Living Open Source

Open Source Software:– Create PDF files

May 1st, 2007 by Tim 7

The Adobe Reader PDF format has become the de facto standard for electronic document distribution and publication. Everybody has Adobe installed, even if they didn’t realise what it was or where it came from. So if you want to publish your cell or home group notes on the web, PDF has to be the obvious choice.
Whatever you do though, don’t just upload your Word documents.

But how do you create PDF files? More importantly how do you take an existing document in Word (or any application) and convert it to a pdf file? And how do you do it without shelling out some cash?

Here are three tools that do the job in a similar way. You download them and once installed you find yourself with a new Printer on your system. When you select that printer from any application and print a document, these clever little tools turn your document into a pdf file.

PrimoPDF - works well, allows you to secure pdf files and has a really easy interface. It is not Open Source, but is free (GNU).
PDF Creator - works well, can create other types of document and it is Open Source. But the user interface is much more confusing than PrimoPDF.
doPDF - easy to use, but less features than other two.

All because this morning the pdf creator I actually purchased a couple of years back has stopped working! You’ll find it in the skip.

7 Comments on the Comment Wall

1 On May 1st, 2007 at 8:53 pm Andy said:

useful!

Thanks…
2 On May 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 am mrben said:

Might also be worth noting that OpenOffice.org will export any document or presentation to PDF too. (Or presentation to flash, if you prefer)
3 On May 10th, 2007 at 8:14 am Living Open Source » Open Source Software:– Open Office said:

[...] pointed out by the JediMoose on the last post in this series, OpenOffice can also export PDF [...]
4 On June 14th, 2007 at 1:21 pm Greg Byman said:

I found cutepdf.com to be extremely easy to use. It also creates a “printer” to choose from.
5 On November 21st, 2007 at 4:54 pm Joni Solis said:

I have used both PrimoPDF and PDF995. I liked both but find PrimoPDF the easier of the two to learn to use.

PrimoPDF make a printer so you can make a PDF file from any program you can print from.

And can’t Scribus also open, edit, and save as PDF files?
http://www.scribus.net/

Thank you for writing this info about free programs. I am glad I found your site.
6 On January 12th, 2008 at 6:49 am Geoff Dodd - pdf said:

I found that Cute PDF writer drops the hyperlinks that I created in Ms Word, much of the time.
Here is yet another, eWriterPro:

The portability of PDF format is perhaps its best feature. It is becoming easier to create these documents with new tools for win. that even allow a child to
create a pdf file or even an e-book quite easily. How long will this format be around now that ISO has control of the standard?
7 On March 28th, 2008 at 4:03 pm Solvudar said:

Well, I’m using CutePDF and I’m very pleased with it. OpenOffice is another great alternative for documents.