A PDF Progress Report --McIlroy

OK, then a follow-up question. If I buy Acrobat and Prinergy or Apogee, can I just plug them in and push print? If not, what else do I need to know?

And this is where I need to sit you down and say, "Have you got a few hours? I can give you about half of the answer in that time."

The fundamental problem with PDF is that it is, in a way, too good. It's too powerful, too flexible, too malleable. There are a great many things you can do with PDF, and literally hundreds of software tools and systems available to help you do them. I guess we all like powerful, flexible technologies. But when it comes to graphic arts prepress workflows we want our powerful and flexible tools to behave consistently and reliably, to chug through the toughest files and produce predictably perfect results.