What are Portable Documents?
A “Portable Document” allows cross-platform, device independent transmission of its information (fonts, format, color, graphics). When you pick up the phone, you don’t ask what kind of phone the person on the other end is using. Phones communicate to other phones. When you create an electronic document, you shouldn’t have to think about where it is going, or what applications or which fonts are being used. You should just be able to send it and share it [Ames93]. To achieve these characteristics a special Portable Document Format (PDF) is necessary as well as a method for treating the fonts used in the document. Finally, we should not have to change any of our environments, or alter our hardware, software, or network configurations to have portable documents.
