This acronym stands for Portable Document Format, an open file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 and now being prepared for submission as an ISO standard. The concept was to develop paperless printing solutions that could be used to represent 2-dimensional documents in a device- and resolution-independent, fixed-layout document format. PDF documentation is gaining in popularity with music technology manufacturers in an effort to reduce paper waste, what with user manuals now commonly running many hundreds of pages, with some over 1,000 pages!
