Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is a reliable file format for storing line art, images, and text (including all required fonts) for pages. Once created, a PDF file can be shared and reused among many different people or processes. Since a PDF file can be viewed on-screen or over the Web, it is simple to preview the content prior to making finished output.
There are two key differences between PostScript and PDF formats:
- PostScript is, essentially, a programming language. PDF is a page description language, making interpretation much more repeatable and reliable.
- An entire PostScript file must be interpreted to obtain the content of a single page. In a multi-page PDF file, the content for each page is independent. If changes are made to a single page, only that page needs to be reinterpreted.
PDF is the internal format for all of Prinergy's digital masters. Through the refining process, PostScript files are interpreted, a display list is created, and from that display list, a digital master PDF file is constructed.
