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>There is absolutely no guarantee that PDF 1.5 files created by Acrobat 6 >can be opened by earlier versions of Acrobat or Acrobat Reader, or for >that matter processed or printed by third party products. PDF 1.3 and 1.4 >files created by Acrobat 6 either via Distiller or saved as PDF 1.3 or 1.4 >by the "PDF optimizer" feature of Acrobat 6 Professional are fully-compliant >with the PDF 1.3 or 1.4 specification, respectively, and should have no >problem being opened in earlier versions of Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat Reader, >and/or third party products that are fully-compliant with the respective >PDF specification. Dov, Thanks for this statement. I wanted to share an observation that implies a few intriguing little caveats to assertions of backwards compatibility. I do understand that you are referring to the spec itself, but not all users will understand the distinction between the spec and the backwards compatibility issues that do, in fact, exist. It is clear that Menu Items have changed form 5.0x to 6.0. Thus, many links, fields and other methods of deploying this functionality in 6.0 simply don't work in earlier versions. For example, a "Search" link in Acrobat 6.0 becomes a "Find" link when executed in Acrobat 5.0x. There are other examples as well... "Exit" becomes "Close", or so I am told. Also on this point... many menu items in Acrobat 5.0x often become "dumb" when executed in Acrobat 6.0 - a point of significance for those supporting sophisticated Acrobat applications developed using 5.0x or earlier. After reading your post, I quickly tested the 6.0 Optimizer feature in this regard. My expectation (ok, hope) was that the Optimizer would adjust menu items to provide the "equivalent" functionality in Acrobat 5.0x. Sadly, this is not the case, although I can't see that this would have been hard to add to the Optimizer. At a minimum, it would be highly beneficial if Adobe were to publish a list of all changes to menu items between the two versions so that us developers would have a point of reference... or some other method better than trial and error. In sum, users authoring interactive PDFs using Acrobat 6.0 need to be VERY careful that they do not include functions that are not supported in earlier versions of Acrobat. More to the point - they need to know that the Optimizer will NOT provide assurance of 5.0x compatibility with respect to these functions. I hope this clarifies the issue for readers of this list. Duff Johnson Document Solutions, Inc. www.document-solutions.com To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdf.html
