PDF Writer, Free?

[Mostafa Kassem]

Another one that no one has mentioned, which may be best of all is a
program called fineprint (www.fineprint.com) which will work like a
printer. Create your document with whatever program you want and then
print with the fineprint "pdf printer" .. I think it is limited to 5
pages per document, but most of the ones I use are 1 page anyway. Of
course if you wanna buy it it is not limited. (50$) .. It will even
combine output pages, up to 8 on one 8x10 page.. acts like a versatle
virtual printer. Then of course just use acrobat reader to read/print
the pages.

I have been using it for almost a year and very impressed with it. But
since the OP was asking for a free software package, I did not mention it.

Best regards,

Mostafa

 

[nospam]

On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 20:05:52 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"

[snip]
http://www.pdf995.com/ works well for me.

But he said free - not powered by spam.

??? I have used it for over a year, and I have never seen any spam
from it.

"The free versions display a sponsor page in your web browser each time you
run the software. If you would prefer not to see sponsor pages, you may
upgrade by obtaining individual keys for each product at any time for $9.95
each"

 

[Leon Heller]

Awhile back someone mentioned that they had a program that was *free*
that could create PDFs.

A friend has a need for such a program, but my surfing/googling hasn't
yielded an answer.

Can someone refresh my memory?

I use Ghostscript/Ghostview. It has an option for converting PostScript to
PDF. Just print the document to a file using a PS driver then convert it.

Leon

 

[gwhite]

Awhile back someone mentioned that they had a program that was *free*
that could create PDFs.

A friend has a need for such a program, but my surfing/googling hasn't
yielded an answer.

Can someone refresh my memory?

Others have pointed to the freebee. There are "low cost" solutions if
the real purpose is simply not to pay $250, or whatever the Adobe
Acrobat price is. I haven't used pdfFactory, but I've heard others say
it is good for the price. Here's the link:

http://www.pdffactory.com/products/pdffactory/index.html

 

[Lukas Louw]

http://www.pdf995.com/ works well for me.

"The free versions display a sponsor page in your web browser each time you
run the software. If you would prefer not to see sponsor pages, you may
upgrade by obtaining individual keys for each product at any time for $9.95
each"

I've used the free version of PDF995 for a few years, it works absolutely
great, and the only sponsor message that I've ever seen is for their own
product. I should really pop for the registration, it's dirt cheap, and well
worth it.

Lukas

 

[Anon]

You should give PDFCreator a shot .... works very much like adobe's own pdf
printer driver

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

http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm

 

[Richard Hosking]

The new version of open office is pretty good I hear
You have to run Linux of course

Richard

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 20:05:52 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"

[snip]
http://www.pdf995.com/ works well for me.

But he said free - not powered by spam.

??? I have used it for over a year, and I have never seen any spam
from it.

"The free versions display a sponsor page in your web browser each time you
run the software. If you would prefer not to see sponsor pages, you may
upgrade by obtaining individual keys for each product at any time for $9.95
each"

It opens a blank Internet Explorer page if you aren't online when
using it, and it will go to their home page if you are on line. I don't
remember ever being online while I was using it.

 

[Rich Webb]

Awhile back someone mentioned that they had a program that was *free*
that could create PDFs.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it (I might have missed it, I
guess) but both WordPerfect and Corel Draw have the ability to create
..pdf files as one if their "save as" options.

The releases that first included this ability had the usual v1.0
problems but those have pretty much been ironed out. Corel Draw can also
import non-encrypted .pdf files.

They aren't free but the prior versions of both WordPerfect and Corel
Draw sometimes show up very cheaply at the traveling "computer shows."
And, of course, WP is still a better product than MS Word...

 

[Jeroen Vriesman]

I would really recommend lyx/latex, I've made complete books with it, takes
some study but is much more than just making a simple document.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

The new version of open office is pretty good I hear
You have to run Linux of course

There are windows binaries on their site. Very clean install, just
download, unzip and run setup.exe.

Of course there are Linux binaries too, and others, (including Mac and
FreeBSD), as well as source code so you can tweak it and compile for
your own special platform.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Bernd Felsche]

The new version of open office is pretty good I hear
You have to run Linux of course

No you don't.

 

[Rolavine]

The new version of open office is pretty good I hear
You have to run Linux of course

Richard

No, there is an open office for windows, I have it and it seems to work just
like the linux version, it's even just as slow, lol.

 

[Al]

nospam wrote:


On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 20:05:52 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"

[snip]
http://www.pdf995.com/ works well for me.

But he said free - not powered by spam.

??? I have used it for over a year, and I have never seen any spam
from it.

"The free versions display a sponsor page in your web browser each time you
run the software. If you would prefer not to see sponsor pages, you may
upgrade by obtaining individual keys for each product at any time for $9.95
each"

It opens a blank Internet Explorer page if you aren't online when
using it, and it will go to their home page if you are on line. I don't
remember ever being online while I was using it.

To disable such nonsense, go to your hosts file and creat a dummy
address for the offending software. It hangs for about 10 secs while
your software rejects the address and then you can use it at will.

Al

 

[Stepan Novotill]

To disable such nonsense, go to your hosts file and creat a dummy
address for the offending software. It hangs for about 10 secs while
your software rejects the address and then you can use it at will.

Al

That's BRILLIANT Al ! Why didn't I think of that????

What would you do if the IP address was hard-coded into the
application?

Stepan

 

[Al]

That's BRILLIANT Al ! Why didn't I think of that????

What would you do if the IP address was hard-coded into the
application?

Stepan

Dunno. But here's a thought.

You could find the address by turning off TCP/IP. Then you will get an
error message with the IP address in it saying it is unavailable. You
might be able to find/code some software that traps that IP address or a
bunch of them from a file you create similar to a hosts file.

Al

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Dunno. But here's a thought.

You could find the address by turning off TCP/IP. Then you will get an
error message with the IP address in it saying it is unavailable. You
might be able to find/code some software that traps that IP address or a
bunch of them from a file you create similar to a hosts file.

Al

Why bother, when you can just click to close the occasional blank page?
The IP address doesn't even register on my firewall.

 

[David Brown]

No, there is an open office for windows, I have it and it seems to work just
like the linux version, it's even just as slow, lol.

It works a bit faster if you use the fast starter, which pre-loads common
dlls and other bits and pieces (MS Office does exactly the same, except that
the "fast start" is mostly hidden from the user - that's why it *appears*
faster).

You can use ghostscript along with the printer re-director from the same
people to get a nice "print-to-pdf" setup.

 

[A E]

http://www.pdf995.com/

 

[JeffM]

http://www.visagesoft.com/easypdf/easypdf_free.php
Freeware. (Haven't tried it.)