I have found that converting files to .pdf format very useful. For example, I can send CAD diagrams to clients who may not have access to a CAD program.
I searched for free conversion utilities online and found only shareware which placed a huge "Demo" banner across the output (see
Purchase Acrobat writer for about $250.
With that your MS-Office documents, Word, Excel, Powerpoint among others can be created with one click to PDF format.
Also all the points related to security, search capability, launching other programs from your PDF document are taken to the limit. And you are not bound to an specific operating system. Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr
One note on using the full, paid version of Acrobat--it should be installed after the other applications. In most cases, it will be anyway.
Another tool I have found useful is a non-Adobe program that will distill PostScript documents to PDF. This particular one is called PStill, and can be found at
. You can download a free version, but the paid version is not expensive. It has both a gui and non-user-interacting version that can be called programmatically. You can't do this with the regular Acrobat distiller, as it will want to come up within a logged-on user and get some interaction.
As for me, I uses Mac OS X. Hence I can convert any printable document from any application to PDF format out of the box without additional installation.
As already stated get yourself a copy of Ghostscript (its free) and then get a copy of Ghostgum, this give you a nice GUI interface and is also free. I use this all the time and once you get the settings right it is almost as good as the Adobe product