Acrobat's New Moves.

THIS MARCH ADOBE RELEASED ACROBAT 5, THE NEWEST INCARNATION of the popular document-sharing program. At $250, it's not cheap (the reader-only version remains free), but Acrobat 5 does have a few tricks up its sleeve that might make its price worth the investment. Do the following additions or improvements make it worthwhile for you to upgrade?

Supports XML. It reads and writes XML (eXtensible Markup Language, the lingua franca for exchanging digital information) [See story on XML, page 7.].

Adobe PDF files can be saved as PostScript files. PostScript, the language of magazine production and printing, is now more easily interchangeable with PDFs, the Acrobat format.

Ability to pull out feature photos. Your fellow document viewers can save Adobe PDF document images as TIFF, JPEG or PNG images, and can add them to word-processing documents, HTML or other files.

Enhanced security. Passwords up to 128-bit encryption are allowed in the new Acrobat. You can also save to the 40-bit level, insuring that the document can be opened with older versions of Acrobat.

Digital signatures. Acrobat 5 works with outside digital signature vendors (Entrust, VeriSign and CIC), so you can add eSignatures to Adobe documents.