Using Acrobat in Writing Classes: Primer

Adobe Acrobat Primer

Adobe Acrobat is a suite of software programs used for electronic publishing. With Adobe Acrobat, PDF (Portable Document Format) files can published and distributed electronically, such as e-mail attachments, Web sites, CD-ROM, and intranets.

Acrobat Reader software lets you view, navigate, and print PDF files regardless of the computer, monitor, or software version. You may make and distribute unlimited copies of the Acrobat Reader software. Reader is available to anyone to as a free download. Students must have Reader and a computer to view PDF files.

Acrobat has all the capabilities of Reader but more, because it is the actual "authoring" program. It allows you to view, create, and modify PDF files by adding hyperlinks, bookmarks, thumbnails, comments, and multimedia (such as movies and sounds). It also allows you to create PDF files from Web sites for viewing offline.

Academic pricing for Acrobat 5.0, the current version, is $60 for an individual copy. A site license price will vary, depending upon campus agreements. For more information, see Adobe’s Education Site. Version 5.0 has several new features.

Distiller is a driver that converts PostScript files to PDF. It has many options for output, such as the amount of compression, color quality, embedding fonts, and image resolution.