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these days they dropped the sourceforge crap for their own crap built-in into the main installer, silently downloaded in the background from sites such as coapr14pool _DOT_ com AND THEN executed while having elevated full admin rights. This is typical trojan dropper / infector / keylogger behavior.

source: http://www.pdfforge.org/blog/p...
(in comments)

Oh yes, Tax Act tries to use that to prod you to upgrade from the free version. In the free version, you can't print to a file, you can only print to a printer. This is easily gotten around with a utility like PDFCreator.

PDFCreator can't help with tax websites that won't let you efile unless you pay, but it can get you around ones that try to hold your data hostage and not allow you to save to disk, only to paper.

I used Acrobat to print to pdfs and alter pdfs (such as insert or delete pages).

If that's all you were using it for, then you should look at PDFCreator.

When all you need is a very simple, portable document... PDFCreator.

Many enterprises use alternative tools for generating PDFs such as PDF Creator to minimize the number of Acrobat Pro licenses required -- or even to eliminate the cost associated with the tool at all.

Why distribute a .DOC file? The .ODF, Open Document Format, is the international standard.

In my opinion: The .DOC format is proprietary and buggy, and very expensive due to forced upgrades and general proprietary quirkiness. The .DOC format is supplied by a company that makes more money if it spaces improvements over ten versions, rather than making all improvements in one version. The .DOC format is supplied by a company that makes more money if the .DOC format is implemented in an abusive manner. Why open yourself to abuse?

The best way to send documents that will not be changed is as .PDF files. That's a simple menu choice in Open Office. Or, use PDF Creator from any application.

Microsoft's ODF Support Falls Short It's just another proprietary format, from a company that makes money by locking people into proprietary formats.

"Out of the box OpenOffice.org version 3 opens Microsoft Office 2007 documents, but often odf-converter-integrator converts with better quality." I haven't tested that myself.

References:

OpenDocument Format Alliance. OpenDocument Format Alliance on Wikipedia

OpenDocument software

OpenDocument

OpenDocument adoption

There are a number of nice adaptations of Ghostscript out there that let you make decent PDFs of any document at all in Windows. It simply substitutes as a psuedo-printer and outputs to a PDF. So you can 'print to PDF' from any Windows app that has a print function. The one I like is PdfCreator and yes, it's a free download. A nice integrated Windows .exe installer in fact. There are also commercial wrap-ups of it for people uncomfortable with not paying for their software. But heck, there are people hawking OpenOffice on eBay under different names too.

I hate the thought that you're using OOo just because you can make PDFs with it.

For Windows the best (and free/open source) tool I've found is PDFCreator. It installs a "printer" on your computer that outputs to PDF. Using PDFCreator, you can make a PDF in any application that allows you to print. Using some of the "advanced" features (not really advanced, but slightly more complex than Print->PDF), you can even combine multiple print-outs from different applications into a single PDF.

Good list.

I would suggest putty instead of teraterm.

And OpenOffice instead of MS Office. (At least until MS Office supports ODF.)

Because you can't install PDFCreator?

Cool, an adware link. Maybe you could try pdfforge instead?

pdf forge appears to be free, and windows only. But then I guess the rest of us get pdf output with our OS's... (I've no idea if there is anything wrong with pdf forge, the ad laden link from the parent makes me suspicious though)

and don't use Adobe's reader. Don't use Adobe's Acrobat either, if you don't have to. At least in the Windows world, there are plenty of alternatives out there, that often work better and more efficiently than Adobe's products, and are sometimes (get this) FREE! Are they as secure as Adobe's products? Who knows. For that matter, who knows how secure Adobe software is: big companies don't necessarily turn out more secure software than smaller ones. They can apply more programmers to a project and crank out more lines of code ... but that generally makes the product less secure because there's more room for error.

I mean if you just want a PDF viewer that works standalone and in Firefox, try Foxit Reader. Fast (very fast), lightweight and free for the download. You can upgrade to the Pro version if you need the extra capability, but for simple viewing the free version is great. I use PDF Creator to convert printer output to PDF files. Also free, and works very well.

I've long considered Adobe's PDF Reader to be inefficient bloatware and haven't used it in years. The fact that it's got security problems is one less reason to use it.

There's so much third-party support for PDF in so many areas that there's little reason to buy Adobe's bloatware anyway. Amazing how their PDF reader has turned into such a POC when there are much more efficient offerings out there.

