In an age when electrons should be driving print to extinction, paper production is growing 20 percent per year. If paper isn't going away how will digital technology and paper coexist?

Paper documents continue to exist for two reasons. First, many companies have mountains of documents that contain useful data but rendering all of them to native Web formats would be expensive. Secondly, some applications require greater detail and typographic quality than Web formats can provide.

Geschke outlined his company's mission as a bridge between the digital and print worlds with Adobe's PDF document format being the cornerstone of this strategy.

Since 1992 when PDF was introduced, something like 100 million Adobe Acrobat readers have been distributed or downloaded.

Geschke said this document format is ideal for capturing and sharing high resolution electronic versions of archival documents, making it a veritable "ePaper" standard.

He cited the example of Pfizer, who filed 2 million pages of documentation with the FDA to get Viagra approved and wanted to streamline the whole process. Delivering this mountain of data in electronic form as PDFs may, Pfizer believes, have sped up the approval.

Now and into the future, Geschke suggested, Adobe will continue finding ways to provide value in the rich interface between the print and digital worlds.

Copyright © 1999 Stephen R. Jones All rights reserved.