By now, many of you are familiar with PDF (Portable Document Format) files
that you can open on any computer provided that you have already downloaded
the free Adobe Acrobat Reader from:
<http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html>
While this free program allows you to read PDF files from MACs, PCs etc, it
does not allow you to create your own PDF files of academic and other
documents prepared in other programs such as Word, Photoshop, Freehand, Excel
and numerous others. To do that, you usually have to buy Adobe Acrobat
(Writer) which will cost you about US $250. What many people do not know is
that there are shareware or free programs available that will create PDF
files for you. If you submit articles to journals or collaborate with fellow
professionals across the world, PDF files will make life far easier for both
sender and receiver.
The advantage of this is that you can create files that you can share with
anyone over the Internet, irrespective of which email system you are using.
I am sure that it has often frustrated many of you that the files which you
so carefully composed for a colleague who uses a different computer system or
email service cannot read what you sent, especially if they contain tables,
graphs or photos. If this is the case, then converting your files to PDF is
the answer. All that you do then is convert your files to PDF format, then
send them as attachments to your friend and all will be well.
To help you do this, here are a few shareware and freeware programs that you
can download from the web:
For Macintosh:
http://www.jwwalker.com/
For PC:
http://www.daneprairie.com/
http://www.over.to/freepdf/
Once you have installed these programs on your computer, all that you need to
do is to print to PDF instead of to your printer and these programs will
automatically create a PDF version of your original file, whether it contains
photographs and tables or not.
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
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