Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00560)

On Saturday, 19 Oct 1996 MK Ramadoss wrote:

>From what I have seen, some of the software documentation that come with some of the free downloadable software are made available in two popular formats. One is Adobe Acrobat Format and the other is Microsoft Word Format. In both cases, there are free software available for viewing and printing the documents.

Can anyone who has more knowledge in this area provide any input?
_______

I'm not sure about the capabilities of the MS Word format beyond simple
text content but have had sucess with the Adobe Acrobat PDF format. I
like it because it allows for the inclusion of graphics, photographs and
hyperlinks. It acts as a multimedia application and is stand-alone after
download (i.e., not dependant on the Web. As a new publishing vehicle,
it has (IMO) great potential. The encoding software is inexpensive and
widely available. The Netscape plug-in "Amber", available at Adobe's web
site

http://www.adobe.com

is easily installed and available free of charge. This allows you to
read the PDF document in-line via Netscape. There is also a new
improvemant to Netscape 3.0's email capability called "html email" It
will allow one to keep content on a server yet send email to people
(with Netscape 3.0 or better as their web browser) who can access it
much as a web browser accesses a web page, complete with graphics,
active hyperlinks, etc. It looks and acts to the receiver like a web
page(s). This is brand new, but also has great publishing possibilities.
For the time being however, it leaves out those people who use Microsoft
Explorer or AOL, etc as their web browser. Worth watching.

Hope this helps,

Mark