[Psml] Paperless Reporting and Record Keeping

[Lu Abel]

One of the best, totally free PDF generators is CutePDF 
(www.cutepdf.com). Totally free and no advertising.

When installed it looks like an additional printer, except when you 
"print" using it a popup appears with a save-file-as menu and you 
specify where you want your PDF saved. It works with all Office products 
and most other programs (if it figures it can't work with a particular 
program then it won't show up as an alternate printer).

I've been using it for three or four years now and am very satisfied 
with it. Works perfectly and the price is right!

Lu Abel
Santa Clara PS


Robert Miller wrote:
> What was I thinking? In my first response I should have mentioned that there
> are free PDF creators that “print” to a PDF file. Some are true freeware but
> quite a few are only free trials so read all the fine print first. Search on
> “Free PDF Converter” with Google, Live Search, Yahoo, Lycos or whatever you
> use and you will find a bunch of alternatives.
>
> Sorry I forgot that in the first place.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bob
> ________________________________________
> From: psml-bounces at usps.org [mailto:psml-bounces at usps.org] On Behalf Of Dan
> Bartell
> Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 10:03 AM
> To: boatsafe at comcast.net
> Cc: United States Power Squadrons Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Psml] Paperless Reporting and Record Keeping
>
> Actually if you have full Acrobat you can turn a PDF document into a form
> with fields and actions upon submission.  Tom Brincka has done that with the
> Educational Department order forms which go to cgi scripts running on the
> server and it works quite well.  You can partially fill out the forms and
> save them as templates on your own machine.  However it takes full Acrobat
> which is a bit pricey.
> Cheers,
> Dan
> At 09:28 3/8/2008, Barclay M. Thomas wrote:
> Dan, R.D., and all,
> Not that I am an expert but, while Rich Text Format (RTF) is easily read and
> written by most word processing programs, any document formatting is often
> lost or skewed in the transition. Portable Document Format (PDF) is designed
> by default to retain all formatting of the original document no matter what
> platform or program it is viewed in.
> Yes, it may take another step or two to save a file in PDF, but it makes for
> a better archive since all the data will remain in the right place. You can
> always save the PDF as a text (.txt) file if you want to alter it.
>
> I have not paid too much attention to what is out there in terms of PDF
> creation/conversion programs, but there are a lot and many are not too
> expensive or are free. Of course you get what you pay for. I do know there
> are some open-source programs that are quite capable though. Take a look at
> <http://sourceforge.net>, but don't get overwhelmed by all the projects
> (grin).
>
> That being said, it would be nice if the forms on the National website had
> all the data input spaces (i.e.: quantity, price, etc.) created as text
> fields so a blank original can be downloaded and save as a template, then
> filled out as needed. Of course I am only looking for someone else to do the
> work so I don't have to. But once it's done, it's done.
>
> Enjoy the weekend,
>