The Four-eyed Journal » OpenOffice

5 Free tools to create PDF files

jhay — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:54:26 +0000

We’ve been downloading, sharing and printing documents and files of various types we get from the Internet in pdf format for so long we’ve been accustomed to doing just that: download, share and print those files that are ‘encased’ in the .pdf format.

So when the time comes that we ourselves need to create a .pdf file, we find our selves in a very strange and unfamiliar world. A question pops into mind, how do we create or transform a file into the handy pdf format so that we could securely and conveniently share it to the world?

Sure there’s Adobe Acrobat Standard that will let us create pdf files with ease, simplicity and with a professional touch, but are we casual netizens willing to spend almost $200 for a piece of software we would only use from time to time?

Fear not for there are a lot of alternative ways to create our very own pdf files and 98% of the time, it would be totally free, fast and convenient. A Google search would turn up hundreds of free alternatives ranging from plugins to M$ Office, programs that convert files to pdf formats, to free online services that do the conversion for you.

Here are some of the 5 most convenient alternative ways to create our very own pdf files:

Google Docs – Google’s version of an online document creator. It’s part of the Google Apps suite which is their version of the online office productivity suite. It comes with every regular Gmail or Google Apps account. If you’re not happy with its document creating-capabilities, it could be slow and buggy at times, just create your document on your desktop, upload it into Google Docs and export it in PDF format. All these will take no more than ten minutes depending on your connection speed and the size of the file itself.
ZohoWriter – another online document creator from the Zoho online office productivity suite from AdventNet, Inc. It is for free, just sign up for an account, verify your email address you signed up with and you’re on your way to online productivity. From my experience, ZohoWriter has a more intuitive interface with more features that resembles M$ Word or any other offline document creator. It’s less buggy and more robust than Google Docs so working with it would be a lot less frustrating. Of course, after you’re done creating your document or uploading it, simply export it as a pdf file and it’s happy days for you.
Doc2PDF – is simply a document to PDF conversion service from PDFOnline.com. The site is actually a demonstration of their easyPDF software which I really didn’t looked into since it wasn’t for free. Going back, Doc2PDF doesn’t require users to signup for an account. Simply head on to their conversion page, upload your document directly to their website, rename the file to suit and lastly enter an email address where you want the converted pdf file to be sent because that’s the only way you’ll get the file for free.
Spam or scam alter right? Relax, for they offer a very good tip. Your personal email is not required, you could just create a new one via Gmail, Yahoo! or whatever free email service and use this email solely for this purpose. If you’re not going to use their service or would use something else, simply close that email account or simply forget about it. You avoid more spam and have converted your documents into pdf format, what else would you ask for?
OpenOffice Writer – This is one of the most popular alternative to M$ Word and its parent suite, the ‘industry standard’ M$ Office. It’s free to download, install and share with everyone else because it’s Open Source. In fact, the French government and its police force has adopted the full usage of the OpenOffice suite about two years ago or so. Just like the first two tools we’ve talked about, OpenOffice Writer can export your documents into pdf format. The beauty of this particular tool is that it’s offline and more stable, and more powerful than its online counterparts. The program itself is free and since it requires no internet connection to export files into pdf formats, you end up saving more.
AbiWord Processor – this is another great alternative to M$ Word and in fact I’m using this program as my default word processor since April last year after switching from OpenOffice Writer. It can equal the features and functionalities of both M$ Word and OpenOffice Writer but AbiWord is much lighter, (just a 5MB download!), even lighter on system resources and allows me to write in full screen mode removing distractions from my desktop. As for its pdf exporting capabilities, I find it more reliable than OpenOffice Writer’s because it rarely changes the layout of the documents when exporting them into pdf format, sweet!

There are lots more of pdf conversion tools and services out there. These 5 are just the ones that I’ve used and found useful, efficient and worth using. This is not a paid post or review for any of the tools or products I’ve mentioned, but I would dare say and recommend any of each for your pdf conversion needs.

If you have used any of these tools do share your experience, tips or tricks and if you have other, perhaps better alternatives, by all means share it for everyone’s joy.

