Quick-n-Dirty PDF Wrangling
Adobe’s Portable Document File format-you know it, you love it. Here are a couple of my quick hints to get a bit more out of this very common (and soon to be ISO Standard) document format.
Reading a PDF file: Standard issue software for reading PDFs is Adobe Acrobat Reader. My one issue with PDFs for long time was the fact that Acrobat would take FOREVER to boot up. Sometimes a link in a web page goes to PDF file, and suddenly your whole computer freezes…. up…. while…. Acrobat ….. launches….
Not anymore. Now I use Foxit Reader, a free app for viewing PDF files. Its reason to exist is its instant loading. Download it, install it, tell Windows to use Foxit by default for PDFs, and you’ll never look back.
Mac OS X users don’t need to worry about this as the ability handle PDFs is built into the OS, and Preview app does a fine job reading the files.
Making a PDF: Adobe Acrobat is a top-flight tool for creating high-quality PDF files, with links and searchable text and other higher-level features. It’s a couple hundred bucks and if you are the kind of person who needs it (this is mostly for businesses, really) chances are you already have it. But there are times when it would be very handy to be able to make a simple plain-vanilla PDF of a file you have. It’s easiest on a Mac, as noted before: Any doc that you can print, you can also print to PDF. Just select print from the dialog box, and choose Print to File, and your Mac will save your print as a PDF. I use this all the time for printing web receipts for Amazon and the like.
For Windows, there are a number of shareware and/or freeware apps that give you the same function to print to a PDF. One example is WinPDF, which shows up as a separate printer in your printer dialog box. There are others.
If you don’t want to install software, or can’t, and you need a quickie one-off PDF conversion tool, you can do it online at PDFOnline. You upload a file, it converts it to PDF and emails you the result. Very nice if you’re using someone else’s computer, or an Internet terminal or something.
One final tip I have is PDFPad. This website lets you generate your own graph paper or blank sheet music, specialized engineering Smith Charts, calendars, and even Sudoku sheets. You choose the parameters, click the button and you download the PDF which you can use as much as you like, or go back to the site and make as many new and different PDFs as you need. It’s a handy bookmark for when you need these papers… download ‘em and print up as many as you need.
Just don’t use up all the inkjet ink.
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Learn how to use apostrophes and the difference between your and you’re.
Everybody’s an editor. Sheesh. Fixed it.
[…] That Adobe Reader, she does a great job of letting you know she’s running. Not subtle by any means. Good to know there are alternatives. […]
I’d also mention that OpenOffice supports pdf export out of box, including links, forms and all that good stuff.
let’s not forget :
troff t.tr| lp -dstoud | ps2pdf > t.pdf
troff t.tr| lp -dstdout | ps2pdf > t.pdf
rather
Abhor Adobe Acrobat as a reader. Discovered foxit for that reason a while ago, and indeed, I don’t detest pdf’s anymore.
But a thought: pdf’s were created as a ‘Portable Document Format’, indeed that is what it stands for. But this at a time when the internet, and html was quite sufficient. Now, html is far superior to pdf and in fact truly serves as a more dominant portable document format. All you need is an editor to create it, and any reasonable browser will render 99% of web pages out there (in some viewable form). What I’m getting at is who fucking needs pdf’s? Html is it.
Darcy, I can think of two reasons why PDF works better than HTML in some cases.
The first is the example of downloadable forms. The nice thing about PDF form is that it will print exactly the same no matter what computer it is printed from. There are still enough minor variations in HTML rendering that it’s not always going to look the same.
The second is something I use in business. When we send a business agreement to a client to be signed, we send a PDF instead of a word document, specifically because it can’t be edited. We could negotiate a price for something, send a word doc over to be printed and signed, and one part could make an edit and then print, and unless we double-checked every word, we could end up signing something we didn’t agree to.
I am sure there are other examples.
Also, cwillu, good point about OpenOffice, though installing OO just for the PDF falls outside the headline of “Quick-n-dirty.” Also note that Google Docs will export to PDF as well.
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