July 10, 2004
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Free PDF Creation Tool (Yawn...)
pdfMachine is a $49 PC app for generating PDF files:
Our pdf writer pdfMachine converts a print stream from an application directly into a PDF. Once you have installed the pdf writer, open your document that you want to convert, then click “print”, select the “Broadgun pdfMachine printer” and that’s it!
A free, Lite version, PDFMachine White (rather odd choices of names) offers basic functionality.
Amazing!
Except that this functionality has been a basic built-in part of Mac OSX since it was released- all print dialog boxes for any document have an option to save as PDF. I use it for 99% of my PDF creation.
blogged July 10, 2004 03:19 PM :: category [ pile ]
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Yeah... And on MacOS < 10, there is the free PDFWriter that does exactly what this thing claims. Installs a new printer (even supports Desktop Printing), where you can PDFerate any document (even Finder windows...)
Oh, and why "Broadgun" - seems like an odd name...
Commented by: D'Arcy Norman on July 10, 2004 05:07 PMA gazillion free PDF printers have been out there for years. I've been using CutePDF Writer (http://www.acrosoftware.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp), previously known as CutePDF Printer.
Most of the free PDF converters leverage GNU Ghostscript (http://www.gnu.org/software/ghostscript/ghostscript.html), the cross-platform, open source postscript-to-PDF converter. Ghostscript was originally released back in '96, although I'm not sure when the Windows and Mac versions were released.
Yup. A few months back I used a quirky OSX one called "StrangeLove" that provided a drag and rop interface to smack a Word file into PDF without having to launch Word.
Sure there have been inroads for a while, i will give you that Greg, but how many average computer users are going to go through the contortions for this?
I was just making an offhand smack at buying some add-on software that requires some gumption to get on your PC rather than having it easily woven into the OS.
Commented by: Alan Levine on July 12, 2004 09:55 PM
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