Technical Foundations
Anyone may create applications that can read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems; Adobe holds patents to PDF, but licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its PDF specification.
The PDF combines three technologies:
- A subset of the PostScript page description programming language, for generating the layout and graphics.
- A font-embedding/replacement system to allow fonts to travel with the documents.
- A structured storage system to bundle these elements and any associated content into a single file, with data compression where appropriate.
Read more about this topic: Portable Document Format
Famous quotes containing the words technical and/or foundations:
“The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, the whole is greater than its part; reaction is equal to action; the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time; and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel.... We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.”
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