Print to PDF
 

Hi,

I know that it's difficult (or costly) to create pdf's on Windoze, and that on Mac's it's very easy, but I don't know if it's easy/difficult on Linux or if it's built in or what?

Can anyone tell me? I don't have a Linux to hand to look at and I'm off to see a friend soon who's looking for a pc and wondering about using Linux, and I know he'll ask me that.

OpenOffice has built-in "export as PDF" (free from http://www.openoffice.org).

There are also some command line utiltiies.

/usr/bin/db2pdf
/usr/bin/docbook2pdf
/usr/bin/ps2pdf.........................PostScript to PDF
/usr/bin/ps2pdf12
/usr/bin/ps2pdf13
/usr/bin/ps2pdf14
/usr/bin/ps2pdfwr
/usr/bin/tiff2pdf

You can also make a virtual PDF printer in CUPS

That's all really useful stuff. Thanks for all the help!

If you want to create PDF from your OpenOffice documents then use the Create PDF feature from OpenOffice which - especially with the newer version 2.0.3 - gives you all needed options. Hyperlinks are kept and content table links (document internal links) and bookmarks are created in the PDF.

If you want to create PDF from other applications - e.g. archive a website as PDF (e.g. a topic of the forum) then you could create a PDF printer similar as in Windows - ASFAIK there are several possibilities. I found this very easy to install: http://www.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~...download.shtml

I have tried this free Adobe pdf creator in Windows

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

it works fairly well except it doesn't keep all links but also doesn't take forever like Acrobat does.

OpenOffice seems to have trouble correctly displaying fairly complex documents created in Word. Just a heads up if you want to do this for previously created documents.

Which unfortunately does not help the linux users here...

FYI: Neither Word has trouble correctly displaying it's own created fairly complex documents. ;-)

I would like to to see MS Word if it would try to display ODT documents correctly (although the format is open). The OpenOffice crew already did a great work rendering so much out of that binary container format.

It is correct that with some complexity the display does not match the Word any more very well. But this happens even within different Word versions.

But however - this is not the real topic here in this thread.

In the original post, the first comment was:

I just wanted to offer an easy to use free tool as well as my experience trying to do exactly what everyone is talking about (ditching Windows/Word/Acrobat for Linux/OpenOffice). So personally I don't think it is off topic.

PDF's have some great uses.
 

In my field, I have to use both MS and Linux applications. I have to publish financial legal docs that highlight errors or even start off fraud proceedings. To reduce the risk of alterations, I submit them in .pdf format rather than as spreadsheets. All alterations are traceable.

To speed up Windoze pdf conversions, I installed Adobe CS2 and it has added "Save as pdf" buttons in the Word and Excel Toolbars but it still takes twice as long as Open Office to complete the job.

Also on web pages, I link downloads to pdf files only - faster web loading and even if they have Adobe Acrobat Pro, if they try to copy and paste your pictures off the pdf download, they become fuzzy - more effective than a copyright.

I hear MS is going to withdraw support for pdf files in their upcoming Vista and Office (or is it Orifice now?)- Idiots!

Just a tip: If you create a pdf printer, and aim it at a folder on a flash drive or memory card, you can shunt your work to the flash drive/memory card and plug that directly into the printer - no more waiting for print queues, paper to be refilled - printer error messages interruping you PC work.

FYI: A friend asked me why I have the need of a PDF printer driver under linux as the most applications under Linux know to create PDF files themselves. - Hey, he is right - the most applications really can create PDF files without a PDF printer driver and if I think longer about it I find that the PDF printer driver is only a workaround for the lack of PDF support under Windows.

However, Firefox seems to be one of the few applications that can't. And there the CUPS-PDF printer from http://www.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~...ownload.shtml" is probably not the best but a simple solution to get a PDF of a website quickly.

Contolling Font Size on PDF Printer
 

I have successfully installed a CUPS-PDF printer on Red Hat Linux. Some of my reports are 132 column reports which I want to print on letter size, portrait oriented paper. When these print directly on Laser printers, I send an escape sequence to print at 17 characters per inch. Is there something similar I can do when I create a PDF file to print in a smaller font?

Thanks, Eddie

Yup, a2ps.