The simple Find function in Acrobat Exchange performs similarly. Arabic text originally from Arabic Word for Windows, for example, cannot be pasted back into that program with success. This tool, which includes software licensed from Verity, Inc., and which is sold separately from the Adobe Acrobat Pro package that contains Distiller, Exchange and Reader, creates indexes of the PDF files stored in designated directories. The updating of indexes can be automated and set to run at specific times, every hour, for example. Once the indexes are created, it is possible in Exchange to form various types of queries, including Boolean, stem, and semantically related word searches.
Indexing is a very simple and relatively fast process.
With a large amount of data, however, updating the index at close intervals could make it difficult to work simultaneously with other programs. With Arabic, moreover, one must search for glyphs rather than characters, and even words that seem to be identical will not necessarily be found in a search. Despite the problems mentioned above, Adobe Acrobat remains a superior tool for electronic publishing, whether online or offline. The primary advantage in the Acrobat system seems to be the use of real fonts which permit real text searches but which do not have to be embedded in all files in a given series. For browsing it is sufficient to open first a single file which has the fonts used embedded.