The Latest Adobe Acrobat

Acrobat is a program which creates PDF (portable document format) files from a variety of file types and the conversion retains the original layout of the document. The latest version, Acrobat 5, has features that improve its usability in sharing documents online as well as over a network. It also has more robust security features.

Acrobat 5 lets you save any PDF file as RTF, JPEG, PS, EPS, and PNG files. The save as RTF feature allows you to extract only text from PDF documents, and leaves out the images and other effects. Saving a PDF documents in other formats creates a separate image file for each page in the document. Acrobat 5 also has some useful options for graphics designers and for those into high-end printing. These include saving to PostScript levels 1,2 or 3 and converting TrueType to Type 1 fonts.

Converting files to PDF documents is also easier. Simply do an Open As in Acrobat 5, choose the file, and it will get converted. You can use it to modify an existing PDF document, or create a new one. This can, however, only be done with BMP, GIF, HTML, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF formats. Acrobat 5 also has a Convert to PDF icon to do this, which (along with other such icons) gets installed within your MS office when you install Acrobat. However, this leads to an increase in the start-up time of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Another icon lets you create a PDF file, open your mail program and include the PDF as an attachment.

Comments

Version 5 lets you open PDF files in your Web browser. Once you do this, you get an Acrobat toolbar in your browser window. Not only can you make comments in text, graphics or use highlighting tools, you can also edit them, look for a specific one, or even get a summary. What’s even better in this version is that you can just upload the comments that you have made through your browser to a server that can then be downloaded by your colleagues and clients located elsewhere. This makes collaborative working faster.

Security

Version 4 ushered in 40-bit encryption for your legal contracts, design proposals, etc. The new version raises this to 128-bit encryption, and also retains backward compatibility. You can password protect PDF documents. You can also easily add digital signatures without going through third-party digital signature vendors to give you one. Acrobat 5 also lets you request for and exchange your digital certificates with colleagues over e-mail, from within Acrobat. Another security feature disallows others from printing your PDF documents or even annotating it.

Forms

You can create forms using the new Acrobat, and connect it to any ODBC database. Forms in the new version also support XML. Now Acrobat 5 also supports the same color engine as Adobe Photoshop, allowing better reproduction of colors.

There are several other features in Acrobat 5. It has an installer to install it over the network on multiple machines, and also send them regular updates, making it easy to deploy in an organization. The price tag of Rs 14,000 for a fresh copy is a little high. However, you can upgrade from an older version for just Rs 5,000. 

Suma E P at PCQ Labs