When in January 2005 Adobe released version 7 of Acrobat Standard, Professional and Reader, most journalists were struck by the newly added feature that allows users of the Acrobat Reader version to edit and annotate PDF files if the original PDF publisher has enabled this function in the PDF document.

Yes, Acrobat now launches from the Windows Startup group, which makes the program load much faster when you open a PDF file, it integrates more security, annotation, review capabilities, pre-press functionalities and more, but in my opinion the real news of Acrobat 7 is that the Acrobat Tracker tool can now be used to subscribe to RSS feeds and convert any of the items from these feeds into a custom PDF.

Acrobat 7 integrates a full RSS reader/aggregator capable of automatic conversion from RSS/HTML to PDF. This integrated functionality allows you to build summaries of all news items into a PDF as well as letting you convert any Web page linked from the RSS feed into a PDF too.

What was labelled the 'Track News’ in version 6 has now been moved to the tracker tool, with the addition of RSS, XML and RDF syndicated feed support.

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Think of the applications of this RSS-to-PDF mechanism:

• Redistribution to users who are without access to the Internet while providing them with full ability to see RSS feed content and Web pages linked to it.


• Easy integration with other content already distributed in PDF format


• Annotation and in-place commenting of RSS feeds with text or audio


• Distribution of editorial revision process


• Archival purposes

Suggested Readings

Review: Seventh Heaven by Clive Shirley (LegalIT, Febr 10, 2005)

Acrobat 7.0 - Our First Look by Richard Crocker (In-depth article on Planet PDF)

Added Feb 27th 2005
Using Acrobat 7.0's Tracker to read RSS feeds by Mark Szulc (Marc is a systems engineer at Adobe)

Added Feb 27th 2005
RSS Meets PDF - Ah, The Possibilities by Derek Franklin (Jan 19th, 2005)