Most Energy Commission reports or publications are available from the website as an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) files. In order to download, navigate and print these documents, you will need the free Acrobat Reader software installed on and configured for your computer. This software is available from the Adobe Acrobat Reader web page.

Most Acrobat files on the Commission's website have the PDF icon or are identified as PDF files.

If you are having problems with downloading or opening a PDF file, you probably do not enough RAM/memory allocated to your browser software or Acrobat Reader, or the connection you have to the Internet is too slow. If you have problems with printing, you may be using an old version of Acrobat. Try upgrading to the newest version.

Why The Energy Commission Uses
Adobe Acrobat for Document Retrieval

1. Acrobat is a very easy program to use once it is properly set up in your computer. A simple click on the hyper-linked name on a Web page will download to your computer's browser and open it with Acrobat Reader. You can also force your computer to download the document to your desktop for retrieval at a later time. This is done clicking on the PDF link with the right-mouse button on PCs or option-click the link with Macintosh computers.


2. Acrobat is optimized to compress the original file and allow it to be downloaded very quickly, thus cutting download times. Very large graphics are dramatically compressed. For example, a report we placed on line had extensive color graphics in it and was 18.7 megabytes in size in the original desktop publishing layout. Using Acrobat, that file was compressed to about 800 kilobytes as a PDF.


3. One single PDF file can be read on any type of computer (Macintosh, Windows or Unix).


4. Acrobat retains all the graphical elements of the original document, including any color used in graphics or drawings. So, any graphics, graphs, charts, headers, footers, footnotes, etc. will be retained just like the original document. Page breaks are the same in a PDF as in the original document. An ASCII text file or HTML file would not retain all graphical elements, bold, italics, underlining or any other characteristics of a document.


5. Acrobat makes full use of your printer better than a word processing program. Fonts used in the original document will be printed from your computer, even if you do not have the fonts or typefaces in your computer's operating system. That's because Acrobat uses a special language to describe the entire page graphically. If the Acrobat file has color on its pages (in graphics or colored text) and you have a color printer, the document will be printed in color. Also the higher the resolution (dots per inch) your printer can print, the better the quality of the final print out. So, if you have a 600 dpi printer the Acrobat file will print at that printer output.


6. Acrobat Reader Software is available for free. You do not have to purchase the program the document was created in. You simply download Acrobat Reader from Adobe's Internet Site. It is also available free on many CD-ROMs and on computer user group bulletin boards. Also requiring a specific word processing program means the State of California would give a tacit endorsement to purchase a specific product, which we cannot do.


7. Posting a document in a word-processing program format like Microsoft Word does not guarantee that the version of Word that the user has will open the version we use. Some consumers may have older versions of Word, which will not open newer versions.


8. Most Web search engines search PDF files, so they are included in Internet or site searches. Our web search engine (Inktomi) indexes PDF files into its search field. This cannot be done with word processing files. Some search engines do not search word processing or spread sheet files.


9. Acrobat is the most widely used electronic, portable document software. It is used by the Federal Government, including the Internal Revenue Service; state and local government; and private industry. Adobe has set the standard for electronic publishing for many years and continues that distinction as an Internet publishing leader with Acrobat.

We hope this explains some of our reasoning for using Acrobat.

Bob Aldrich
Webmaster & Supervisor Web Development
California Energy Commission