Alternative PDF freeware
There are a number of excellent freeware alternatives to Adobe’s relatively expensive writers and also an excellent alternative to the arguably bloated Adobe Reader. These freeware utilities together can do just about everything Adobe’s Elements & Standard writers can do.
PDF-XChange Viewer:
PDF-XChange Viewer from Tracker Software is a smaller and MUCH better alternative to Adobe’s Reader. Although the current release (Version 1) has a few minor blemishes, these are minor inconveniences given its array of extra features including Annotations, Comments and “Typewriter” tools. Best of all, their development team is actively updating features. Finally, the 12MB download may seem daunting, but it’s still less than half the size of Adobe Reader and its extra features fully justifies the size.
Website: http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/pdfx_viewer/
Ghostscript:
Ghostscript is a package of software that enables converting printer output into PDF files. While Ghostscript is a very powerful tool, it does not have a graphical interface that would make it easy to use. However, when combined with CutePDF (see below) making PDF documents becomes a simple process – just ‘print’ to the CutePDF printer driver.
Website: http://www.ghostscript.com
Download: GPL Ghostscript ver 8.56 (32bit Windows)
CutePDFTM Writer:
Making a PDF document is as easy as printing the document …
CutePDF Writer is a print driver which outputs printer instructions directly to the widely used Ghostscript software (see above) which in turn creates your PDF documents. Installation is straight forward, simply download and install CutePDF from the link below. (Of course, you’ll also need to download and install Ghostscript from the link above.)
Website: http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
Download: http://www.cutepdf.com/download/CuteWriter.exe
PDFTK:
Website: http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/
PDFTK is another powerful PDF tool – able to split and merge PDF documents, add and remove passwords, add backgrounds (company logos, watermarks etc) and stamps, and rotate pages – just to list some of the things it can do. However, like Ghostscript, it lacks a graphical interface. However, when combined with PdfBuilder (see below), using PDFTK is very easy.
PDFTK Builder:
Version 3.2
Last Updated 27 Apr 2007
Copyright © 2005-07 – Angus Johnson
Email:
License: GNU General Public License.
PDFTK Builder is a free graphical interface to the Windows version of PDFTK making it much easier to use.
Collate – allows you to rearrange (reorder, delete, & duplicate) pages in a single document and/or merge pages from multiple PDF documents. Multiple documents will be merged in the order they are listed in the ‘Source Documents’ window. If page ranges are not specified, PDFTK Builder will assume all pages for that document are to be included. Page ranges can be indicated by using a single page number, or a hyphen between start and end pages (reversed page orders are allowed). Multiple ranges are indicated by using commas or semi-colons between ranges.
For example: if you wished to insert pages from one document into the middle of another, then the primary document would need to be listed twice, once before (listing pages to appear before) and once after (listing pages to appear after) the document containing the pages to be inserted.
Split – allows you to separate each page of a PDF document into its own file.
Background or Stamp – ‘Background’ enables you to add a background to each page in a document or just the first page. The ‘background’ (eg a company logo, or a ‘draft’ watermark) must be another PDF document (the first page of that document if it has more than one page). ‘Stamp’ is very similar to ‘background’ except that the ‘stamp’ is placed on top of the source document.
Rotate – ‘Rotate’ enables you to rotate a range of pages in a document.
Password Protection: The new document can be password protected (encrypted) by providing ‘owner’ and ‘user’ passwords. The ‘owner’ password does not stop users from reading the document, but it does restrict the actions that users can perform on that document – printing, copying, decrypting etc. Specifying a ‘user’ password will stop anyone without either ‘user’ or ‘owner’ passwords from opening and reading the document.
Full installation (includes PDFTK ver 1.41):
pdftkb_setup.exe (2.0mb)
Source code (requires Borland Delphi Ver 7 compiler):
pdftkb_source.zip (11k)
PDFTK Builder History:
Version Date Changes
3.2 27 Apr 07 Bugfix: “Stamp” and “Background” was broken when applied to the whole document.
Removed “Decrypt” option.
3.0 14 Apr 07 Collate no longer limited to 26 files.
Added ‘Rotate’ option.
Added ‘Stamp’ option.
Added an option to ‘Background’ or ‘Stamp’ just first page of a document.
2.3.4 20 Mar 06 Added ‘Split’ option and minor bug fixes.
2.3.3 17 Apr 05 Fixed broken link to help file.
2.3.2 4 Feb 05 Bug in owner’s permission options fixed.
2.3.1 2 Jan 05 Initial Release
source-
http://www.angusj.com/pdftkb/
Filed under: Freeware
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