PDF Research Universal Publishing Design...
Definition
Where We Are
The Future
Opportunities

Where We Are...

We are forever at the cave painting stage of emerging publishing technology.

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A collection of visuals from our presentation on "The PDF Format: Universal Publishing" is now available in PDF format. Best viewed with the PDFViewer Helper.

The rate of change in the publishing field is geometric.

  • From hierglyphs to Gutenberg's letterpress - 5000 years.
  • From letterpress to photolithography - 500 years.
  • From photolithography to desktop publishing - 50 years
  • From desktop publishing to World Wide Web - 10 years
  • From WWW to High Definition Television - 5 years

Digital publishing enjoys immense advantages over print publishing for a variety of reasons.

  • Creativity
    The price of paper stock and the limitations of size, shape, binding, and color all affect how we design. Digital publishing allows us greater latitude as well as allows us to add motion, sound, forms, interactivity and linking.
  • Distribution Methods
    "Print first, distribute afterwards" requires careful anticipation of demand with costly consequences.
    "Distribute first, print on demand" allows the user to choose whether printing is necessary and access to documents can be secured with passwords.
  • Shipping and Storage
    One CD-ROM can hold 1700 lbs. of paper's worth of text. That's tonnage. Add to the cost of printing the cost of vacillating postal rates and the overhead of storage and preservation and the cost difference between digital and paper is immense.
  • Search and Retrieval
    Paper files can only be filed by one index field. Access requires training and refiling is prone to errors. Statistics show that 7.5% of paper documents get lost completely. In contrast, digital documents can have any number of keywords attached and access is controllable through password protection. Hyperlinking between documents speeds up access to complete information.

For another comparison of formats, visit InfoCon America's comparison of PDF against printing and non-PDF formats (i.e. SGML tagging, HTML).

"Executives spend as much as three hours every week looking for missing information, the average document is copied 19 times, 200 million pieces of paper are filed away each day."

Dr. Keith T. Davidson
Executive Director, Xplor International

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