You can link directly from NASA's site to the Adobe site for download of Acrobat Reader and can download and read PDF technical and educational materials. It was neither fish nor fowl. With Acrobat 4, however, Adobe has made a strong case for PDF as the overarching solution to communicating across all media. Optimizing files for Web, print or press output is a step in that direction. Using ICC color profiles also keeps colors consistent between Web and print.
Limitations still exist, however.
And some might argue that designing PDFs for the Web is challenging as monitors are almost always wider than tall while print pages are the opposite. But PDF has brought the process of maintaining layout integrity for both print and Web one step further. Perhaps the real solution to using PDF lies in our expectations of what print and electronic documents should be. Scott Bury is a writer, editor and educator based in Kanata, Ontario. All rights reserved.