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From Adobe's specifications third-party software developers can create their own PDF code libraries which other third-party software companies can license to create competitive products to Acrobat. So in the PDF market you have developers making apps and developers making library tools to help others make apps -- all designed to compete with Adobe in some respects within the Acrobat PDF economy.

While the embrace of file formats that are 'open standards' are an ideal match for Adobe with PDF, the company's latest product, Acrobat 3D, goes way beyond .u3d for 3d CAD file format compatibility.

Adobe even goes one step further. "We provide an SDK (software developement kit) to developers," says Patrick Aragon, "which will enable them to do various things from within their application if Acrobat is present on the desktop." The company's SDK is C language-based and -- like just about everything else -- is provided for Mac and Linux as well as Windows. It also leverages industry standards-based Javascript technology to interact with forms and do 3d walk-throughs for instance.

Adobe versus Autodesk:

These days Adobe is up against Autodesk as a new challenger to the ubiquitous PDF format both on the Internet and in CAD markets specifically. Autodesk is a formative foe; both companies are similar in size and resources, though Adobe is a slightly bigger company -- and with its new Macromedia acquisition gains significantly important technologies. I asked Patrick Aragon how Adobe was going to address this challenge and what Acrobat PDF's natural advantages were.

"The first advantage we have over Autodesk DWF is cross-platform support," says Aragon, "and that is increasingly important." And he adds: "The second advantage we have is our ubiquity across a wide array of operating systems." "DWF has actually been available in some form for nearly ten years and today they only have about 9 million downloads. Compare that to Adobe Acrobat 7 where in the first 17 weeks alone we had close to 35 million downloads." As noted earlier in the article, there is no denying the prevalence of Acrobat's numbers. There are 1.52 billion copies of Acrobat Reader in the circulation.

It is noteworthy to recognize that when asked what advantages Adobe has over Autodesk with PDF, Patrick starts with its cross-platform support. And this may be the ultimate advantage, the one that decides the outcome years from now. Adobe clearly recognizes the trends in the OS (operating system) markets. (see Analysis section at end of article for more on this).

But besides the platform advantages, Adobe's Aragon says there are several other key advantages over Autodesk DWF. Secondly, he adds, "PDF is an industry standard in the publishing world and DWF is not. We have superb printing support across multiple platform environments and that has benefited customers for years."

He continues to explain that PDF also excels at archiving and search because it has a rich meta data structure. Autodesk DWF does not. Acrobat PDF also has the edge in languages support and security. "We provide very granular levels of security. We have a server product, Adobe LifeCycle Policy Server," says Aragon, "wherein administrators can assign various levels of security to individuals."

Adobe's technology advantages in Acrobat stem both from its long life and from many of the company's core technologies and applications. However, when I asked why so few really understand what Acrobat Professional can really do he said that is one of those efforts the company needs to keep working on. Besides articles like this one, Aragon said Adobe is working hard on doing outreach to people in the industry to explain the advantages of Acrobat PDF. "We do seminars or on-demand sessions on the Web," said Aragon.

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