I know Distiller creates PDF files, 1

[Maine]

I know Distiller creates PDF files, but when would someone need to use that feature? Would you create PDF files for any other reason other than to send to an outside printer or for easy e-mail distribution?

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, Maine,

Yes, Distiller converts Postscript output to PDF, but to take full advantage of the PDF format you need Acrobat.

We use PDFs as uneditable documents for application forms and so on, as the end user only needs the free Acrobat Reader. The real advantage is that the layout is not altered.

Read the Adobe Acrobat promotional material at:

http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/newfeatures.html

and

http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/pdfs/acrnfhs.pdf

Iechyd da! John
12:48 01/03/03 GMT

 

[Eggles]

Where I work, we have an intranet site to keep head office, interstate and overseas branches 'in the loop'. All documents created under ISO2001 - policies, procedures, forms, work instructions, etc are uploaded as PDFs to the intranet site for people to download and read the latest version as required. Things change quickly, so having a print folder full of e.g. policies, may not mean they have the most up-to-date version. We put a watermark on our PDFs that remind people who print them off to check the intranet for the latest version. We create them as PDFs (rather than say, Word docs) as some are derived from Excel, Visio (flowcharts - lots of these) and other software which not everyome may have access to. Plus of course PDFs preserve all formatting, so the 'corporate look' is retained.

I also use PDFs to upload samples of my portfolio to my website.

And some uses you've already mentioned - using PDFs to send docs via email that you don't want reformatted e.g. resumes, and as a nifty way to send files to commercial printers, including fonts and graphics.

 

[111011]

pdf files are very handy. We not only use them for our internet site, but to send files to our printers. By using the pdf file we are guaranteed we have the guarantee that our documents will look the same when we get them back from the printer as when we sent them.

Another good use for pdfs is to generate procedures books. If you have the writer you can even create a table of contents. This is an excellent way to distribute corporate procedure manual to our staff.

 

[Nohjekim]

There is another good use for PDF files.
If your computer and PageMaker is like all the ones I have had you will have noticed that PageMaker does the worst job of actually showing colors correctly on screen.

Things always appear much darker then they print on mine,
This has been true for every version of PM I have had.

While I am working I often export a PDF file just to see what the colors, really look like. The PDF files usually look very close to what you will get when you print.

This takes only a minute or so and can be very helpful.

Nohj