Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 5035011" data-attributes="member: 447">Just to be clear, Acrobat (Std or Pro) is not a layout tool; it is the tool you use to create a PDF from already existing content and add functionality to the PDF once it's created.Even without Acrobat, you can generate a PDF with free or low-cost tools. I've seen CutePDF, PDF995, and PrimoPDF/NitroPDF come up in this regard, but I have no experience with any of these. CutePDF, PDF995, and PrimoPDF offer "print this as a PDF" functionality for free. The pay products (PDF995 Suite appears to be nag-ware) appear to offer Acrobat-like functionality. Any tool that will allow you to edit (not just generate) a PDF should enable you to manually add bookmarks if you so desire.Now, what you use to create the content that you want to turn into a PDF is a whole different ball of wax. OpenOffice is a usable layout tool, as is Microsoft Word... IMX, it's tough to get really classy-looking output from these. Not impossible, just tough. (Note that my experience with OpenOffice Writer is sorely outdated, but it continues to claim a Word-like environment, so I think it's safe to say they're about the same, time- and effort-wise.) In Microsoft Word, it's possible to generate PDF bookmarks automatically using the document outline (at least, this is true if you have Acrobat installed). I've read OpenOffice Writer works the same way (and its PDF generator is built in).Dedicated page-layout software makes it easier to produce classy-looking output, but note that most users new to page-layout software experience a significant learning curve. InDesign and Quark XPress are the kings of this market, and their price tag reflects this. Microsoft Publisher and Serif PagePlus are cheaper. Scribus is free. All are going to offer varying levels of PDF export support; InDesign (being an Adobe product) is the winner here, IMX.</blockquote>

Verification