Yellow Dog Linux

Did you know that on Unix type operating systems the ability to create PDF's is built in? Yes, even a PS2 running Linux can make PDF's with a standard base install.

Now usually, you'll be running some kind of graphical application that will often have a button or other menu item for it. But what if they don't?

That's when you'll install cups-pdf:

yum install cups-pdf

You know how on windows you can download some programs that install a virtual printer that will let you print to make PDF's? Well cups-pdf works the similarly, but better. Then you can:

system-config-printer as root to install the fake printer which will then show up in the print menus of your applications. When you use it, it'll print the pdf to your Desktop direcotry in your home directory.

But....you don't even need to do that, though installing cups-pdf makes it easier. You see, most Linux applications print-to-file option outputs postscript, and postscript is easily converted to PDF using the built in utility ps2pdf. You'll hit print-to-file in your app, save the file and then run ps2pdf on it in a terminal.

Now suppose you had a plain ascii text file you wanted to make a PDF out of. You could load it into abiword or OpenOffice and use them to make a PDF, but what fun is that when you could do it in a terminal faster. a2ps converts ascii files (and others) to postscript, then you can use ps2pdf to make the PDF.

Or you can even use lpr in the terminal to print directly to cups-pdf:

lpr -PCups-PDF file

Isn't Linux fun?

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)

whats a pdf?

massproduce wrote:whats a pdf?

That's a type of file that Adobe Acrobat Reader uses for platform-independent documents. Like, when you click on a link on a web browser in Windows, and it says "You need to install Adobe Reader"

You can find more information about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format

Cheers,
Paul

Hello all, Susan here i am not net savvy but had trouble converting word to pdf to send a invoice to my boss each time i was wondering is there no way round other hand go in to the Adobe web site, then i spotted this place which has great tips & tricks to create pdf's from anything.

Thanks a lot for this.

Cheers!!!

susanspy wrote:Hello all, Susan here i am not net savvy but had trouble converting word to pdf to send a invoice to my boss each time i was wondering is there no way round other hand go in to the Adobe web site, then i spotted this place which has great tips & tricks to create pdf's from anything.

Thanks a lot for this.

Cheers!!!

Easiest way on Windows is to download a "virtual printer" that you select in your print dialog that converts whatever you print to it to PDF and saves it.

I personally would recommend PDFCreator

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

Also the freeware version of CutePDF writer has also been suggested:

http://www.cutepdf.com/

At least one version of Print Shop installed a virtual PDF printer for me on Windows XP.

Hope this helps

Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)

How can i change pdf version to microsoft word? I downloaded a book in my computer in PDF version,Now first i want to transmit it to progarme microsft word and then print it?
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market samurai ~ marketsamurai ~ marketsamurai.com

nabritta wrote:How can i change pdf version to microsoft word? I downloaded a book in my computer in PDF version,Now first i want to transmit it to progarme microsft word and then print it?

Ummm - yeah - Microsoft Word doesn't work on Yellow Dog Linux. This may not be the best place to ask that question. Just sayin'.

Now - if you want to know about Open Office, that's more our speed.

Cheers,
Paul

yum install cups-pdf worked great, all I needed to do was type that in terminal as root and I was in the races.

This thread is kind of old, but some net-searchers might find it useful to know as well that Open Office and other word processing programs (Abiword, I think) produce PDF output. If you have a Word document that you wish to convert into PDF, it is possible with these programs.