Understanding PDFMaker
To include the most relevant interactive features in a .pdf file, it is important to build the source file in an authoring application correctly and then preserve those features on exporting to PDF. We will begin by understanding the conversion process in PDFMaker.
PDFMaker is an engine that creates .pdf files while preserving interactive features built into a document in the authoring software. PDFMaker is part of the Acrobat Professional and Standard installations. It is not installed with the free Acrobat Reader.
All MS Office applications, such as PowerPoint, Excel, and Word, display an Acrobat tab in the ribbon with buttons that open dialog boxes with PDF settings:
Figure 3.2 – Acrobat ribbon options in MS Word
PDFMaker changed over time
In MS Office 2003 and earlier, PDFMaker used Adobe PDF Printer to create a PostScript file. Then, the Adobe PDF printer interfaced with the Adobe Acrobat Distiller application...
