Apollo and PDF Print Engine take the spotlight, while Investintech unveils new server-based PDF creation software.ORLANDO—In his keynote address at the AGI Acrobat & PDF Conference, Adobe Acrobat Group Product Manager Rick Brown talked a little about the new application development tool Apollo, put the new Acrobat 3D through its paces in a demo, and demonstrated the (formerly Macromedia) Breeze Flash meeting software by setting up a real-time meeting with an Adobe peer back at the company's booth.
He mentioned Adobe's acquisition of Navisware's DRM (digital rights management) division, known for its ability to rights-manage Microsoft Office files.
This could mean, among other things, that Navisware technology could be integrated with Adobe Policy Server, which controls PDF access from the server.
He also talked about Adobe's April 21 acquisition of TIF (Trade and Technologies France), whose 3-D modeling and compression technology could augment functionality of Acrobat 3D for the engineering and CAD markets.
Apollo, he said, promises to be a way for developers to create applications integrating attributes of Flash, PDF and HTML that can run across platforms and devices much as many Web-based apps already do—except without the online connection.
Apollo software will look like traditional desktop applications, that is, complete with installers and uninstallers.
As for how Apollo will integrate with Acrobat, Brown didn't offer specifics, but told PDFzone after the keynote that the two development teams will collaborate closely.
"I think that what will happen over time is that requirements for Flash and Acrobat will be driven into Apollo, and requirements for Apollo will be driven back into those products," Brown said. "So if I as an Acrobat customer say, 'I have a real requirement for how PDF forms could exist in a desktop application based on Apollo,' I can drive that into the Apollo team, and vice versa; if they say, 'Hey, we want to be able to talk to PDF,' using a scripting bridge, for example—they can make requests of us, too."
Click here to read more details about Adobe's Apollo application development tool.
Perhaps the biggest news item was an omission: Brown did not mention the next version of Acrobat, which Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen recently indicated would be out later in 2006.
Developers and users alike buzzed about Acrobat and Apollo in the exhibit areas, imagining how Flash will manifest itself in Acrobat and PDFs in the future, now that Adobe and former Macromedia engineers are readying the first Acrobat revision since the merger of the two companies.
"Adobe senior management has made clear inferences that there will be tight integration with former Macromedia products … but specific details and capabilities are not being discussed by Adobe," show organizer Chris Smith said. "It will be very interesting to see where Adobe continues to go with expanding capabilities of sharing documents and collaborating with people who are outside your workgroup, outside your firewall."
In separate sessions, show-goers also got their first in-depth looks under the hood of the Adobe PDF Print Engine—a platform incorporating JDF job-ticket data to enhance communication between designers and printers working with PDFs in Creative Suite applications.
Sessions also covered hot issues in the PDF world such as creating documents accessible to the visually impaired following federal Section 508 regulations; creating rich-media PDFs, including video and virtual reality environments; and XPS, the Microsoft-Global Graphics printing technology collaboration.
At the show May 16, Investintech demonstrated Absolute PDF Server, a network edition of its desktop PDF creation software. The application enables creation of PDFs—and extraction of PDF content—throughout a network. The company claims to be the first to give office workers the ability to extract content from a PDF, edit it in another application and save the edited content as a PDF via the server.
"Absolute PDF Server was designed specifically for multiple users and high-volume conversions; as such, there are no limits per server license on how many conversions can be achieved throughout the organization," said David Moon, president of Investintech, based in Toronto. "Everyone in the organization with access to a server where Absolute PDF Server is installed gets complete PDF creation and extraction capabilities."
Document Management 
