Mapsoft Blogs

Is PDF accessible? Overview Accessibility in software refers to the design and development of software that is usable by people with disabilities. Keyboard shortcuts, screen reader compatibility, and high contrast modes are examples of such features. It also includes ensuring that the software can be used with assistive technology, such as screen readers and magnifiers, and that it can be navigated using only a keyboard. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionality can also be included in accessible software, making it easier for people with disabilities to interact with the software. Accessible software is essential because it ensures that everyone, regardless of ability, can use and benefit from it. Making sure that people with disabilities have equal access to information and technology is not only a legal requirement, but also a moral imperative. The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe Systems. PDF makes it possible to distribute documents with ori

Adobe PDF Base-14 Fonts A number of fonts are included with Adobe Acrobat and therefore don't need to be embedded in PDF files. In our products Impress , Impress Pro and TOCBuilder these fonts are marked in the font lists in Red: 4 font sets in the Helvetica family: normal, bold, and bold italic, with any size. XSL-FO "sans-serif" font family is normally mapped to "Helvetica". 4 font sets in the Times family: normal, bold, and bold italic, with any size XSL-FO "serif" font family is normally mapped to "Times". 4 font sets in the Courier family: normal, bold, and bold italic, with any size. XSL-FO "monospace" font family is normally mapped to "Courier". 1 font sets in the Symbol family: normal, with any size. "Symbol" is normally used for Greek alphabets and some symbols like:  Ω, φ, ≠, ©. 1 font sets in the ZapfDingbats family: normal, with any size. "ZapfDingbats" is normally used for Zapf dingbats

 The Camelot Project  J. Warnock This document describes the base technology and ideas behind the project named “Camelot.” This project’s goal is to solve a fundamental problem that confronts today’s companies. The problem is concerned with our ability to communicate visual material between different computer applications and systems. The specific problem is that most programs print to a wide range of printers, but there is no universal way to communicate and view this printed information electronically. The popularity of FAX machines has given us a way to send images around to produce remote paper, but the lack of quality, the high communication bandwidth and the device specific nature of FAX has made the solution less than desirable. What industries badly need is a universal way to communicate documents across a wide variety of machine configurations, operating systems and communication networks. These documents should be viewable on any display and should be printable on any modern

A Short History of PDF Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. In the early years PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows and the first PDF Export was created for PageMaker 5 by Mapsoft . PDF competed with a variety of formats such as DjVu, Envoy, Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica and even Adobe's own PostScript format. Released as an ISO standard PDF was a proprietary format controlled by Adobe until it was released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008,[5][6] at which time control of the specification passed to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts. In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell, and distribute PDF-compliant implementations.[7] PDF 1.7, the sixth edition of the PDF specification and the version