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Re: Player Pro and Packages

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg87983] Re: Player Pro and Packages
  • From: Jean-Marc Gulliet <jeanmarc.gulliet at gmail.com>
  • Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:40:39 -0400 (EDT)
  • Organization: The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
  • References: <200804150947.FAA24752@smc.vnet.net> <fu4fnb$nkc$1@smc.vnet.net> <fuhf8r$i8o$1@smc.vnet.net>

AES wrote:

> In article <fu4fnb$nkc$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
>  "Ingolf Dahl" <ingolf.dahl at telia.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Maybe Wolfram should ask Adobe for an advice, how to ensure that behind the
>> content created for Adobe Reader is a genuine Adobe Acrobat license. The
>> problems involved seem to be quite equivalent. ;-)
> 
> I do hope this comment was sarcastic or sardonic, rather than serious?
> 
> Is not the great virtue of PDF that it's a more or less fully _open_, 
> fully specified, and widely distributed format or standard, made openly 
> available by Adobe so that anyone with adequate coding skills can create 
> documents or display documents in that format _without_ having an Adobe 
> license at either end.  
> 
> I understand that Adobe does retain some kind of ownership over it, and 
> they certainly sell tools that third parties can purchase to create or 
> read PDFS.  And, there are security links and password protections that 
> document creators can put into PDF documents to limit what recipients 
> can do with a document.  
> 
> But my understanding was that the second paragraph above was nonetheless 
> more or less true (except for some unfortunate garbage related to 
> embedded fonts).  Is this not the case?

 From the Adobe Developer Connection website:

"The PDF specification was first published when Adobe Acrobat was 
introduced in 1993. Since then, updated versions of the PDF Reference 
have been made available from Adobe via the Web. A significant number of 
developers and systems integrators offer customized enhancements and 
extensions to Adobe's core family of products. Adobe publishes the PDF 
specification to foster the creation of an ecosystem around the PDF 
format. The PDF Reference provides a description of the Portable 
Document Format and is intended for application developers wishing to 
develop applications that create PDF files directly, as well as read or 
modify PDF document content."

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html

(Note that this is why open source as well as non-Adobe commercial 
software can legally read and create, and even add goodies to, PDF 
files. To name a few: OpenOffice, PDFCreator, Mac OS X, ...)

Regards,
-- Jean-Marc



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