PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is a file format used to present documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, graphics, and other information needed to display it. In 1991, Adobe Systems co-founder John Warnock outlined a system called “Camelot”that evolved into PDF.
While Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993, PDF was a proprietary format, controlled by Adobe, until it was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008, at which time control of the specification passed to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts. In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell and distribute PDF compliant implementations. However, there are still some technologies referenced by ISO 32000-1 that can be incorporated into valid PDF files that remain proprietary (but still publicly documented), such as Adobe XML Forms Architecture, and JavaScript for Acrobat. The ISO committee is actively standardizing many of these as part of ISO 32000-2.
