I Have No Idea How to Make PDFs

[Gwen]

I have several RPGs (some one-shot... some longer) on Word.  Is there a way to put these in Adobe?

What is the best way to make RPGs available online?

Any help would make me love you!

Gwin

[C. Edwards]

Hey Gwen,

Here's a couple links that might help you out.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5620&highlight=pdf

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6293&highlight=adobe+pdf+pdf

-Chris

[ethan_greer]

Buy a Mac.  :)

With OS X, you can make a PDF by saving a print preview.  It's wicked slick.

Seriously though, good to see you're planning on unleashing some products - that appocalypse game as well as the surrealistic fantasy setting you've discussed here both looked quite cool.

[DP]

How bizarre. This has got to be the only gaming site in the known worlds in which a thread offering the love of a girl for assistance gets only two replies. :)

Gwen, I'll point you to Clinton's article here on the Forge about how to make a game cheap. I think he mentions that Adobe offers the ability to make PDFs, and I believe they give the ability to make a couple for free.

The best solution is Acrobat, which gives you the option in MS Word to "print" your file as a PDF. It's an expensive piece of software, as Clinton's article mentions, but people with a flexible sense of ethics have been known to get around this. If you get absolutely stuck, PM me and I'll see if I can't contact such dastardly folk to assist you.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Hey, don't look at me! I sent her a private message with very detailed advice.

[Wormwood]

Alternatively many TeX compiliers will provide you with a pdf output. It gives you lots of control over the format and typesetting, and best of all, it's free. Of course on the downside the default styles tend towards scientific publications. And coding in TeX is often as complex as web design, but subtly different (it's macros rather than markups).

Any websearch for TeX will give you a bunch of sites. I've typically gone with the LaTeX compilier, which has several well written GUI's. I'm currently writting my thesis in TeXnicCenter, and it's going pretty smoothly.

    -Mendel S.

[ADGBoss]

Also, if your squeamish about Dave's afore mentioned shady folk, Kinkos does have all that on their machines.  Creating 3 or 4 PDFs at a time would be very easy to do and quick.  You just export from their version of word.  

And of course Ebay always has Acrobat for sale, as well as Pagemaker.

Sean
AzDGboss

[max.lambertini]

I have several RPGs (some one-shot... some longer) on Word.  Is there a way to put these in Adobe?

What is the best way to make RPGs available online?

Any help would make me love you!

Gwin

Download, or have someone download it for you the latest beta version of Open Office (www.openoffice.org). It's an office suite not unlike Microsoft's, with two added benefits:

1. It's got an adequate MSWord file import feature
2. It's got a built-in PDF exporter which does an almost perfect job (except for JPGS, which are squeezed to a 72DPI, very low quality image)

Ciao,
Max

[ADGBoss]

Download, or have someone download it for you the latest beta version of Open Office (www.openoffice.org). It's an office suite not unlike Microsoft's, with two added benefits:

1. It's got an adequate MSWord file import feature
2. It's got a built-in PDF exporter which does an almost perfect job (except for JPGS, which are squeezed to a 72DPI, very low quality image)

Ciao,
Max

Which is not a big deal if generate your jpgs in 72dpi to begin with. Since most people will be looking at it on the net and even if they do print it, its probably not for the artwork, 72dpi is just fine.

Sean
AzDGBoss

[max.lambertini]

Which is not a big deal if generate your jpgs in 72dpi to begin with. Since most people will be looking at it on the net and even if they do print it, its probably not for the artwork, 72dpi is just fine.

Sean
AzDGBoss

Yes, but in Acrobat you can work out an acceptable trade off between compression and quality. In OO, you simply can't do this.

Despite this small flaw, however, OO is IMHO the best all-round freeware solution for this task.

Ciao,
Max

[Mike Holmes]

The only problem with all these suggestions is that they ignore the fact that Word does lousy layouts. Yes, you can make a PDF that looks just like the Word layout, but that'll look, well, not nearly as good as it could.

To get a better look you'll need better software. Something meant for layout. Lot's of threads here on that.

Have you considered hiring one of the many layout folks here (Matt Snyder comes to mind if he's got time)? Given a document that's already got some idea of what the layout should look like from, say, Word, it might not be a lot of work, and might not be too expensive.

Mike

[Michael Hopcroft]

If you;re going to start your own publishing house (which it sounds like is what you're thinking of doing), then i agree with those who say you will definitely want the services of a layout guru. A person who does alyout for e-publishing on a regular basis will already have all the tools required to both produce good-looking layouts and convert them tinto PDFs for both e-book and print quality.

Don't ignore the print facotr. Now that RPGmall is beginning to take off you may at some point want to invest in Print-On-Demand. It expands your audience as some people simply won;t buy an electronic book (those people must have unlimited space on their shelves, but....) Hiring someone to do yourr layout costs some money initially but gives you a great deal of flexibility.

In addition, a layout person who has done RPG Ebooks before will know the business and what the market expects. He may be able to point you to illustrators, cover artists, and the like. He knows what file formats are needed for what

I've tried doing my own layout in the past and the software has an enormous learning curve. Plus you need to have a basic sens eof design that only training or instinct can give you. Thus my investment in layout has creatively been a good one, even though at times the expense has been a bit much.

Thus you have terminated the biological existence of multiple avian creatures with a unitary geolofgical artifact. (For those of you who have never been to a Willam S. Buckley lecture, that's "killed two birds wsith one stone"....)

[ADGBoss]

I use Word to make the initial run down (because I work at work and home and do not have agemaker here at work).

Once I am past a certain stage however, I start plugging everything into Pagemaker.  YEs it is an enormous learning curve and of course expensive (though onebay its priced more like a computer game from your local store) but its well worth it especially since it meshes with Acrobat so well.

Of course doing desk top pub for several years has helped so I do not personally need a layout person (editor hell yes you all know I am a grammar nightmare) but a good layout is as important as good art.

Sean

[Reimer Behrends]

Yes, but in Acrobat you can work out an acceptable trade off between compression and quality. In OO, you simply can't do this.

Yes, you can. You simply have to choose the Print or Press option instead of Screen optimization.

Despite this small flaw, however, OO is IMHO the best all-round freeware solution for this task.

Only insofar as there are hardly any freeware solutions. OOo Writer still has a fair amount of limitations, especially with respect to typography. Any real DTP program will run circles around either OOo or MS Word.

Note also that the name is OpenOffice.org, not Open Office. This may sound like nitpicking, but Open Office is a trademark owned by another company.

-- Reimer Behrends

[Reimer Behrends]

Also, if your squeamish about Dave's afore mentioned shady folk, Kinkos does have all that on their machines.  Creating 3 or 4 PDFs at a time would be very easy to do and quick.  You just export from their version of word.  

And of course Ebay always has Acrobat for sale, as well as Pagemaker.

And of course, you can always create PDFs for free, either by going to http://www.ps2pdf.com/ or by installing Ghostscript on your machine.

-- Reimer Behrends