Hello:
This is in reply to the article on PDF file format. This morning I spoke
with Paul Fontaine of the GSA. PDF is a format that incorporates ASCII.
It is like PostScript in that it contains the ASCII text to be printed or viewed
as well as codes for Font, color, location on the page etc. Although the current
viewers for PDF files are the accrobat products from Adobe, it is possible
to write a viewer to make the files accessible. In the case of the IRS
forms, the IRS went off on its own with this project. It turns out that the
PDF forms can only be viewed or printed. You cannot fill in a PDF form.
Adobe is aware of the issues involved. NIST may get involved with the creation of
a viewer. I suggest that we track activities in this area and we should
consider working with Master Soft (The creator of Word For Word) to make a
converter package. Word for Word is the conversion package used by Arkenstone
and Raised Dot Computing for conversion between word processor formats.
See you all later.
Robert Jaquiss
Internet: robertj@tekgen.bv.tek.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 02 2012 - 01:30:03 PST