free/cheap PDF (Pretender PDF as example)

[xiombarg]

Hey, all. As as a quick search on "PDF" in this forum will show, there's a lot of information here on the Forge about how to produce a PDF on the cheap, none the least of which is Clinton's excellent article. It's been mentioned quite a few times that OpenOffice and Ghostscript are capable of producing PDFs for free, not to mention the "Postscript to PDF" site. And it's my understanding that MacOS X can save files as PDF from the "Print Preview".

Well, I wanted to start a thread to call attention to one of the better methods for producing cheap PDFs that I've found which doesn't seem to have gotten much attention, though Kester and Andrew Martin have mentioned it in a few threads: PDF995. I also wanted to discuss people's successes, tips, and tricks using PDF995 or any of the other methods mentioned above.

I downloaded PDF995 last night, and for Windows users, it's a wonderful and easy solution -- it creates a printer that outputs to PDF. Anything that can print can be used to produce a PDF. Last night I used it to produce a quickie PDF of Pretender, outputting it from Word. However, I could have just as easily outputted from Publisher or my web browser -- I tried outputting from Internet Exporer and it worked great.

The only problem I ran into was if I substituted TrueType Times Roman instead of allowing to use its built-in "Times" font, all the words were scrunchedtogetherlikethis, while if I used the "Times" font, it put a space after apostrophies, so you got text like this: I'  ll go down before you'  ll be there. I solved this by substituting Arial apostropies for Times apostropies (easy enough to do in Word with a search and replace).

Also, I had to make sure I paged through the document and looked at the pictures, making sure they loaded into memory, before they'd show up in the output.

However, these were minor problems that only took a bit of tinkering to fix them. Plus, the biggest problem with free PDF production is you can't use some of the nicer features like bookmarks or linking, but there's a companion program for PDF995 called PDFEdit995 that fixes this problem.

However, there is a relevant lesson here for those who want to do things cheap: Usually it takes a little more effort. If you're not willing to put in a bit of time to make sure everything works okay while tinkering with a free product, you're better off paying the money for the full version of Acrobat.

The only other problem -- which others have mentioned -- is a nag screen pops up in your browser when you use it, unless you pay a little cash to make it go away. However, it's very innocuous -- it doesn't flash and it dosn't contain pop-up ads, just a simple nag. I may give the authors money because I like the program so much, but not just to make the nag go away -- if I was more strapped for cash, it wouldn't be a big deal at all.

What have other people's experiences been in terms of producing PDFs on the cheap?

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings xiombarg,

The only problem I ran into was if I substituted TrueType Times Roman instead of allowing to use its built-in "Times" font, all the words were scrunchedtogetherlikethis <...>

Also, I had to make sure I paged through the document and looked at the pictures, making sure they loaded into memory, before they'd show up in the output.

However, these were minor problems that only took a bit of tinkering to fix them. Plus, the biggest problem with free PDF production is you can't use some of the nicer features like bookmarks or linking, but there's a companion program for PDF995 called PDFEdit995 that fixes this problem.

<...>

What have other people's experiences been in terms of producing PDFs on the cheap?

First up: If you go into your printer settings, right click on PDF995, click properties, you can fix most of the minor TTF problems from there.  Otherwise you are best advised to use TTFs sparingly, especially the fancy ones.  But if you save those for titles all you need do is go in and highlight the spaces between words and change the space to the font Helvetica, and woila!  You now have properly spaced text WITH the TTF.

As to your "image" problems.  Let me guess, your sources were either GIFs, JPEGs, or BMPs; right?  My suggestion: convert to 300 DPI TIFFs and forever after work only with TIFFs that are 300 DPI.  :)

Second:  A good alternative for producing decent looking PDFs is Openoffice.org.  This is a free Office Suite similar in most regards to MS Office.  Be warned this is a 60 MB d/l.  Also it has no bookmarks, but it does give you quality control for the PDF output.

Alternatively, if you go to sourceforge.net there is a program there called, I think, PDFCreator.  Haven't tried it yet, but it may be a decent alternative.  If you try it let us know how it worked out, 'k?

edit:  Afterthought!  If you'd like to see examples of each type of PDF (sans PDFCreator which I don't have) click the link in my sig.  All Crystal Spheres PDFs were produced with PDF995.  All Ubel They PDFs were produced with Openoffice.Org; as was the AnyBook PDF and the review for Crest of the Stars.  Notice that AnyBook has background images.  Nice, if mildy annoying, yes?  ;)


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[madelf]

I tried outputting from Internet Exporer and it worked great.

Now that's interesting.
So a document can be put together as a website and then printed to a PDF? How would pagebreaks and such be handled? Using tables to define the area of each page?

I've been using pdf995 with the Microsoft Works word processor that came with my computer & I've noticed no problems with TT Times Roman (using the default properties).
Maybe it depends on the program that's doing the output?

[xiombarg]

I tried outputting from Internet Exporer and it worked great.

Now that's interesting.
So a document can be put together as a website and then printed to a PDF? How would pagebreaks and such be handled? Using tables to define the area of each page?

It would be handled just like the web browser handles it. Different browsers do this differently.

I've been using pdf995 with the Microsoft Works word processor that came with my computer & I've noticed no problems with TT Times Roman (using the default properties).
Maybe it depends on the program that's doing the output?

