How to Print to PDF

If you are sending a document to someone and want to make sure that your recipient sees what you intend, use a PDF file.

You are probably already familiar with PDF as an Adobe Acrobat :pdf: or Acrobat Reader file.

Table of Contents

What is PDF?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and was developed by Adobe as a way to produce an electronic version of a document which can be viewed on screen and print reliably. Readers for viewing PDF files on screen are freely available from Adobe in the form of Acrobat Reader and are commonly part of the software bundle included with a new computer.

PDF is an open document format and other options exist for viewing and producing PDF files, some provide similar functionality as the offerings from Adobe, others provide specialized capabilities for particular applications..

PDF is derived from Postscript, the printer language which spawned the desktop publishing industry by allowing printer output to be described without worrying about the physical printer which would be used for final output. Postscript is a complete programming language.

Why PDF?

PDF works so well to insure that printer output will be as expected it has become a key component of electronic pre-press, typically vastly reducing and often completely eliminating the need for physical printed output for proofing. As of this writing (April 2005) PDF is supported natively by some printers and most high-end typesetters.

PDF is a subset of postscript carefully designed to be able to specify items on a page without being a complete programming language. This is an intentional and very careful design consideration to make it impossible for PDF to carry viruses. This is a critical feature for print shops which could ill afford to have their printers infected with malicious code. You can have similar confidence when opening a PDF file or sending one to someone else.

When you print to PDF, you will get a file which can be counted on to print properly and which can be viewed on screen before printing to paper. For long documents printing to a file will typically be much quicker that printing to paper. Errors large and small can be discovered on screen before committing to paper. Printing to paper may be completely unnecessary in some situations.

How do I make a PDF?

Under Mac OS X:

Mac OS X includes the capability to save as PDF in every print dialog. When you go to print, there is a button inviting you to Save As PDF...

Under Windows:

The simplest way to make a PDF is to use a PDF printer driver. You then print as usual, choosing the PDF printer driver, but instead of your output appearing on paper on a physical printer, it is saved to a file which can be viewed on screen or printed to paper after making sure it appears as you intend.

Adobe Acrobat Professional

Windows computers in public labs may have Adobe Acrobat Professional installed. Among the included features of Acrobat Professional is a printer driver. When you go to print, you can select a printer and one of the choices will be the Acrobat PDF Writer.

Acrobat Professional is a commercial product from Adobe Systems, Inc. and includes vastly more capabilities than just printing to PDF.

The Adobe PDF Writer printer driver, or similar functionality, is also often bundled with other products including software for image manipulation, desktop publishing, or the software included with some scanners.

PDFCreator

If you are running Windows and do not have Acrobat Professional, there is Free/Open Source software available which will install a PDF printer driver. One of the nicest implementations for Windows is PDFCreator.

As of this writing (April 2005) here are details for the download:

√xhtml w3c √css