Adobe opens up its PDF file format.
The company joins Bentley Systems, Intergraph, and McNeel (Rhino) in documenting primary file formats publicly.
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Actually, PDF has been an open format for a long, long time - a quick search finds the PDF Format Specs for V1.3 (July 2000), and it may have been opened before then.
That's one reason there are so many tools for it.
Postscript, OTOH, is not an open format.
--Tony
Posted by: Tony in SV | Jan 29, 2007 at 09:09 AM
Neither are Adobe's many other formats.
Clearly, documenting formats is done only when the corporation sees a benefit to itself; in this case, Adobe is ensuring PDF is used by agencies concerned about opening documents a hundred years hence -- and then purchasing Adobe's expensive server software (heh!).
Posted by: ralphg | Jan 29, 2007 at 09:36 AM
Interesting... Wonder if the fact that DWF or the new Microsoft XPS formats are "open" was a driver to make this kind of move...
While PDF has been "open" for some time, that's not really the same as being adopted by an ISO standard.
Posted by: Matt M | Jan 29, 2007 at 04:07 PM
Tony, Postscript may not be an open format (whatever that means), but I have on my bookshelf "PostScript Language Reference Manual", second edition (1990) by Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Posted by: Dale | Jan 29, 2007 at 05:48 PM