The Bathford Society
Portable Document Format - or PDF - provides a way of presenting information in a structured manner within a single document. This is used within this site for self contained topics with a mix of text and images such as the History Projects.
A PDF document is read with the Adobe PDF reader which provides facilitries to search, print and save a copy of a document. It is NOT a proprietory Microsoft or Apple product, but is often installed on new PCs by the supplier. You need to have the reader installed to access PDF documents. The section below outlines how this software can be downloaded and installed, free of charge.
Click on the Adobe Reader icon below to access the Adobe site and then follow the instructions to download and install the reader software. This is a large download and will take a while to run !
The site has been designed to work with a dialup internet connection - at approx. 56 Kbps. Most pages sizes are no more than 60 Kbytes and should display within about 10 seconds, with a quicker response over a broadband connection.
For larger files such as photographs, maps and PDF files, a cut down version is provided for quick access over a dialup connection with a separate option to get the full version.The size of a PDF document is determined mainly by the number of images it contains and the resolution of the images. The image sizes have been keep to a minimum in the cut down versions.
For PDF files, the file sizes are displayed to provide an indication of the likely download time. For a dialup connection, expect a maximium rate of approx. 7 Kbytes per second, or two-and-a-half minutes per Mbyte of the file size.
The screens are designed to display with a minimum resolution of 800 x 600 pixels.