The theory of The Paperless Society was that the widespread dissemination and availability of information via electronic media (i.e. computers) would essentially eliminate the necessity of producing printed materials. However, have you taken a look at the acres of trees being eaten up by the multitudes of printers, copiers, faxes, etc. lately? Seems like something went wrong between the rubber and the road. Actually, contrary to the hope of the Paperless Society, the ease of spreading around electronic mail, memos, letters, reports, jokes, top-ten lists, and so forth has meant that it is now easier than ever to receive more material every day which individuals can just print off and not bother to pick up; or print, pick up and immediately discard; or even occasionally print, pick up, read, and then throw away.
I print, therefore I am. There are many reasons why so much 'stuff' gets printed. One reason is because people find it so much easier to read from a printed page rather than from a computer monitor screen. Another reason is because people feel safer with something that they can hold in their hands, distrusting the computer to keep their only copy for them. However one major reason that so much gets printed and distributed [now we're actually getting closer to what this article was supposed to be about in the first place] is because there is usually no other way to have the intended recipient view the document in its final form, with all the fancy formats and fonts, without having it printed off.
Take Omnibus for example. You are almost certainly reading a paper 'form' of this issue. Why is that? Well, Omnibus is put together using QuarkXPress, an electronic publishing software application. Even if the final QuarkXPress version of this month's Omnibus document was put on-line somewhere, you would still need your own personal copy of QuarkXPress in order to read it. Just like when folks send around a Word document or Excel spreadsheet. Each recipient needs the same application that was used to create the document (e.g. I need a copy of Word to read any Word documents that are sent to me). Not only is this expensive, but the sender really has no way of knowing which applications the recipients have available to them. It's not probable that most Macintosh users have their own copy of QuarkXPress lying around on their hard disks. You might be thinking that making a sharable copy of the creating application available on the network would solve this problem. Not really, for several reasons. One, everyone who received the document would have to be on the same network in order to access the shared piece of software. Two, most application software licenses are single user, single-system licenses and so prohibit mass sharing of the same code. And three, even if the software were available to everyone over the network, most end-user systems are not capable of running the large, CPU intensive, software applications with their memory requirements and so forth such as QuarkXPress or PageMaker.
So that means that we are stuck with printing and distributing? Not exactly. This is where ".pdf" files and Adobe[TM] Acrobat[TM] come in. Portable Document Format (pdf) files are just that. PDF is a unique file format that describes documents containing any combination of text, graphics, images, and color, in a format that doesn't depend on the computer the viewer has, or the software they have available. PDF is designed to replicate the appearance of pages with the same fidelity as the original on a wide variety of platforms. In other words, I can use my favorite document preparation software to prepare my fancy-smanchy document, convert it to a PDF file, and then distribute it around the office or around the world. The viewer does not need to have the same applications that I did when I created the document, the PDF format insures that the original look and feel is preserved.
The Adobe Acrobat Reader allows recipients to view and print any PDF document they receive. Since so many vendors are now distributing their documentation in PDF, you should know where to get a reader for your Macintosh. The ASHD1 volume has a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader version 2.1 (in the folder "Acrobat[TM] Reader 2.1 installer"). This reader is free to users to download, install, and use. The installer application contains a Read Me file that gives the latest information and program installation instructions. There are also several folders of Acrobat 'plug-ins' (Acrobat[TM] Plug-Ins), such as the Weblink plug-in. This allows Acrobat Reader users to take advantage of World Wide Web (URL) links in PDF files. A folder of Acrobat utilities (Acrobat[TM] utilities) will be found on ASHD1 as well.
More and more of the documentation that we have been receiving is in PDF format - from Apple, as well as other vendors. Some universities are converting all of their documentation to PDF format. Its a good bet that you will soon be wanting to install the Acrobat Reader on your Macintosh.
Peter Furmonavicius <peter.furmonavicius@yale.edu>is a senior research programmer for C&IS Technology and Planning