and soon became popular as a productive and cost efficient software. It was this scripting technology that was developed into a file format that could format across systems and platforms, and was introduced as PDF 1.0 in 1993.

PDF 1.0 featured internal links and bookmarks and fonts that could be embedded, but the only color space supported was RGB. Besides, it was too expensive ($695 for the personal version and $2,495 for the network version, with a further payment of $50 for Acrobat Reader), which made it unpopular.

A year later in September 1994, Acrobat Reader was made free and a new PDF 1.1 introduced. This new version supported external links, article threads, security features, and device independent colors. Acrobat 2.0 soon followed with enhancements, including a new architecture of Acrobat Exchange to support plug-ins and the possibility to search PDF files. Acrobat 2.1 added multimedia support.

In 1996, Acrobat 3.0 was launched. This version supported OPI 1.3 specifications and CMYK color space. Spot colors could also be maintained with half-tone functions and overprint instructions. PDF soon gained popularity as further features like the possibility to link PDF files to HTML pages and vice versa were added.

In 1998, Acrobat 4.0 was launched with added features like webcapture, configurations which made creation of PDF files easy, and easy integration in Microsoft Office. Acrobat 5 was released in May 2001. This included transparency support and improved security. The PDF file format was also improved with support for Java Script and “tagged PDFs”.

In May 2003, Acrobat 6 and PDF 1.5 were introduced. Added features included improved compression techniques and supports for layers and tagged PDFs. Acrobat Reader was renamed Adobe Reader in the same year. In 2005, Acrobat 7 was introduced which supported a new PDF 1.6. Improvements this time were in encryption algorithms, annotations and tagging, and the ability to embed 3D data. Acrobat 8 was introduced in November 2006, which made it easier to save documents in older PDF versions, and had better organized menus and toolbars.

Today PDF is the most popular file format with over 200 million PDF documents posted on the web and more than 1,800 vendors in the PDF ecosystem, worldwide, which offer PDF-based solutions including technologies PDF creation, plug-in, consulting, training, and support.

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