PDFalerts

I’ve just finished upgrading to Gutsy Gibbon, the latest release of Ubuntu, and I am very happy to find that a PDF printer driver is now installed by default. Previously I’ve covered some PDF creators that are available for Linux operating systems and have generally found that they are lacking in both functionality and numbers (i.e. there isn’t that many of them). Hopefully now that the PDF printer is a more integrated part of Ubuntu, it will get more attention feature wise.

The PDF printer in Gutsy Gibbon is an updated version of CUPS-PDF.

It’s easy enough to create PDFs on a Windows or Mac machine, but what about Linux? A quick search of the web will show you that Linux doesn’t have half the number of PDF creator options that Windows and Macs have, not even close, in fact your options on Linux are quite limited (which is hard for me to say, since I’m a Linux fan).

You might be asking why would anyone need more than one PDF creator? The answer is simple, if there was one free PDF creator that did everything (retain links, bookmarks, indexes, tables of contents, convert entire websites, optimize output, control font embedding, add metadata, etc), then you wouldn’t need more than one, but there isn’t, so you need options.

Here are some of the options for creating PDFs on Linux:

• CUPS-PDF: This is perhaps the most well known PDF printer driver for Linux. If you are using Ubuntu then CUPS-PDF is provided as part of the distribution, you can install it by following these instructions. My main complaint is that you cannot manually specify the location that you would like to save your printed PDF to, instead the application prints all PDFs to a hard coded location (in Ubuntu it is a folder called PDF in the home directory). Also, you can only configure the PDFs paper size, color and margin, you are unable to configure settings like the desired file size/quality, etc.
• OpenOffice: With the release of version 1.1 Open Office included a export to PDF option. While this isn’t a stand alone PDF creation tool, OpenOffice does allow you to open and print it’s native files as well as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents and some image formats.
• ps2pdf: If you are comfortable working with the command line then you might like to check out this option. ps2pdf uses Ghostscript to convert postscript files to PDF. Most Linux operating systems support the creation of postscript files natively.

As you can see, the number of Linux PDF creators is quite limited at the moment, but last year at the Linux Desktop Printing Summit, it was agreed that PDF would replace PostScript as the standard print job transfer and processing format for Linux, so hopefully this will mean a number of high quality PDF printer drivers become available for Linux in the not-to-distant future. Read more here.
Don’t forget, if you don’t want to install any applications on your machine, you can use one of these free online PDF converters to create your PDF documents, they are completely platform-independent.

Lastly, it’s important to note that a number of applications, such as OpenOffice and Scribus, support exporting to PDF natively, so if you only need to create PDFs from certain applications, you may not need a stand alone PDF creator.

P.S. If I have missed any PDF printer drivers for the Linux platform then please add a comment and I will update the post. Specifically I’m looking for PDF printer drivers similar to Primo PDF or PDF Creator. Cheers.

Word processor documents are for authoring, PDF documents are for sharing. It’s a fairly simple concept, to which even the developers of these Word Processors have cottoned on to. Yet there are still users who insist on sharing their Word processor documents with colleagues, colleagues who do not need to make changes to the document and are only reviewing them, in this authoring format, instead of converting these document into a file sharing format, like PDF.

Is there really any excuse for this given that most decent Word Processors include support for export to PDF? Here is three well known Word Processors that support this much valued functionality.

• Microsoft Office 2007. Microsoft could not deny their customers this functionality any longer, for the latest version of , you can download a Save as PDF plug-in here.
• OpenOffice.org 2. The latest versions of OpenOffice come with Publish to PDF functionality built in. Plus the whole application is free.
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets.Never one to miss a beat Google know what users want and have included a Export to PDF function in their online and free, Word Processor.

The number of different ways to create PDFs is growing daily. A few years ago if you didn’t have Acrobat, your options for creating PDFs were quite limited, but today there are hundreds, if not thousands, of free and commercial PDF conversion utilities out there that will allow you to create all the PDFs that you could possibly desire. In this post I will list a number of different free online PDF converters.

• PrimoPDF Online - Simply browse to the file to be converted on your machine and upload it for immediate conversion to PDF. Once converted, the resultant PDF file is made available via email.
• LOOP for Firefox - Upload, convert and combine your files to PDF from a tidy toolbar, without the conversion getting in the way of your Web browsing. LOOP for Firefox allows you to convert and combine files to PDF with the click of a button.
• PDF Online - Convert Microsoft Word documents to PDF, Excel XLS to PDF, Powerpoint PPT to PDF, Text TXT to PDF, HTML to PDF, most image formats (JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, etc) to PDF, and much more.
• ExpressPDF - Convert your Microsoft Word and Excel documents and Web pages to PDF.
• Media Convert - Create PDFs from pretty much any file format and convert PDFs to Text Files (.txt), Rich Text Format/MS Word (.rtf), Adobe Postscript (.ps) and Flash SWF (.swf).
• RSS 2 PDF - Convert your RSS feeds into PDFs.

As you can see, there are a number of ways that you can create PDFs online for free. My personal favourite is the LOOP for Firefox that I’ve previous mentioned here, but all of these online services performed pretty well in general and I am sure that one of the services will be to your liking.

The add-ons for Firefox just keep getting better. This new one from Drawloop Technologies allows you to create and combine multiple PDFs directly inside your Firefox browser. You have the option of converting files from your desktop or converting the web page that you are currently viewing or a combination of both.

This is a great tool for anyone who doesn’t already have a PDF creator and only occasionally needs to create hassle and cost free, PDFs.

Check it out: LOOP for Firefox.

I look forward to the next great Firefox add-on.

Given the plethora of PDF Creators that are out there, you might expect there to be quite a few options for free PDF Readers as well, but this isn’t the case. There really are only two stand out options. The first option, Adobe Reader, is king of the mountain and has been around, in it’s current free form, since 1994. The second option, Foxit Reader, is a relative new comer and has developed a large following in a short period of time.

Adobe Reader. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that Adobe Reader is the most stable and reliable PDF Reader out there. Why? Two simple reasons spring to mind — 1) it’s developed by the masters of the PDF specification, 2) it’s been around for over a decade. The two downsides of Adobe Reader, which are a favorite pet peeve of many a forum frequenter, are that the installer for Adobe Reader is somewhat large (circa 20 MB) and the application load times can be slow in certain environments. But to be fair — the file size is becoming less of a concern for many people as Internet connections get faster and Adobe have been making a concerted effort to speed up the loading speed.

Download Adobe Reader here: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Foxit Reader. This application hasn’t be around for long but it has gained a large cult following fast. If you have a quick search on Google Groups for PDF Reader, you’ll see what I mean. It’s key selling points are that it uses a really small installer (1.67 MB), it loads quickly and it isn’t developed by a behemoth corporation.

Download Foxit Reader here: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

I have been using a handy Firefox Add-on called PDF Download for the past few months. This add-on allows you to specify whether you want to view a PDF file inside your Firefox browser or if you want to download it to your desktop. Without this add-on any PDF links that you click on would open directly inside your browser, which is not some peoples preferred option.

Of course you still need have a PDF Reader installed to be able to view PDFs whether they be on your desktop or in your browser. Check out PDF Reader options in my next post… PDF Readers: What are the options?

Fans of Sudoku rejoice. You can now download free Sudoku books in PDF format from www.printsudoku.com. Go on check it out. It’s guaranteed to frustrate you for hours.