PDF

Some ways of creating PDF are simple, and some are more involved. Some applications, including many applications from Adobe, let you save files as PDF directly. This doesn't require much hacking and so isn't covered here, but it might...

It works beautifully, but it also leaves much behind. Document headings could have been turned into an outline of PDF bookmarks, and document links could have become live PDF links. Adding these features, shown in Figure 4-1, will help ensure...

Yet computer screens have a horizontal, landscape orientation. Accommodate on-screen reading and paper printing by setting your document's layout to two-column, landscape-oriented pages, producing the result in Figure 4-3. Sadly, Acrobat's ...

As people desire more features, more things get packed into the PDF. By attempting to make one file do all things for all people, that one file becomes large and unwieldy. Its portability begins to suffer. In particular, Adobe has worked t...

HTML is a better choice for distributing your document's data. Your source document can give you both, as shown in Figure 4-4. Figure 4-4. Different editions for different purposes; let readers decide PDF does have newer featur...

If you need to distribute information to readers using handheld devices such as Palms and Pocket PCs, you should take a look at Plucker. 4.6.1 Palm OS Reading with Plucker Plucker is a toolset for reading HTML documents on Palm OS de...

Here are some freely available document viewers. Open your trouble document and then print it to PDF. 4.7.1 Microsoft Office Viewers Microsoft provides freely distributable, Windows-based document viewers for its Office suite. Down...

What kind of PDF do you need? You can configure Distiller to create the best PDF for your purpose. The choice is usually between document fidelity and file size. File size becomes an issue only when distributing a PDF electronically. When in do...

Adobe Acrobat sets the standard for PDF creation, but it can be too expensive. Ghostscript is a free PostScript interpreter that can also create PDFs, much like Acrobat's Distiller. Use RedMon to plug the power of Ghostscript into the convenien...

Any time you go to print a document, you can choose Save As PDF . . . from the bottom of the Print dialog box. Unfortunately, this approach provides no options and tends to produce large files, but at least it is a quick solution to producing...

What PDF viewers are they running? Assume that they have at least upgraded to the previous version of Acrobat/Reader (or another, compatible viewer). PDFs created with the newest Acrobat might be incompatible with previous versions. A little ...

On Windows, choose a profile when you print by changing the Print Properties . . . Adobe PDF Settings tab Default Settings drop-down box, as shown in Figure 4-11. On a Macintosh, choose PDF Options from the drop-down box that starts out sa...

Embedding ensures that your PDF text looks perfect wherever it is printed or viewed. Embedding also bulks up your PDF's file size. In this hack we discuss embedding and its alternatives, their upsides and downsides. We also discuss font subse...

However, maintaining Ghostscript on every client in your enterprise can be a nuisance. Consider installing it on a single Linux server instead. Then, use Samba to share it as a PDF printer to your entire network. Before creating a PDF prin...

You can easily add a "Print to Image" printer by following [Hack #39] and changing a few ingredients. Alternatively, rasterize your PDF documents using Adobe Acrobat or Photoshop. Because Photoshop gives you the most power, you might prefer...

w3.org/Graphics/SVG/). It behaves more like PostScript than PDF. In fact, you can transform PostScript into SVG using pstoedit's SVG filter. Close the loop by wiring these tools into one of our virtual printers and you'll have "Print to SVG...

The idea is to enable authors to create documents using their favorite editor and then print it to a web site. Once on the web server, the PostScript print stream can be converted to PDF and posted online for reading or downloading. In this s...

Preparing these pictures to share with your family and friends is a more difficult task. Consider creating a photo album with PDF. It makes a clean package that you can easily distribute, and its thumbnails feature is ideal for rapid navigation...

If the document in question is already stored on a computer, it makes more sense to print the document from the computer to the target fax machine. This yields a much higher-quality fax, and it is much more convenient. On a Windows machine wi...

Today, we still have fax. Integrate fax with your 21st-century lifestyle using HylaFAX. HylaFAX turns your Linux box into a fax server. For details, visit http://www.hylafax.org and http://www.ifax.com. Here, we discuss configuring HylaFAX so...