This page provides the Computer Applications and Computer Science Internship Application for the Montgomery College Computer Internship course for CA/CS 269. The file in four formats in the links below:
PDF. The PDF formatis a picture of a document previously made in Word, internapp.pdf. PDF converts a text-based document using ASCII code into a picture. This picture cannot be read by text readers -- because it is a graphic. So, if you're putting it on the web, you need to add an "alt" tag of some sort.
PDF originally was created by Adobe to permit the permanent digital storage of documents. Acrobat documents are used extensively by large and small firms which need to permanently store records for long periods, but want to eliminate the storage problems associated with paper files. Insurance companies, (life insurance policies) accounting firms (tax returns), and federal government agencies, to name a few, often scan paper records and convert them to digital PDF files for storage and portability.
PDF actually is a "printer" technology found under your File>Print icon if you install Adobe Acrobat on your computer.
However, the very permanent graphics creation technology which made PDF files popular for document storage made it unpopular for document retrieval on the web once web accessiblity issues rose to the surface in the late 1990s. Many entities, including the federal government and Montgomery College, relied on PDF documents on the web to display documents that they did not want the public to modify. Until the past few months, for instance, the only web-available copy of the Montgomery College catalog was a PDF file! This was inconsistent with the 508 standards which the College had adopted.
Once the 508 rules became effective in July, 2001, federal agencies had to stop placing PDF documents on agency web sites. This caused no small amount of consternation both within the agencies and at Adobe Corporation.
Adobe attacked the problem by releasing Adobe Capture in 2001. This technology permitted PDF files to be converted back to formats which were accessible to text readers. However, Adobe did not bundle Capture with Acrobat 5.0 when it was released in 2001, and attempted to charge $300 extra for the Capture technology. This was not very popular with the federal government. The U.S. government did not embrace Acrobat 5.0. Acrobat was further battered as new government purchasing policies called for the purchase of web software capable of creating accessible documents.
Finally, Acrobat got it right with the April, 2003 release of Acrobat 6.0 Professional, available in an educational version in the College bookstore for $109.00. Adobe included its Capture conversion software with Acrobat 6.0 Professional.
Be careful to purchase only the Professional version if you are going to build web sites.. The regular version of Acrobat (Educational Edition, $99.00) does not include the Capture technology you need to convert PDF-format documents to accessible documents.
Adobe Capture has now brought the text to graphics to text problem full circle. We're now going to create ASCII-based text files from PDF documents. Here's the full circle.:
Insurance companies do not have to comply with 508, but federal agencies do.
If you want to display a record on the web in PDF format so visitors know it is the permanent copy, you now create a second version in XML or .doc format, depending on your visitor's needs, and link both the inaccessible PDF document and the accessible XML or .doc format on the page.