Slashdot Mirror

Or perhaps the open source PDF Creator, available for download on their sourceforge page.

The program simply installs a fake printer that creates PDFs. So any Windows program that can print can also export to PDF.

There are substantially cheaper ways of implementing PDF functionality in Office then buying Adobe's Acrobat product just for a plugin. If you want to use a commercial product, there is always http://www.pdf995.com/ which is substantially cheaper than Acrobat. There is also http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm for substantially cheaper still. Neither of these products are going to give you the wizbang super duper features Acrobat does but, you know what, they aren't missed 99% percent of the time unless you job entails sending print once documents which are also forms with drop-down lists that need umpteen different encryption schemes tacked onto them and self-destruct when the moon is inline with Jupiter on the summer solstice.

Cliff

>> If I want to send a pdf, I either use Open Office, or I have to buy Adobe's Standard Edition to get a plugin for MS Office.

Or you can use PDFCreator which is a free program that lets you print to a pdf file.

Frankly I think putting PDF generation in as a printer driver, a la Mac OS X, is more powerful than putting it into the application itself.

Someone else have already pointed out Primo PDF (which I didn't know about). I use PDF Creator, that works the same way (as a Printer Driver). I'm sure there are probably other such solutions. Before I knew about PDF Creator (4 or 5 years ago), I used to manually install a printer driver (any PostScript capable - HP Laserjet series, Apple Color LW, etc.). Then I would configure the driver to print to a file (that's a native feature of Windows - any installed printer driver can output to a file). As it was a Postscript printer, the file content was all Postscript, so I opened it with a Ghostscript Viewer for Windows (I think it was GSView), and then saved it as PDF. I believe PDF Creator and others just automates this whole process.

            I bet a significant portion of the searches they see for PDF support involve something on that level, rather than simply being able to print to PDF - if I've been able to do that on a Mac for this long (long before OSX had it natively) I'm sure there are many similar options for Windows users.

There are a few.

http://www.primopdf.com/

http://www.pdf995.com/

http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm

http://www.paehl.com/pdf/

PDF995, which is ad-supported (or was last I used it).

PDFCreator, which is free and open-source.

I know there are others, those are just the two I've used - successfully, I might add.

I have the same problem. I normally don't use Office, I use pdflatex. Sometimes, though, people e-mail me abstracts in word, and I have to convert them to pdf. I use
PDFCreator

So far it worked for me like a charm.

So do I.
(ok, so I actually just select the PDF printer, but it's still the same number of clicks)

So, add in a copy of Office to compete with Appleworks ($250), a copy of Acid to compete with Garageband ($100), a licensed copy of Acrobat Distiller so that you can create PDFs (it's built in on the Mac), a copy of Adobe Premiere Express to compete with iMovie ($200), a copy of something that can handle full-screen video conferencing (any ideas?), plus a copy of Quicken for your taxes ($30). Oh, and 'cause you're running a Windows box, don't forget the Anti-virus software ($20).

Although I agree with the premise, I have to point out the weakness of this part of the argument. A copy of OpenOffice.org ($0). A copy of PDFCreator ($0), and a copy of AVG Free ($free, duh). You can't say free software is cool on your Mac or *nix box without admitting that it is also available for Windows.

Have a look at this gpl pdf creator program for win32.

C'mon, go the extra step and link it! :-) And the homepage is here.

Here's an open-source equivalent that does pretty much the same thing.