mime application/acrobat

The MIME type application/acrobat is used to denote the presence of a portable document format file. It falls under the category ‘application’.

The files associated with this mime type carry the extension PDF, which stands for the name of the format itself – Portable Document Format. It was first developed by the software development company Adobe and was a proprietary format at the beginning. Afterwards, Adobe released its hold on the format and allowed it to become open source. Later, the International Standards Organization (ISO) made the format an international standard. This was done because the file format had been embraced all across the globe and is still widely used across platforms.

The main aim behind making the PDF was to have a way to carry documents across platforms without altering the way their style or formatting was represented. PDF is thus a platform independent format that works on all major platforms. Once created, a PDF document will appear uniformly across all platforms regardless of the application used to view it. A PDF file typically contains the text, the formatting data, vectors for images and other such information like encryption. PDF is in fact a very secure format for transmitting documents across any network.