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Most people believe PDF files are an electronic replacement for paper. 

If they create a PDF file from a scanned document or a Word file to e-mail, they believe the content of that file is locked down and not editable, just as if they were handing someone a piece of paper.  For example, an individual may write a proposal and “print to PDF” the final version to e-mail to his or her customer.  However, the PDF can still be altered if the recipient has a full version of Adobe Acrobat. With Acrobat, the recipient can open the PDF, make modifications and resave the PDF file… just as they could with a Microsoft Word document.

So if it’s not like “virtual paper,” then what is a PDF?  Essentially it’s a container. 

• Text – such as text in a Word document or text editor, including font information;
• Pictures – JPG and TIFF images, as well as other file formats, such as a 3D CAD drawing;
• Metadata – descriptive information, including OCR results that enable the PDF file to be “full-text searchable.”

The PDF format is so powerful and has been adopted around the world because it acts as a container for all these various types of content.

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. Adobe PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system. Each Adobe PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout 2D document that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2D vector graphics which compose the documents. Lately, 3D drawings can be embedded to PDF documents with Acrobat 3D using U3D or PRC and various other data formats.

Adobe Systems co-founder John Warnock outlined a system called "Camelot",that evolved into the Portable Document Format (PDF) file-format.

Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008