On July 2nd, the International Standards Organization (ISO) announced that Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is a new international standard. Because PDF is a national standard, Adobe must turn over PDF to the ISO. The ISO will now be in charge of publishing specifications for the current 1.7 version, and for updating and developing future versions. The standard sold by the ISO will contain all the essential information for developers with a price tag of about $360. The ISO praised PDF in a press release for preserving the format of the original documents, something other software programs have struggled with. The full press release may be found at http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1141