Why?
Well, that is always the question, isn't it? How many times have you made a Word document, open it on another computer or a different version of Word, and found that it looked different? Or you found that Word had reflowed the document so your page 4 is now a page 5, and the figures aren't where they supposed to be? With PDF, you're pretty much guaranteed that your document would look the same everywhere and on any platform (there are exceptions to this, of course, albeit very few). In order to view the PDF files, you will need to download Adobe Reader (or equivalent software).
I have been using 3 different techniques to generate PDFs. They're all free to use, without any need for expensive third-party software. I'll describe them one by one shortly, from the "easiest" to the "hardest".
OpenOffice.org
By far, OpenOffice.org is the easiest way to create a PDF document. It's got an "Export Directly as PDF" button which is very handy. Oh, the name of the application really is "OpenOffice.org". This is because "OpenOffice" is a trademark of another company.
For those of you not in the loop, OpenOffice.org is a complete office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application, and drawing package). The functionalities offered are just as good as Microsoft Office. Well, as long as you are not reliant on the "Office only" functions, that is. I have started using this package for a while, and I could do almost all the things I could do in Office.
The main advantage of OpenOffice.org is that it is absolutely free. It's also available for many operating systems, including Macs, Linux, and Windows. Extending the language tools (dictionary, hyphenation, and thesaurus) for OpenOffice.org is also easy to do.
Adobe PostScript Printer
The second option to create PDFs is by installing a virtual PostScript printer. This step is probably better because it allows any application to utilise the virtual printer. The drawback is, it's only available for Windows and Macs. In order to install the virtual printer, follow the following steps: (the instructions are for Windows, because I haven't got a Mac, unfortunately)
- Download and install AFPL Ghostscript (the latest is 8.14)
- Download and install GSview (the latest is 4.6)
- Go to Adobe website and download "Adobe PostScript printer driver" (the latest is 1.0.6) and the "Adobe PPD files". For Macs, follow the same instructions on the Mac page.
- Unzip the "Adobe PPD files". This will give you several PPD files.
- Install the "Adobe PostScript printer driver". When prompted, choose local printer, with FILE as the port. On the "printer model" selection page, browse to the directory where you unzipped the PPD files. The selection "Adobe Distiller" (along with about 4 other) should be available. Choose the plain Adobe Distiller one. The rest of the installation should be trivial.
- There should now be a printer called Adobe Distiller available for you to use. Adjust the default paper size if you wish (I always set mine to A4)
When you want to create a PDF document, you should follow these steps:
- Print the file to the "Adobe Distiller" printer. This will create a PRN file in the same directory, which you then rename to PS.
- Open the PS file in GSview, and then go to File » Convert. Choose "pdfwrite" with resolution of "600". Make sure the settings in "properties" all have the value "[Not defined]" (which means they are set to the default settings), except for "CompatibilityLevel", which you can set to at least "1.2". Of course, you can change the settings if you know what you're doing, or if you want to optimise the resulting PDF.
The resulting PDF has the same quality as the one produced by Adobe Acrobat. The reason why Acrobat is not cheap is because it eliminates the need for manual setting of PS generation and conversion to PDF. It also comes with nice Type 1 fonts.
(La)TeX
The third way of creating PDF is TeX. The learning curve for TeX beginner is probably a little steep because you have to get used to the concept of content based typesetting. It is somewhat similar to the concept of "style" in Microsoft Word (in my opinion, one of the most underappreciated feature of Word). It allows easy changing of the formatting/layout of a particular content type (e.g. "heading") by changing a few lines in the style definition. This is somewhat similar to what CSS is to HTML. TeX allows the author to concentrate more on the content of a document than the formatting of it. There are many implementation of TeX. But, the most commonly used one is called LaTeX, which is basically a set of TeX macros.
A TeX document can be written using nothing more than a simple text editor, and the end result would still be of a high quality (in my opinion, it looks even better than Word documents). This is because a TeX file is basically a bunch of commands that are passed to a TeX interpreter. It is very easy to get a LaTeX interpreter for Linux. In fact, it usually comes installed in any modern Linux distributions. In case your system doesn't come with it, then all you need to grab are teTeX and either LyX or Kile. For Windows, you can use MiKTeX and WinEdt (shareware) or TeXnicCenter (GNU GPL). A TeX file can be compiled into either a DVI, PS, or PDF file.
The first thing that you have to know is how to pronounce the name of the product. TeX doesn't come from an English word, but from the Greek characters τεχ. As such it's not pronounced like a normal English word. Here's how you're meant to pronounce it:
Donald E. Knuth, The TeXbook, Addison-Wesley (1986) ISBN 0-201-13448-9
Insiders pronounce the X of TeX as a Greek chi, not as an 'x', so that TeX rhymes with the word blecchhh. It's the 'ch' sound in Scottish words like loch or German words like ach; it's a Spanish 'j' and a Russian 'kh'. When you say it correctly to your computer, the terminal may become slightly moist.
For long documents such as a thesis, LaTeX is a much better option than Word because it has a very good bibliography reference system (similar to EndNote, and in fact, there is an Endnote style which converts references in EndNote format to BibTeX format), automatic numbering of tables and figures, excellent equation handling, and it allows direct generation of PDF files. Convincing your supervisor to let you send your current progress in PDF, however, may raise another issue. But that's another story altogether.