Acrobat 5

All very welcome but hardly exciting. There's nothing here to catch the eye like version 4's Web Capture capability for converting Web pages to PDF (though this has been extended with support for CSS and JavaScript). Where's Acrobat 5's killer feature?

In fact, the program does have rather more to offer than appears at first - much of it is hidden away in the revamped Preferences dialog. To begin with, there's the Web Buy option, which enables the easy licensing of downloadable copy-protected PDFs. There's also a new Distiller 'eBook' default job setting, which sits somewhere between the smallest Web-optimised 'Screen' and the more workgroup-oriented 'Print' options.

Going along with this new eBook drive are Acrobat's enhanced accessibility features, again available from the Preferences dialog. You can now override the colour scheme in a PDF to set your own text and background colours to improve readability. Alternatively, Acrobat now supports third-party screen readers, which synthesise text into speech. Under the Display option is another major new feature that Adobe mysteriously seems to be downplaying - its support for CoolType. This is a subpixel colour-aliasing system that improves the quality of text rendering, though only on LCD-based displays.

The biggest change of all though - and one that Adobe doesn't even mention in its various launch press releases - is the presence of a Viewing mode. Next to the Actual View, Fit Page and Fit Width icons is the Reflow option. Select this and, if your PDF has been tagged correctly, the current page's text will automatically reflow to fit the current window size. Change the window size or zoom, and the text automatically reflows to accommodate. This is completely different to Acrobat's usual fixed layout view and quite a shock when you first come across it. After all, surely the whole strength of Acrobat is its high-precision page layout with formatted text and graphics all fixed in place? That's certainly true in most circumstances, but not when trying to view a page on a small screen. For easy reading on a handheld, an uncluttered reflowing layout is essential.

Ultimately, the biggest advance, and the one for which Acrobat 5 will be remembered, is the move towards eBooks and handheld reading - a crucial part of Adobe's 'any time, any place, any device' Network Publishing initiative. Unfortunately for Adobe, it can't make a song and dance about this as its handheld software is still in development (its PalmOS Reader has just gone into public beta), while the ability to tag content for screen reflow is currently restricted to captured Web pages and converted Office documents (though no doubt a new InDesign and FrameMaker are in the pipeline).

At the moment, Acrobat 5 must be judged on its existing merits. With improvements to its security handling, Office integration, team working, form handling and prepress control, it's a worthy release if hardly exciting. Behind the scenes, however, Acrobat's new support for XML and ODBC, PostScript-based transparency, secure eBook handling and built-in repurposing make it a stronger-than-ever cross-media publishing platform for other applications to build on.

Chances are that you'll be coming across a lot more PDFs in the near future.

Author: Tom Arah