Industry leaders need to join in the global quest for a single open document standard...
IT IS one of the ironies of the computer revolution, now a quarter century old, that automation, far from decreasing the dependence on paper has vastly escalated it. First they spoke of the `paperless office'; when that proved to be almost unachievable, they rephrased it as `less-paper' office. We may no longer maintain vast godowns of paper files and records at corporate level; but in our individual capacities we tend to generate, exchange and download a lot more information — a large chunk of it not critical to our work.

Sitting on a gold mine
What is more, we have become choosy: We want to print a document exactly as it was sent — which is why companies like Adobe, who developed the Portable Document Format (PDF) to do just this and created a tool called Acrobat to transport such files on the Internet, are sitting on a gold mine.
This month, the latest — 8th — version of Adobe Acrobat has been released in India. As it proclaims on the cover, it is not just a vehicle to send and receive documents but a collaboration and communication tool.
A single click accesses a separate service called Connect that enables real-time Web-based collaboration on a document. This is aimed at professional verticals like the construction and engineering industry.
Legal beagles, marketing mavericks, publishing pundits...these are some of the professional groups, Adobe has set its sights on. In fact multiple documents can be bundled as a single PDF file — and collaborators can post their marginal comments much as they would stick `PostIT' memos on a real document.

Bloated the product
Now the level of automation has been made smarter. A new feature allows users to selectively hide sensitive information.
All these have bloated the product beyond a simple PDF reader-creator. The Acrobat 8.0 Professional version costs Rs. 25,000 while the Acrobat 8.0 Standard is available at Rs. 17,000.
On his first visit to the land of his birth recently, after steering the mega merger with technology company Macromedia, Shantanu Narayen, President and Chief Operating Officer of San Jose, California (U.S.)-based Adobe Systems, took time off last month to brief The Hindu about his Net-enabled road map for the future.
A new technology `combo' codenamed `Apollo', will enable a digital work flow that is aimed at embracing both designers and developers simplifying the process from project conception to completion, Mr Narayen explained. It will leverage Adobe's flagship product Acrobat and the Connect feature.
Naresh Gupta, Managing Director of Adobe's Bangalore-based R&D Centre added that Indian engineers were the brains behind critical features of another element of the new Apollo initiative: the Web publishing tool `Contribute.'
For its fourth and latest edition, the Bangalore engineers had added features to Contribute, that simplified the process of creating blogs — or web logs — allowing tight integration with Microsoft's Office and enabling bloggers to include Flash animation in their postings.
What about the rest of us who look for a simple way to send a document by email so that it is received with the look and feel of the original? While the Acrobat reader continues to be free, the full product that enables one to create a PDF file, has been priced out of the reach of lay users.

Many alternatives
No wonder so many alternatives have sprung up on the Web. A free-to-download PDF creator PDF creator from any Windows platform is available at Source Forge : http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
Foxit 2.3 ( http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php ) is the latest version of a fast PDF Reader that occupies just 1.5 MB.
It allows you to draw graphics, highlight and type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document.
You may convert the whole PDF document into a simple text file. The basic version is free to download.
Microsoft's next Windows version, Vista will allow document creation as a PDF file or in its own challenge to ODF called XPS. The Save as PDF and XPS download is available at http: // http://www.micro/ soft.com /downloads.
The Open Document Format Alliance (http://www.odfalliance.org/) has seen dozens of IT players, nations and states coming together under the ODF flag (ODF was initially a creation of OpenOffice.org).
Indian members include the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune, the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and the National Institute for Smart Government, Hyderabad.
The Delhi government has opted for ODF for its commercial tax department.
There will always be a market for compelling corporate document collaboration solutions — like Acrobat's latest avatar. But the Adobes and Microsofts of the world need to nurture the aspirations of the millions of lay users of the Net by joining in the global quest for a single open document standard.

Original Story

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