If you're a Windows user and you just want to render printer output into PDF, give PDF Creator a shot. Somebody else here on Slashdot recommended it a couple of months ago, and it seems to work well. It's also open source, GPLed, and free for personal or commercial use.

So, it's not impossible to beat a major company at its own game. Difficult maybe, but not impossible.

Any application can print to postscript using good old lpd, ps2pdf does the rest. If you're on Windows you can install PDFCreator and again, print to PDF from any app.

Once a month my consulting invoices are output as PDFs using enscript, a tiny shell script pulls the data from sqlite (previously Berkeley DB), converts to PDF and emails the client.

Is having a save as PDF button really a big deal?

I actually like clicking through the GPL. It tells me right away what kind of license I'm dealing with, and lets me know I can deploy the software through my company with impunity. Hell, TUGZip and PDFCreator alone have saved my company thousands over WinZip and Acrobat, and clicking through the GPL's boilerplate lets me know that I don't have to worry about hidden gotchas that might be present in a custom "open source" license.

No doubt that I would agree with the parent 100%. GIMP may be acceptable for casual doodler or cropping photos, but it ultimately a complete waste of time for any professional accustomed to a plethora of serious tools and a myriad of features used daily to make a living. We don't even have to discuss its' intolerable user interface because GIMP's graphic capabilities are not even in the same ballpark as Photoshop.

However, one may be able replace some of the other software depending on how you used it. The original poster framed the scenario as tools for the marketing department to use, which clearly lowers the bar in terms of expectations as to what level of competency will be applied. Marketers are not designers, so it would appear as though if Software X does a reasonable job approximating most tasks of Adobe Y, then one can adopt it.

Photoshop - You're unlikely to replace that one. Although, someone else mentioned Pixel which could possibly cut the mustard depending on your needs. Otherwise, there really is nothing to compare to Photoshop.

Illustrator - Definitely have a strong look at Inkscape. I've toyed with it for 2 or 3 years to keep tabs on its' development, after being fairly impressed during my first run through. These days it has continued to advance and I'd suggest it's ready for the professional world. You can create substantially complex pieces with Inkscape which will probably far out-pace the ability of your Marketing department to bother learning in the first place. While it might be missing a pet feature or two, the bottomline is that Inkscape is ready to be taken seriously as a replacement for Illustrator (and, previously, FreeHand).

InDesign - Professionals already use Scribus to handle multipage full color layouts sent directly to commercial print houses, so it's gotta be worth your time to look at. CMYK separation, PDF generation,and much of the toolsets you'd expect to see in Quark or InDesign; certainly more than enough power for your Marketing department.

Acrobat Pro - If you're heavily using features like annotation, collaboration, form creation, et cetera, then you probably won't be replacing Acrobat Professional. Nothing can touch it. However, if all you need is to be able to allow your Marketing droids to generate PDFs from documents they create in other software, then you can slap PDFCreator on their little Windows boxen. Remember that OpenOffice already has the ability to turn any of their normal documents and spreadsheets into a PDF at a click of a button. Surely, you've dumped MS Office by now.

Dreamweaver - This is a tough one because you should probably rethink your environment to realize you most likely don't really want Dreamweaver to be used. Unless you're just using Slashdot to conveniently survey the geek mindshare, the odds are that WYSIWYG is an old paradigm no longer needed by most scenarios. What you probably want is some kind of content management engine which your key tech person(s) can administer such that your Marketing department can monkey with the website(s). One engine could be adapted to various websites, if you proposed such a need. If I were to suppose someone was trolling Slashdot, then I would mention Quanta Plus before realizing Marketing droids would be helplessly confined to Windows and thus I'd point to Nvu as your capable hero.

But, really, if an evaluation of your technical needs leads you back to WYSIWYG, then you've made a logical error somewhere. The days for that hobbled solution are definitely over.

There you have it! Free and open source software is up to the challenge is most regards. Where there are shortcomings, there are adept proprietary solutions for far, far less than the onerous cost of Adobe

PDFCreator is a free open source pdf printer http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator

If you have a Photo or Video iPod, it is a good test to convert the presentation to a series of png files (e.g., with pdfcreator) and upload them to iPod. If they don't look good on its 320x240 screen, it means that they already cause too much eyestrain that will prevent the reader from understanding.

As a bonus, you'll be able to practice your presentation while not being near your computer.

There is no reason that it needs to cost so much to create non-editable documents.

Quite, which is why things like PDFCreator exist.