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At Wharton, PDFs Stand the Test of Time
5/7/2002
Computer technology has advanced
dramatically since 1993, when the Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania put then-new Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat software and the Portable
Document Format (PDF) to work. The school first used the technology to
disseminate information to students and faculty over local-area networks. It was
an innovative application at the time, but over the years, Wharton not only has
continued to use PDFs, it also has greatly expanded their role across campus and
beyond.
"We routinely distribute all school publications—including
course catalogs, promotional brochures, and periodicals—as well as course
materials and faculty research papers in Adobe PDF over the Web and other
electronic media," says Kendall Whitehouse, Wharton's director of advanced
technology development. "What began as a ‘one-to-many' distribution model has
become a ‘many-to-many' way for everyone associated with Wharton to share
information."
The PDF is a popular delivery format for reasons that
have been true since its inception: Anyone can open, view, and print documents
that look just like the originals, regardless of their visual complexity or the
application used to create them. But according to Whitehouse, efficiency is
merely the beginning of the technology's benefit to Wharton.
"Our Adobe
PDF files have become increasingly valuable over time," Whitehouse says.
"Without any additional effort, we've created a historical document archive that
has outlived original artwork files and printed copies. With what other document
format would that be true? Most application files are incompatible from version
to version. But Adobe PDF files created in Acrobat 1.0 in 1993 look just as good
in Acrobat 5.0 today."
As a result, departments and individuals
throughout Wharton have been able to preserve whatever documents they
need—including hundreds of back issues of Wharton's State of the School annual
reports, alumni magazines, and other publications—in a way that makes them easy
to use. Through Wharton's dozens of internal and external Web sites, students,
faculty, researchers, administrators, alumni, prospects, and people worldwide
have instant access to relevant information.
PDF files download
quickly. They retain the look the authors intended and are comfortable to view
on screen because they contain navigational elements such as thumbnail previews,
bookmarks, links, and article threads that help readers scan multicolumn and
multipage layouts. Viewers can then print pages true to the document's
appearance. "Most formats are optimized for either screen or print," Whitehouse
says, "but Adobe PDF files render beautifully on monitors and on paper."
Moreover, Adobe PDF files maintain their fidelity across platforms,
from desktop and laptop computers to handheld devices, which weren't even
invented when Wharton began using Acrobat. Says Whitehouse, "The Adobe PDF
architecture is forward- and backward-compatible. We keep finding new uses for
Adobe PDF as computer technology changes around it."
Wharton faculty
members, for example, now regularly use Acrobat software to generate course
materials as press-ready PDF files, which they submit electronically to Xerox
Corp.
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