FLORA.ca: Portable Document Format (pdf)

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A Portable Document Format (pdf) file is a self-contained cross-platform document. In plain language, it is a file that will look the same on the screen and in print, regardless of what kind of computer or printer someone is using and regardless of what software package was originally used to create it.

An important part of the format is its portability. In order to ensure portability not only between different operating systems, but also a wide variety of readers, we would encourage you to try to make use of a wide variety of tools. By encouraging the use of many different PDF generators and readers, we are ensuring that the PDF format remains portable.

Here is a quick list of PDF readers, with a number of other links following:

Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview (Variety of Software licenses, with some tools are under the GNU General Public License)

This includes a class of tools that can view PostScript and PDF files. Most tools available for Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, and most flavors of Unix. This tool is normally pre-installed with most Linux distributions. Enabling this viewer for Web-usage involves configuring ones browser if this was not already done by the OS distribution vendor.

Xpdf (GNU General Public License)

Xpdf is a viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files. (These are also sometimes also called 'Acrobat' files, from the name of Adobe's PDF software.) Xpdf runs under the X Window System on UNIX, VMS, and OS/2. The non-X components of the package (pdftops, pdftotext, etc.) also run on Win32 systems and should run on pretty much any system with a decent C++ compiler.

BePDF is a program based on Xpdf that runs on BeOS.

Adobe Acrobat Reader (Proprietary, with this End User License Agreement)

Adobe Acrobat Reader is software you can download for free that lets you view and print Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, and some versions of UNIX and Linux.

Related links and Utilities

Note: This set of links was started from the list published on Xpdf site. If you know of any other tools I should be providing a link to, please contact me.

General PDF Support Sites for all platforms
- PlanetPDF
  - Includes a tool list.
- The PDFzone
  - Includes a tool search where one can find many alternative viewers.
PDF converters/generators:
- OpenOffice.org - As of version 1.0.2, OpenOffice.org includes the ability to save files as PDF files. With a growing number of import filters available, this tool becomes ideal both as a replacement for Adobe Distiller but also for replacing your existing office suite.
  Note: For OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 you choose Print, then click the "print to file" button and choose PDF as the file type. For OpenOffice.org 1.1 and above there is an "Export as PDF" option in the File menu.
- PDFCreator (GNU General Public License) is PDF creation software for Microsoft Windows. It uses a modified version of Ghostscript.
- Ghostscript can display PDF files, and also includes a Postscript to PDF converter
- pstoedit converts from Postscript to many formats, including PDF. (GNU General Public License)
- PStill is a shareware Postscript-to-PDF converter.
- HTMLDOC converts HTML to PDF and Postscript.
- Lout is a document formatter that can produce PDF output.
- PDFlib and ClibPDF are non-free/libre C libraries for dynamically generating PDF. PDFLib support is included in Web-languages such as PHP to allow on-the-fly creation and manipulation of PDF files online.
  (Note: PDFLib makes use of the "Aladdin Free Public License" which despite the name is not Free Software.)
- txt2pdf and jpg2pdf are shareware converters.
- ReportLab includes an Open Source PDF library for Python developers, including developing for application servers such as Zope.
PDF format info:
- Acrobat / PDF technical notes. Adobe created Postscript and PDF, and except for some patents have released the format for public usage. The patents are licensed on a royalty-free, non-exclusive basis.

While the easiest and cheapest option to generate PDF files is to use the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite or other free PDF generation software, the following is an alternative method. This is a demonstration of how easy it is to generate a PDF file, without the use of (possibly expensive) tools from Adobe, with the following example being for Microsoft Windows.

create a new 'printer', choosing a postscript printer driver. One example of a Postscript printer that works would be a "HP 5P/5MP". You can skip this if the printer you normally use is a postscript printer.
print from the relevant Application, choosing this new printer. In the print dialog there is an option 'save to disk'. Save the file - it will be marked either .ps for simple postscript or .eps for encapsulated postscript, depending on the postscript printer driver.
download gsview and ghostscript. This is Free Software (Free as in speech and free beer)
load the postscript file in gsview, and convert to PDF
view new PDF in favorite PDF viewer, and/or publish on website to automatically come up in correct plug-in.

Others have written similar articles, such as Quick Guide to Making PDF Files - by David Hineline

Last update: $Date: 2004/02/11 17:57:52 $ UTC

Copyright 2004, Russell McOrmond

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.