The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems as a standard for the web and for printing. PDF is a fixed-layout format used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.
Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a 2-D document (and, with Acrobat 3-D, embedded 3-D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2-D vector graphics that compose the documents.
PDF is a popular way of formatting documents because it preserves the graphical look of a document, unlike HTML, which adapts itself to different browsers and has limited support for fonts. Documents in the PDF format can be viewed, navigated, and printed from any computer regardless of the fonts or software programs used to create the original.
Adobe Reader is free software that lets you open, view, search, and print Adobe Portable Document Format files.
Foxit Reader is a PDF viewer, with small size, breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set.
PrimoPDF is a free tool for high-quality PDF creation that enables printing to PDF from virtually any Windows application.
