« Links for Tuesday | Main | My PS2 is Lacking Pep »
PDFCreator Rocks the Llama!
Another piece of indispensable open-source software for windows that I love is PDF Creator.
It is an open-source alternative to Adobe Acrobat creator. after you have installed the PDFCreator software you can print to a virtual PDF printer from any normal Windows program and create a PDF file suitable for later printing and online reading. You just hit print from any program and select the PDF Creator printer, then enter the file name and save your brand new spiffy and totally free to create PDF.
The Adobe Portable Document format is one of the best cross platform design and media distribution tools. they have eventually became the de facto standard in electronic publishing. A PDF is a collection of Post Script data in a simple compacted file. It is a captured version of your document with all the text, font, vector illustration, layout and bitmap graphics in one file. Since you can embed font files in a PDF you can make sure that the reader will see it exactly as you intended it. You can search for key words and you can copy and paste text into other documents.
Since it is scalable vector data you can display the document at a variety of resolutions and it will stay legible. Apple's Mac OSX has gone so far as to incorporate PDF into their OS as it's native file format. The latest version of the Adobe Acrobat PDF reader takes advantage of Microsoft's ClearType technology for Windows XP and it makes the text on LCD displays looks anti-aliased and crisp. This makes the same file look good on any resolution of screen. This looks especially nice on large high resolution displays.
The advanced interactive forms and DRM are not included in this program so it can't do everything that Adobe Acrobat software can but since I would not use those for my own personal uses I do not really care about them. However the Adobe's DRM in PDF eBooks do have an interesting history.
I love printing out web pages to the PDFCreator printer out of Mozilla Firefox. It lists the URL that it was printed from and the time in the footer and header of the document. I stopped saving web pages by "saving as" from Firefox. Instead i have some nice PDF files where a HTML page each with a folder of embedded images. Before I will print out a page to the PDF I will remove any annoying banner ads with a trusty right click then Remove Object in Mozilla. Then you get a nice readable version of the page but with out any ads or less than legible web designs.
PDFs are not perfect because some older search engines will not be able to read to content of the PDF and they tend to have a larger file format then a pure text and graphics document.
I think that Jakob Neilson has gone off his rocker when it comes to the usefulness of the PDF format. Sure it is not the replacement of HTML but it is still pretty slick.
Open Office.org 1.1 added a nice PDF creation tool to it. Rather than printing to a PDF you an export to a PDF directly. It is works wonders when you are trying to convert MS Office documents to PDF.
Yup if you just ad some PDFs to your digital document you can cut down on your output of Dead tree edition documents by a heck of a lot. That is better for you and everyone else. PDFs are low in carbs and have zero fiber.
Jake at May 25, 2004 
Nerd
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.8bitjoystick.com/cgi-bin/mtype/mt-tb.cgi/628
Comments
Well, it is free and acrobat costs over 400 dollars doesn't it?
Posted by: pete at May 25, 2004 8:01 PM
There is nothing wrong with the PDF format (it may be a bit bloated), but there is EVERYTHING wrong with Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is the single most crappy piece of malware I have installed on my computer. I avoid clicking PDF-links as it sends my HD into a frenzy and freezes my browser for 45-90 seconds. It's just so un-Mozilla-like, Jake! ;o)
Posted by: Berklee at May 26, 2004 4:05 AM
Acrobat reader launches much faster than that but granted it should be faster. If there is a PDF I want online I will download it and take a look at it outside the browser
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at May 26, 2004 5:29 AM
You have a fast computer, then... ;o) On mine it's slow, at work it's slow (which is a fast computer too) at several of my friend's computers it's slow, too... I hate it. ;o)
But I use the PDF export of OpenOffice all the time!
Posted by: Berklee at May 27, 2004 2:51 PM
Well you can always un-install the PDF plug-in. That way it will not launch the Acrobat viewer every time you come across a PDF.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at May 27, 2004 3:27 PM
The 5.x series (and I assume others before it) is much faster than 6 in terms of startup, if that's your issue, Berklee. You can score old versions here: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/reader_archive.html
Posted by: karl at May 28, 2004 9:45 AM
Oh, and thanks for the link, Jake. PDF Creator rocks. It's a much more elegant solution than doing the whole "print-to-file" and ps2pdf thing.
Posted by: karl at May 28, 2004 9:48 AM
Thanks, Karl, but I was using 5.x already because 6+ was even slower. No, I really need to get me an open source reader of some sorts. Just like I need that open source Real Media player...
Posted by: Berklee at May 29, 2004 4:10 PM
