Creating PDFs
 

Hi

I'd like to try my luck at e-publishing by producing music in PDF format but I can't find out how to do it. I've got the latest free download of Adobe Acrobat but although I have no problem opening other people's PDFs I can't work out how to create my own. :{

Any help appreciated.

Do you mean you have the free 'Adobe Acrobat Reader'?

You cannot use that to write .pdfs.

I use Cute .pdf writer - which is free! See http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

Basically it installs as a pseudo printer. All you have to do is write your document, then select 'print' and choose the cute .pdf writer option - it then 'prints' your document in .pdf form for you to save wherever you wish.

Simple and easy.............and free!

There are a number of free & shareware PDF editors/converters/creators around. I have to convert exel & word documents into pdf format at work & I very much like primo pdf for that. If you just want to convert into pdf, it's very good.

http://www.primopdf.com/

The OpenOffice suite of programs will let you export Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents as a pdf.

If you want to print music, there are programmes designed to do that. I had one, but my daughter wanted to use it and now has "my" licence for it.

Pdf Creator is another free one that installs like a printer and turns anything you can print into a pdf. But you can't edit it.

Anyone know a free pdf editing utility that works well?

There are 4 listed in the 'Ultimate List of Free Software' sticky at the top of the page. The mac has it as a 'print' function.

My thanks to you all. I've installed Cute as per Beag's suggestion (1st on the list) and it works beautifully!

Keef: I write and print 'hard copies' of music with Sibelius. Is that what you meant?

Kev

There's no such thing as a universal PDF editor, because PDFs contain PostScript, a language spoken by output devices, usually* printers. Depending on the method used to create the PDF, it can contain text or graphics, even just scans of a paper document. There are tools to extract the PostScript, but can you speak PostScript?

There are PDF Annotators out there, such as the VeryPDF Editor (which costs and isn't really an editor), and the open source PDFtk for Windows and Linux. These can do things like fill in forms or edit the metadata, but true PDF editing isn't going to be easy.

* there have been attempts to use it for screen displays too e,g, Sun's NeWS.

That's the fella!

PDF is really only meant as a rendering format. You should save the work in the native file format of the tool you use to produce it and just edit that.

Bzzzt. Many people may think there probably SHOULDN'T be true PDF editors out there, but out there they are.