What is Digg?118 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+70@panique
@darksheer
This is a Mac OS X feature...period. You can do this from any print dialog. - centic, on 10/12/2007, -11/+55print -> save as PDF.. i love my mac
- ani-pockdotnet, on 10/12/2007, -12/+51Macs have this feature built in. When you print something you can click on the PDF button in which you can choose to save the PDF, compress the PDF, encrypyt, fax, mail...
- jasper976, on 10/12/2007, -25/+58hmm.. free program or buy a mac... what shall i do
- jedikd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+36I like how thus far in this thread the following things have been listed as being "easier" than downloading a printer driver (takes about 5 seconds to install):
1) Buying a new computer (mac)
2) Installing a new operating system (linux)
3) Installing a new set of software (OpenOffice)
you people are odd.. - DesiGUY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26Go OpenSource: PDF Creator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ - spitenmalice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21or PDFCreator
- Softland, on 10/12/2007, -16/+34a big mac?
- i64X, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18We use PDFcreator at work. It works well.
- Softland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17direct link is http://www.dopdf.com
- unixer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17or use cutepdf to print anything in pdf
- MWeather, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Or just use Open Office and save it as a PDF
- FKnight, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19Kinda sucks how Microsoft is the only company on Earth that isn't allowed to include PDF output options in any of their products.
- kirkio, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16could just use pdf995 or cutepdf... they all work just as well
- theundone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Haven't used any of those mentioned above but I've been using Primo PDF for awhile.
http://www.primopdf.com/ - ahill7, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15But for non Apple and non Linux users, this is good. I remember previously the only way I knew how to print to PDF was to install the Adobe Acrobat Distiller to achieve the same effect.
- astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Actually, Mac minis are $600. MacBooks and iMacs are $1000.
Yes you can print PDFs, but you can also cut and paste PDF snippets between applications, which is a feature I've come to rely on quite heavily. For example, for school I can cut and paste snippets of the PDF course slides into my own notes (I use OmniOutliner to take class notes), or I can paste a diagram created in OmniOutliner into TextEdit or Pages, and that diagram is pasted as PDF, which means that it can be scaled and printed without looking pixelated. Or I can create a math formula in Grapher.app and paste it into a report, and it too is pasted as a PDF.
And all PDF documents are indexed in Spotlight.
All are essential features for the University student, if you ask me. - darksheer, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15@panique,
I think this is a mac-only feature in office. Under windows, you're required to have Adobe Acrobat (or something similar) installed. - Ansible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Another vote for primopdf from me
- jedikd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10@mweather
really? because i could have sworn the title of this story was "How to print just about anything to PDF for free"? - bobpaul, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12How is this better than CutePDF? Doesn't DoPDF have adware? Not to mention they are probably using GhostScript ILLEGALLY anyway. That's why CutePDF stopped bundling GhostScript, the OSS license it's under doesn't allow that.
Personally, I recommend PDFCreater. It's free, it's OSS, and it's on SourceForge, and it looks surprisingly identical to DoPDF - XSforMe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9PDFCreator: Free, stable, open source, installs like a windows printer. Why mess around with experiments?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ - atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18Or just use Linux (you don't have to buy a new computer to use Linux)
My KPrinter has "Mail PDF file", "Print to file (PDF)", "Print to file (Postscript)", "Send to Fax" options. - unixer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@stvspl
Foxit is a nice reader but it is irrelevant. (we are talking about printing in PDF) By the way I use adobe reader with most of the plug ins removed. It is just as fast as Foxit and renders PDFs correctly.
PS Thank you Firefox spellcheck - toxicredm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Or, use Google Docs.
- joeTaco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Don't know why you're getting dugg down... exporting as pdf in OpenOffice works great. And PrimoPDF for everything else is nice too. Seems to be pretty much the same as doPDF.
- partialinfinity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@unixer: actually, this is better than CutePDF Writer because doPDF doesn't require a third party converter -- it's built into doPDF.
- dmason, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is what I'v used on all my client machines. Very nice little program.
- crazydiode, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5another one from me.. i have been using this for a long time...
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -12/+16Or just use OpenOffice and save it directly to a PDF.
