As the name suggests this is a thread about PDFs and applications that we use daily to deal with them. The more seasoned men will either use a native app such as Adobe Acrobat. For those that don't have the cash printing/saving to pdf is as simple as 'save as' in the later installments of MS Office or Open Office. However that still leaves alot of headache for other tasks, say printing a image you drew to pdf, or if you have older versions of Office or if you have a pdf and want to MANIPULATE it.
So below is a collection of a few little tools I've come across (whether by chance or intent) over my years dealing with the open yet proprietary document standard:
Cutepdf writer - This is a staple in my normal PC setups regardless of what machine i'm using. It appears like a printer on your PC so you can 'print' to it regardless of the app you may be using. It's open source so its FREE. It used to come in 2 parts a gpl ghostscript driver and a printer overlay, I believe now it's an AIO installer.
PDFTK Builder - I only found this little gem today actually, it's again open source, so its FREE and what it allows you to do is basic layout manipulation of pdf document/s. So you can rotate individual pages, collate several pdfs into 1 big one. Split pdfs and a few other neat tricks. Comes in handy for reorganising a final document.
Open Office pdf plugin - I've not tried this myself, but basically it allows you to perform edits of basic types of pdf documents, cheers.
Here are some ONLINE PDF conversion options and tricks - I've used zamzar before and I can attest it WORKS!
Being a big fan of open source software, my free PDF creator of choice is the appropriately named "PDF Creator"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
If anyone has any more diy type solutions or other FREE or affordable resources please do feel free to add it here, i'll add it to the first post as time goes along. Particularly pdf apps for smart phones! Cheers
