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The PDF format was developed in 1991 by John Warnock and became publicly available in 1993, initially competing with other formats in desktop publishing. It transitioned from a proprietary format controlled by Adobe to an open standard in 2008, with the release of ISO 32000-1. The latest version, ISO 32000-2, was published in 2020, eliminating proprietary technologies as normative references and was made available for free download in 2023.

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The PDF format was developed in 1991 by John Warnock and became publicly available in 1993, initially competing with other formats in desktop publishing. It transitioned from a proprietary format controlled by Adobe to an open standard in 2008, with the release of ISO 32000-1. The latest version, ISO 32000-2, was published in 2020, eliminating proprietary technologies as normative references and was made available for free download in 2023.

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qincongyao211
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
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History of PDF

The development of PDF began in 1991 when John Warnock wrote


a paper for a project then code-named Camelot, in which he
proposed the creation of a simpli ed version of PostScript called
Interchange PostScript (IPS).[8] Unlike traditional PostScript, which
was tightly focused on rendering print jobs to output devices, IPS
would be optimized for displaying pages to any screen and any
platform.[8]

Adobe Systems made the PDF speci cation available free of


charge in 1993.[9] In the early years PDF was popular mainly
in desktop publishing work ows, and competed with several other
formats, including DjVu, Envoy, Common Ground Digital Paper,
Farallon Replica and even Adobe's own PostScript format.

PDF was a proprietary format controlled by Adobe until it was


released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by
the International Organization for Standardization as ISO
32000-1:2008,[10][11] at which time control of the speci cation passed
to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts. In 2008, Adobe
published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-
free rights for all patents owned by Adobe necessary to make, use,
sell, and distribute PDF-compliant implementations.[12]

PDF 1.7, the sixth edition of the PDF speci cation that became ISO
32000-1, includes some proprietary technologies de ned only by
Adobe, such as Adobe XML Forms Architecture (XFA)
and JavaScript extension for Acrobat, which are referenced by ISO
32000-1 as normative and indispensable for the full implementation
of the ISO 32000-1 speci cation.[13] These proprietary technologies
are not standardized, and their speci cation is published only on
Adobe's website.[14][15][16] Many of them are not supported by popular
third-party implementations of PDF.

ISO published version 2.0 of PDF, ISO 32000-2 in 2017, available


for purchase, replacing the free speci cation provided by Adobe.
[17] In December 2020, the second edition of PDF 2.0, ISO
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32000-2:2020, was published, with clari cations, corrections, and
critical updates to normative references[18] (ISO 32000-2 does not
include any proprietary technologies as normative references).[19] In
April 2023 the PDF Association made ISO 32000-2 available for
download free of charge.[17]

References
1. Hardy, M.; Masinter, L.; Markovic, D.; Johnson, D.; Bailey, M. (March
2017). The application/pdf Media Type. IETF. doi:10.17487/
RFC8118. RFC 8118.
2. Adobe Systems Incorporated (November 2006). "PDF
Reference" (PDF). 1.7 (6th ed.). Archived from the original (PDF) on
October 1, 2008. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
3. Warnock, J. (October 14, 2004) [Original date 5 May 1995]. "The
Camelot Project" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 18,
2011.
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