A PDF is a file in the Adobe Portable Document Format, and its purpose is to render finished documents and forms in an OS-agnostic manner. PDF has emerged as the de-facto standard for document exchange, sharing, and distribution in situations where the precise layout of the document and its pages is critical. Before Adobe created the format in 1993, the only formats for document exchange were proprietary word processor file formats (whose rendering often depended just as much on the word processor's platform and version as it did on the brand) or plain unformatted text files.
The use of the PDF file format depends on both a creator and a reader. Adobe's creator product is Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe's reader is Adobe Reader (formerly known as Acrobat Reader). Other products have arisen to create as well as read PDF documents.
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