Anniversary of a file format: The PDF turns 30
In 1993, Adobe introduced the Portable Document Format—and today, more than 400 billion PDF files are opened in Adobe products each year.
A popular file format turns 30: Adobe launched the Portable Document Format (PDF) in 1993. And this is how it all began: Adobe co-founder John Warnock developed the format as part of a project called "Camelot." Today, as in the 1990 idea sketch, PDF stands for the ability to exchange documents across operating systems, software applications and devices without changing their appearance. Recipients can therefore read and print any PDF in the same way as the sender. With the ISO release 15 years ago, Adobe made the PDF permanently available to the public free of charge, and Adobe Acrobat Reader - the viewer for PDF files - is also freely available today.
"Our vision for Camelot is to provide a collection of utilities, applications, and system software so that an organization can effectively capture documents from any application, send electronic versions of those documents anywhere, and view and print those documents on any device," Warnock wrote about The Camelot Project (J. Warnock) in the early 1990s. Even the first version, PDF 1.0, supported links, bookmarks, embedded fonts and RGB images. But Warnock and his collaborators had more in mind for documents than the purely digital version of printed paper. So PDF and Acrobat were soon enhanced with search functions, article threads or Java Script elements, and strong encryption technology, among other features. Last year alone, more than 400 billion PDF files were opened in Adobe products.