By default, it's going to substitute "Times". In my experience, the only problem with that is the strange gap after apostrophes. If you're not getting that, maybe it is the output program -- only I don't get that result with my regular printer, only PDF995. Or perhaps you have an older version of PDF995 than I do, and it handles that one thing better...

[contracycle]

I tried outputting from Internet Exporer and it worked great.

Now that's interesting.
So a document can be put together as a website and then printed to a PDF? How would pagebreaks and such be handled? Using tables to define the area of each page?

What these things do is a "virtual print run".  So you would, I expect, get an output much like if you pressed PRNTSCRN while looking at a page, except to a file instead of hardcopy.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings,

I tried outputting from
What these things do is a "virtual print run".  So you would, I expect, get an output much like if you pressed PRNTSCRN while looking at a page, except to a file instead of hardcopy.

It's times like this that I wish we could attach files.  I just did this using PDF995 on this thread.  Two words: Ghaaah! + Ugly.

Well, ok, it's not that bad.  It's just like if you tried to print the thread out.


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[xiombarg]

Well, ok, it's not that bad.  It's just like if you tried to print the thread out.

Yeah, it's ugly. But that isn't the fault of PDF995 so much as the browser -- most browsers don't try too hard to prettify print output, for a variety of obvious reasons.

[efindel]

A note for those using Unix or Linux...  Scribus, a free DTP program, has reached its 1.0 version this month.  It can create PDFs with font embedding, form fill-in, and even encryption.

The Scribus website:

  http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/

Scribus docs on the web, in English (developer is German):

  http://www.atlantictechsolutions.com/scribusdocs/topics.html

--Travis[/url]

[Clay]

Much thanks for the tip on Scribus.  That should completely kill my productivity for days.

[Reimer Behrends]

Hey, all. As as a quick search on "PDF" in this forum will show, there's a lot of information here on the Forge about how to produce a PDF on the cheap, none the least of which is Clinton's excellent article. It's been mentioned quite a few times that OpenOffice and Ghostscript are capable of producing PDFs for free, not to mention the "Postscript to PDF" site. And it's my understanding that MacOS X can save files as PDF from the "Print Preview".

Well, I wanted to start a thread to call attention to one of the better methods for producing cheap PDFs that I've found which doesn't seem to have gotten much attention, though Kester and Andrew Martin have mentioned it in a few threads: PDF995. I also wanted to discuss people's successes, tips, and tricks using PDF995 or any of the other methods mentioned above.

Note that pdf995 seems to be just a wrapper around GNU Ghostscript, and a fairly old version at that, it appears. Last I checked, the example files on their site where created with version 6.51. Especially font handling has improved much in more recent versions of Ghostscript.

On a related note, I'd strongly advise against using OpenOffice.org's "Export to PDF" feature until this bug is fixed, or if for some reason it doesn't occur on your system.

[madelf]

The PDF export in Open Office also seems to freak out over certain fonts, changing them into illegible gibberish.
I exported the same thing in PDF995, and it worked just fine.

Thought I'd share.

[Kester Pelagius]

The PDF export in Open Office also seems to freak out over certain fonts, changing them into illegible gibberish.
I exported the same thing in PDF995, and it worked just fine.

Thought I'd share.

Which ones?

I've not encountered any problems, thus far, but then again I don't use a lot of fancy fonts.

[Emily_Dresner]

Hey --

Hooked PDF995 up to Word 2002 and having no problem with it.  It churns out some very nice looking PDFs.  Perhaps I grabbed the newest and spiffiest version of it, or maybe it has to do with Word 2002's handling of fonts.  It seems to be highly useful for proofing a document, although Word itself is giving me the fits to die for.  It has issues with trying to do spacing beneath fonts and rules, and is telling me that eventually I'll need to either learn Ghostscript or LaTeX or shell out cash for some real layout tools.

I downloaded and after several days and an epic battle with Qt and Mesa, I got Scribus 1.0.1 to build and install on my RedHat 9.0 box.  I haven't had a chance to read the documentation and work with it yet.  I'm having the usual problems with fonts and Linux and installing of fonts and Linux, so the system isn't as stable as I'd like yet.  Now, on the Scribus page, they do have a highly entertaining article on KDE/Cygwin and building Scribus under Cygwin to get it working for Windows 2000/XP.  However, the KDE port looks terrible, so even if I got it working, Scribus may just churn out utter garbage.  I'm joining the development list to read what they're doing, but from what I see, mostly they're busy porting the documentation to various languages instead of working on stability and tools.  I honestly cannot attest to its stability and usability yet.  Perhaps in a week.

For now, it looks like the free tools are more than adequate.  My main issue is my inability to do anything visually artistic.  For the not as technically proficient as I, you're basically screwed when it comes to getting the free tools to work, because they don't work without at least a little bit of a fight.

[contracycle]

Acrobat has a LOT of font problems; they may carry over to some of the related products (cannot speak for anything on Linux).  One thing worth trying when you are getting font substitution is to install PostScript-capable print driver on your machine as a dummy printer.  Becuase the system is doing a "virtual print run", the absence of PostScript device drivers may cause hiccups.

[C. Edwards]

Right now I'm doing layout in Serif PagePlus (version 6) and printing to PDF995. It's been working wonderfully. I may end up buying the PDF capable PagePlus 8, but for only a $10 expenditure my current setup is working much better than I expected.

-Chris