Things work a lot better without Microsoft bloatware hogging up your Windows box. - mazdagirluk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I like primopdf.com
- sulf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@atdigg
Unfortunately, only KDE apps can natively print to PDF. For other applications like Firefox you'll have to install cups-pdf package. Not very hard to do, though. - Altotus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I think that the point they were getting at is that Windows is the only one of those platforms that doesn't natively support the feature that this free driver (for pre-Vista Windows) implements. The driver exists to provide a basic feature of the competition. I think they are insinuating that it's another place where Windows is playing catch-up. Of course they are right, but...
You paid for Windows. It didn't come with all the features of the other operating systems, but you bought it (possibly bundled with a PC) with the understanding that for what it lacked in features it more than made up for in numbers. And numbers mean mass-market products and a richer set of applications to choose from. It means greater breadth in cost-quality (cheap crap to decent but expensive software).
Windows may not make you as productive as the other environments out-of-the box, but that's not its design and that's not really what the typical Windows customer is thinking when they get it. They'll be thinking something "what games can I buy for this" or "will I be able to run Word and Excel". You don't ask questions like, "will this make my workflow more efficient", "does this scale with job/data sets", or "how transparent is integration of my local work environment into the larger heterogeneous environment" and come up with Microsoft Windows as an answer (not if you're equally familiar with the alternatives).
That's the point. In their fanboy way, they are using this small use case to highlight a situation that is addressing a shortcoming that's indicative of a possibly larger misfit of product-to-task. I use Linux, Windows, Solaris, and to a lesser extent OS X, all the time and it couldn't be more clear to me that each has certain appropriate uses.
Windows' only liability, as far as I am concerned, is that versions I'm using (namely W2K, W2K3, and XPSP2) don't really excel at anything in particular. They are all necessary to run certain applications, but the platform itself, at least right now, has nothing in and of itself to suggest it other than by arbitrary means it became a prerequisite for those apps. That's too bad, because MS has more resources than anyone and still fetters that money on being dominant rather than being great. - WaldorfSalad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3PDFCreator user here.
Another useful, but little-documented, feature of PDFCreator is the ability to also create output in various graphic formats (TIFF, JPEG, BMP) at a specified resolution. This has been useful to me in the past. - Icklehamsta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well if you have Office 2007..
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en
or am I being completely stupid in some way? - protium, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5This 'doPDF' program has built in adware.
No thank you. I'll stick with other non-annoying solutions. This DiGG is SPAM. - diggduggjoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Works great and is open source! Why would anyone want adware on their PC to replace a program like PDF Creator?
- sulf, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6ORLY? What about transaction receipts from websites that most people print to PDF? So you need to download 100+ MB OpenOffice, then save page from your browser to the hard drive, then open it from OpenOffice and print to PDF?
- Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2GhostScript & RedMon FTW!
- krunk4ever, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://www.primopdf.com/
- Spuby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Seems the download link died, here's a mirror for the download http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5545
- jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
I used this when I was still a Windows user. Works perfectly... But since my switch to Linux, KDE (and OpenOffice as well) has it built in. So ner - colklink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Are you down with .odt?
Yeah, you know me... - ChiSoxFan77, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sorry to not continue the compelling off topic mac or "other free pdf product" discussion, but has anyone actually used this product that can give some input on it?
- vondur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2actually in most linux apps you can also print to file which makes a postscript file (.ps) then simply run the command ps2pdf which is installed by default in most linux distros. Or buy a Mac.
- panique, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2.ggiD no deirub neeb ev'I !pleH
- SteveMax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You can tell most applications (possibly all, except Gnome-based apps) to print through any program you wish. So, tell them to print to kprinter (that's what I do on xdvi or gv, for example. Their print dialogues are way too simple, and I really cannot remember all command-line switches and pipes I'd need to print on a different paper size, on both sides, two pages per side)
- evilTak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For linux, CUPS PDF: http://www.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~vrbehr/cups-pdf/
- Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For a very long time, you've been able to do this with GhostScript on windows.
In fact, I've seen commercial apps that just automate the installation of GS.
I realize that raised awareness is good, but this isn't new. - whiledo, on 03/25/2009, -0/+2I used to use primopdf, but I had real problems on an XP setup with multiple users and fast user switching. Kept showing some of the dialog boxes under a different session than the interactive one. Hopefully doPDF won't do that.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 118 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is