Is it possible to save my pages documents as editable PDF's?

Question

I start a new semester (college) in two weeks. I was wondering this partly because one of my professors (from last semester) had a lot of trouble sending pages documents to people who have PC's.
How do I save a pages document as a PDF and not as a ".doc"?
Thanks!

Answer 1

one of my professors (from last semester) had a lot of trouble sending pages documents to people who have PC's. How do I save a pages document as a PDF and not as a ".doc"?
Microsoft Word was introduced for Macintosh in 1984. The file format of Microsoft Word is application-dependent, that is, both the author and the audience must acquire the selfsame application in order to see shared files. This is true also of Aldus PageMaker (introduced 1985), QuarkXPress (introduced 1987) and any of a very, very long list of file formats specific to one and only one application.
It became clear to all concerned in 1989-1990 that problems would be produced by interchange of digital documents, if there were no conversion from application-dependent archival file formats into application-independent archival file formats. It also became clear to all concerned that there would be two kinds of application-independent archival file formats.
When laser imaging was introduced, developers of laser imaging systems for photographic preparation of the printing surface introduced preparatory-phase page markup languages which are content-oriented and production-phase page description languages which are appearance-oriented. Initially, both were tied to the make and model of laser imaging system.
Page markup languages for a make and model of laser imaging system (essentially the command syntax for the laser imagesetter) meant that if you coded/tagged for one make and model of laser imagesetter, you could not repurpose what you had coded/tagged for another make and model of laser imagesetter. Clearly, this was uneconomical.
This realisation led to SGML Standard Generalised Markup Language under the governance of the International Standards Organisation. SGML is not perfect, among other things it can let you have what are essentially private characters and if porous memory serves it can let you have several coded character sets simultaneously which is undesirable in a content-oriented format.
The same sort of problem was posed by page description languages the first of which was the command syntax for the raster image processor that ran the Monotype Lasercomp introduced in 1976. Page description languages introduce an x-y coordinate design space that is mapped onto an x-y coordinate user space which is the address space of the raster image processor.
Page descriptions that depended on the command syntax for a make and model of laser imagesetter posed problems for portability and page description languages under corporate governance clustered around the companies in the United States that targetted the market for graphic information processing commonly called desktop publishing.
Hewlett-Packard Printer Command Language was introduced into this market in May 1984 when the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet made it to market, driving a wedge between the IBM Personal Computer and the IBM line of non-impact printers. Xerox Interpress made it from the laboratory into the market with the initial documentation of the model in 1985.
Adobe PostScript and Xerox Interpress are along almost all dimensions the same model, developed by some of the same people. Adobe PostScript made it to market through a contract entered into in late 1984 between CEO Steven Jobs of Apple Computer, CEO Dr Wolfgang K u m m e r of Linotype, and CEO Dr John Warnock of Adobe Systems.
Adobe PostScript and Xerox Interpress both support multiple coded character sets simultaneously, although Xerox Interpress favours XCCS Xerox Coded Character Set which is the conceptual precursor of Unicode. Xerox Interpress in addition has a default metric coordinate system and strict page-independent structure that Adobe PostScript does not have.
At the Seybold Conference on Computer Publishing in September 1989, Dr John Warnock stated that the aim was to be able to send a page description around the world. In order to do this, first, the page-dependent structuring of Adobe PostScript had to be converted into a page-indendent structuring principle suited for drawing pages in any order on the digital graphic display.
But neither Adobe PostScript nor Xerox Interpress, being appearance-oriented page descriptions, had a strong concept of a standard coded character set that structured the imaging process. Adobe PostScript is in fact a strategy to overcome drawing on a digital device with small coded character sets containing incompatible constituencies of character codes.
The Adobe PostScript rasteriser deals with glyph names and not with character codes and some sort of solution had to be sought so that source character information could be synthesised in converting page-dependent PostScript into the page-independent page description model of what in June 1993 was introduced as Portable Document Format version 1.0.
This solution is to try to use font-independent glyph identifiers as glyph names so that the conversion from Adobe PostScript to Adobe Portable Document Format carries forward a clue about the source character information. There is no concept in PDF of page text, as if the source character information were contained in the page description.
This is the core of the commercial conflict between Adobe Systems which is trying to preserve its market share for the Adobe Portable Document Format, and to introduce Adobe PDFXML as a more serviceable and more sustainable solution for computerised full phrase cataloguing, and on the other hand Microsoft XPS XML Paper Specification which does indeed have a concept of page text for computerised full phrase cataloguing.
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