Sony PRS950BC, User Manual

3 

I. Introduction 

PDF (Portable Document Format) 

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a cross-platform, device-independent page 
description language and file format developed by Adobe Systems. Its primary use is to 

render, store, and transmit formatted pages, capturing the entire page structure of a 

document just as it would have been rendered by a Postscript printer. 
Most common file formats can be converted to PDF using Adobe

®

 Acrobat

®

 Standard or 

Professional or other PDF rendering applications, some of which are available at no cost. 
Many professional book, magazine, and other printers prefer to be supplied with PDFs for 
printing because it is a standardized format and because unless a PDF is deliberately 

edited, its contents can be considered safe from unintended alteration. Properly 

generated and handled, PDFs can basically be thought of as a faithful electronic 
representation of the print version of any document. 
One of the key differences between a PDF and an image file format (like jpeg, gif, etc.) is 

that PDF preserves formatting elements such as fonts and graphics by embedding them 
into the file in a manner that can be managed via various settings.  
PDF is an excellent means of displaying content from a variety of common consumer 

applications, including the Microsoft

®

 Office suite of applications and their 

OpenOffice.org open source counterparts, on the Sony

®

 Reader. The key to generating 

PDFs that will display clearly on the Reader is to size the PDF properly when you create it, 

and to set margins, font sizes, etc. within a range that is suited to the Reader’s screen size 
and resolution. This instructional document is intended to provide all the information 

necessary to create PDFs that are ready to be viewed in the Sony Reader from a variety 

of common applications. 
 

PDF Creation Software 

On a computer running the Microsoft Windows

®

 operating system, you will need to have 

PDF creation software installed in order to generate PDFs from within the common 
desktop applications covered in this instructional document. Two good options are 

Adobe Acrobat (either Acrobat Standard or Acrobat Professional) and PDF Creator. 

 
Adobe Acrobat Standard and Professional, unlike the free Adobe Reader, are used to 

create, edit, and add features to PDFs. (Adobe Reader can only be used to view them.) 

The Professional version of the Adobe Acrobat software includes a number of features 
and capabilities of interest to professional users, but Acrobat Standard is often sufficient 

for creating PDFs for the Sony Reader. These applications are available for purchase at 

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/

.  

PDF Creator is an open source alternative to Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional for 
generating PDFs from documents created in Windows applications. It has been released 

under the terms of the GNU General Public License and is available for download at 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

. 

Once you have successfully installed one of these applications, you will be able to 

create PDFs using the print menu of your applications.