A suite of programs developed by Adobe Systems, Inc. for creating and distributing electronic documents. Programs in the suite allow you to create a Portable document Format (PDF) file for a document. You can then distribute the PDF file electronically to people who view the document with the Acrobat Reader. The reader is the best known component of the Acrobat suite and is freely distributed.
People viewing a PDF file (or document) with the Acrobat reader see the document with the exact layout intended by the author. This is its main advantage over other electronic formats such as HTML, where the layout can vary depending on the softwarebeing used.
Also see All About PDF Technology in Webopedia’s “Did You Know…?” section.
