Tuesday, 10 October 2006

PDF

The Portable Document Format developed by Adobe - essentially Encapsulated PostScript with a few indexing,crypto and security features thrown in.

Resources:

Mac OS X uses Display PostScript (part of its NeXT heritage), so you don't need anything to view or create PDFs in it (just save the Print Preview results to a file).

Tools:

Viewers:

(I rely exclusively on Mac OS X Preview and Linux has plenty of them, so this is mostly Windows-oriented):

  • Foxit PDF Viewer - very fast, very small, somewhat buggy image display and font rendering. Lets you remove all toolbars, advertising, etc.
  • Adobe Acrobat 6.0.2 - the only bearable one, since 7.0 is full of unsightly bloat.

Toolkits:

Libraries:

Samba/Ghostscript Printer:

[smbpdf]
  comment = PDF Generator
  path = /var/spool/samba
  printable = Yes
  print command = gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -q - \
  sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=%H/%s.pdf; rm %s

See Also

VisualizationNotbooks and CraptopsThe Switcher's Application GuideKeynote
iPod TouchLinuxPythonDiesel Sweeties Webcomic eBooks
Office 2008 (the somewhat delayed review, now post-SP1)NodeBoxswftools (in Leopard)iPhone - Post-Launch Coverage
PdfMeNot.com - a nicer way of linking to PDFsFeedJournal - RSS to PDFGoogleMWSF 2008 Rumor Doodles
PagePackerSeam CarvingMusings on Leopard iSync, Bluetooth and AutomatorNokia - Q3 2007
Two Months With An E90iPod Touch Features GuideRubyThe complete guide to PDFs in iTunes
Native iPhone ebook readerCitrixpisa - Python PDF generatorChocoFlop - Release Alpha 0.64
MusicPrototypeiPhone - From Announcement To LaunchMy New Phone
BlinkCombinePDFsThe Palm Foleo - Too Late?On Symbian, Again
Puttering AboutSkimPreviewThe New Portuguese ID Card - and Macs
Dear Lazyweb,Attack Of The Rampaging Visio FlowchartsThe Most Entertaining Evening In WeeksYou Need No Further Evidence That Software Is Bloated...
No HatDimmedPDFOffice Files
Data For The Ages/Time CapsuleWindows/Applications/CutePDFiPod (Classic)EXIF
Bring On Holographic StorageAquaTermMac OS XThread Arcs
Monday, Oddly EnoughThe Drunken Canaries?Yojimbo on the CheapKip
Building The Anti-WikiOn Mark's un-Switching, and LemmingsWii-ing on PowerPointTofu
Link DumpCompacting WindowsMinor TopicsLilyPond
Side-SwitchingThe Tele Teaching ToolWindowsTeleMarketing
MacBooks and Other HappeningsWhile In StressThe Five Unwise MenThe Red Toshiba
iBookCatching UpCanon/EOS 5DK750i
PowerBookTerminal ServicesNews FlushThursday The 13th
Patently AbsurdHyperlinked PDF Generation?Resources:The Python Grimoire, Reborn
ConfluenceDjangoNearly Halfway ThereI, For One, Welcome Our GPS-Enabled Overlords
PHPRosettaFive Almost-Killer Applications in Tablet FormA Few Other Tiger Notes
Link Mode, Take 24 and a HalfHOWTO Convert (and Rotate) Windows PDFsMinimal UpdateAdobe
The Wheel, That Radical New ConceptHOWTO: Monitor an Alcatel SpeedTouch 510 ADSL ModemChaotic WeekendEquationService
PDFLabBrownout Gone BlackTen Open Source Projects Worth Keeping Track OfBayesian Classification
The Hello Kitty iPodJPEGNokia/9500Idle Surfing
Maps/EuropeLinks, UnleashedIn The Wee HoursLinking Spree
Neat IdeasResources:The Monday ThingFix a Troubled Mac
Juggling WindowsCDMaps/LondonLeisure Time
Feedback LoopClosing TimeEAP-SIMNokia Prepares Launches, Apple Holds Its Ground
The Perfect PDACreate PDFs with CoreGraphics and PythoniStormGraphviz
First Eolas, Now NomadixResources:mySQL Navigation WarningCutting Corners
Panther in the OfficePanther First ImpressionsPalm PhonesG5
802.11gFlash for the Series 60EAP-TLSBayesian Whatsits
NeXTHardwarePowerPoint Remote 1.0Samba
More Movin' And Shakin'Final VinylMore DowntimePDF Tools
MyMindThe Martians Have LandedWISP/RoamingDeployment Notes:
PPTPJava