One of the troubles which all of the technical people face is that they are unable to express themselves in just one sentence. This is particular when such people are asked to answer a question, 'Portable Document Format is great but why it should be termed as great when the content becomes non-editable and frozen?' To this, probably the answer that can be expected is that the format is great because it allows users to select and lock the look as well as feel of the content in PDF files. If this is not the answer then technical people might say that the format is great because users can apply document signature after creating a file so that no one can tamper with the content. With the amount of popularity that the format has gained, almost every one will say the similar thing that they can create various files in PDF and send them across to people over the net without any trouble. People feel at ease because the content is protected from a third party as well as various malware. For different people, the use of PDF files is also different but they all agree that the format is possibly the best when it comes to sharing a document.

Ability to edit and reuse content in a portable document file- Users who are really concerned about this file format must follow the ISO committee, which is in-charge of managing PDF as the ISO 32000 standard. There is a lot of information available, which states that the ownership of PDF has moved from Adobe to ISO. The charge was moved in the month of January of 2008. However a majority of the reuse issues belong to the software and the not the format. So if you are using a software and find something is wrong with it then it would be best to consider replacing it with another that has needed functionality and features. PDF conversion software allows you to edit PDF files by converting PDF to word or another editable document format. Once the editing is done, you can convert the document back from word to PDF hence carrying out the whole editing process with one software. Basically there are some degrees of reuse that have been incorporated in Acrobat viewer, which are:

  • Copy/Paste content – With the author's permission, content from a PDF file can be copied and pasted in another file.
  • Exporting – Acrobat offers support to exporting content in various formats such as .doc, html, jpeg, xml, tiff, .txt, etc. It will be amazing for you to see how many formats Acrobat supports. This surely provides a strong support needed to reuse the content in a file created in this format.
  • Hybrid files and documents – Hybrid documents can be created that include the original source file by the author as an attachment. Acrobat's Open Office tools, an automated feature supports creation of hybrid files. The final document has the editability of the original source which the author used for the creation of PDF at first.

    • Since it allows only limited control over the PDF file, using PDF conversion software over Acrobat viewer would be a wiser choice.

    Author's Bio: 

    Gracy Brett is the developer & publisher of powerful document conversion products like pdf to word converter to edit pdf files, using which one can also convert word to pdf. She is the frequent writer of supportive trade articles.