Adobe Acrobat® PDF Documents
Adobe has created a cross-platform document reader
called Acrobat. Adobe Acrobat formatted document readers are available for major
operating systems and available as plug-ins for web browsers.
The Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format)
Format and Reader Guide is itself in PDF format. To view it, you need to get the
Adobe Acrobat Reader and install in with your WWW browser program
before you access the file.
There are several ways to get the Adobe Acrobat Reader:
- Download it from the VT library. (See
"Configure the WWW Browser" discussion below.)
- Download it from Adobe Corporation.
- Get it off of the Engineering CDROMs.
Configure the WWW Browser
Before getting the Adobe Acrobat your WWW browser must be configured to
inform it what to do with the downloaded file. The library has some good
step-by-step instructions for doing this for MS Windows
and for the Apple
Macintosh. Follow these instructions before you attempt to follow the
link above and actually get Acrobat.
If the version of the Acrobat Reader you have does NOT come with the Weblink
Plug-In get it and install it. You will need it to automatically
follow the World Wide Web (WWW) links I will embed in the PDF files from
time to time.
UNIX PDF Viewing
There is a fairly simple way to make the PDF files from CS 1704 accessable
under FreeBSD. Simply install the "Postscript Printer" driver under Windows
and set it to print to "EPT:" (use the connect button). Now load up Acrobat
Reader and print to the Postscript Printer. (Be sure you set it to print
Type 1.) A file called "EPT" will show up in the current directory. Just
rename it to whatever the note file was called with a PS extension. Now the
file can be read by GhostView under X. The quality is just slightly less
than that of a PDF file, but is fine, and all the graphics still show up.
Be warned: PS files are about twice the size of PDF files, but that's a
small price to pay.
After you have downloaded the Adobe Acrobat Reader and installed it click here to view the PDF document that describes the Adobe Acrobat format and Reader.
Further Exploration 
Adobe Acrobat Product Info