Overview

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is one of the most widely used file extensions because of its flexibility to open with all operating systems and on the web. It is a multi-platform supported file format which is independent of the basic computing resources including hardware, software, and OS. A PDF file holds varieties of information including text, graph, images, lists etc.

Category

It belongs to the document format.

Developer

The most popular format was developed by Adobe Systems.

Supportive Apps

It supports Adobe Acrobat Reader to create and open. Kindly note that Adobe Systems is patent to PDF but anyone can create the extension without paying to Adobe Systems. Its license is royalty free.

MIME Types

It has several MIME types including

application/pdf

applications/vnd.pdf

application/x-pdf

application/acrobat

text/pdf

text/x-pdf

Signature

It supports digital signature.

Structure of the File

It is based on COS and PostScript Imaging model.

The tree format of COS includes- Boolean Values, Numbers, Strings, Names, Arrays, Dictionaries, Streams and The Null Object.

Adobe PDF viewer and any free or paid PDF viewer can help to view a PDF file.