PDF is a popular format for distributing documents on the Web. To make PDF documents, you need Adobe Acrobat, which is currently in version 4. The new version has many enhancements and new features—adding digital signatures for enhanced security, support for multiple languages like Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, etc. Enhancements like the tool bar and command bar make for convenient and easy maneuvering.

Working with the new package is pretty easy, and the extensive help makes it even simpler. You can convert any document, including Web pages, or forms with JavaScript, to PDF. Acrobat has a JavaScript tool for editing the script. To create PDF files, you can either open or import a file from within the application, or simply drag-n-drop a file directly on the Acrobat icon on your desktop. It can also do batch processing, where it converts complete document folders at one go. Once you have the PDF document, you can annotate it, insert post-it notes, etc.

Advanced tools like the Movie tool let you insert a link to a QuickTime, MOV or AVI file. When you click on the link, the file starts playing from within the PDF document. The Link tool lets you create hyperlinks and can also be used to reset or submit created forms in the document.

The right-click mouse menus in Acrobat 4 come in handy for quickly changing the properties of any document, say the color of an icon, or the font of text. Inserted objects are also customizable, in that properties like border width, color, etc, can be changed.

Acrobat uses an advanced search option, that lets you index all PDF documents on your system. When you do a search after this, all documents will be queried to find a match. You can put specific or even vague queries, and various kinds of queries—word specific, phonetic, and even word proximity ones can be efficiently handled.

We converted various documents to PDF and got some interesting results. We found that the PDF size for documents like MS Excel or Word with embedded images remained the same after conversion. However, a JPG image file balloons up to more than 10 times the size when converted to PDF. Other graphics formats like GIF, BMP, and PNG didn’t change significantly, and TIF files were slightly compressed.

The package has many good security features. It lets you sign your documents digitally, so that the receiving end can verify the document’s authenticity. Documents can also be password protected with read-only or editing rights.

At Rs 14,500, this feature-rich product is worth a buy.

Ankur Saxena at PCQ Labs