Free alternative to MS Office

jhay — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 01:47:40 +0000

Here’s an interesting story from INQ7.net, ‘Net cafe group to offer cheaper alternative to MS Office‘ The report says:

IN AN effort to help struggling Internet café chain operators, the Internet Café Association of the Philippines (ICAP) has teamed up with the local distributor of Ability Software to distribute a suite of applications similar to Microsoft Office but significantly cheaper.

Ability Office has alternatives to each application of the industry-standard Microsoft Office suite: Ability Write as an alternative to MS Word; Spreadsheet as an alternative to MS Excel; Presentation for MS PowerPoint; and Database for MS Access.

In addition, Ability Suite also comes with a basic alternative to the Adobe Photoshop image editor, which it calls Photopaint, as well as photo album software.

ICAP president Mario Munoz said in an interview that the partnership will give Internet café owners a way around having to obtain copies of MS Office, which many Internet cafe operators find expensive despite discounted rates available to them.

Munoz said Microsoft offers its Office Standard and Professional suites at 10,000 pesos and 15,000 respectively to cafe operators. But Ability Office costs 2,950 pesos for the Standard Edition and 4,960 pesos for the Professional Edition.

Indeed, with those high price tags attached to legal and licensed copies of Microsoft Office, cafe owners would definitely seek out alternatives and most the most common practice is to use illegal or ‘pirated’ copies of the proprietary office suite from Microsoft which has become the so-called industry standard. Since one could buy illegal or ‘pirated’ copis of MS Office for just under Php200.00 ($3.64 using the current exchange rate), it’s a no-brainer why most internet cafes have shied away from the legal and licensed copies of MS Office.

Of course, this illegal workaround the expensive licensing of MS Office is a big problem not just to the local software industry but also for the cafe owners themselves. If caught, they face severe punishments from the law. There are solutions to this propblem like alternatives to MS Office. Going back to the INQ7.net news story, ICAP has endorsed Ability Office as a legal and cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office. With the much lower price of under Php 5,000.00 for the Professional edition of the Ability Office suite it is really an attractive option.

But hold the phone, there’s a better and way way cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office. It’s called OpenOffice.org which is a free and open source office suite, including word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, vector drawing and database management. It is available for many different platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Unix-like systems with the X Window System including GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X.

Included in the suite are programs that are alternatives to every program in MS Office. Click on the thumbnail for a larger view of OpenOffice’s Writer word processor.

Writer – a word processor similar in look and feel to Microsoft Word and offering a widely overlapping range of functions and tools. It also includes the ability to export Portable Document Format (PDF) files with no additional software, and can also function as a WYSIWYG HTML editor for creating and editing web pages.

Calc — a spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing, based on the layout of the user’s data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as a PDF file.

Impress — a presentation program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint. It can export presentations to Macromedia Flash (SWF) files allowing them to be played on any computer with the Flash player installed. It also includes the ability to create PDF files.

Base — a database program similar to Microsoft Access. Base allows the creation and manipulation of databases, and the building of forms and reports to provide easy access to data for end-users. As with Access, Base is able to work as a front-end to a number of different database systems, including Access databases (JET), ODBC data sources and MySQL/PostgreSQL.

Draw — a vector graphics editor comparable in features to CorelDRAW. It features versatile “connectors” between shapes, which are available in a range of line styles and facilitate building drawings such as flowcharts.

Math — a tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor. Formulae can be embedded inside other OpenOffice.org documents, such as those created by Writer. It supports multiple fonts and can export to PDF.

I’ve been using OpenOffice since it first came out with version 1 in 2002. The feature I loved about it the most was the ability to export all of my documents, spreadsheets and presentations into PDF files without using any other third-party program or configuration.

The Writer is even more robust when running on Ubuntu Linux! The entire OpenOffice.org suite is even included by default in the Ubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS install CD. Back on Windows, MS Word would often freeze up or crash altogether whenever I directly paste text and graphics off off web pages from the internet whenever I’m doing my homework or research. In OpenOffice’s Writer, this has rarely happened. The best part of using OpenOffice as alternative to MS Office is that it is absolutely FREE! Yup, you just head on to their website, download the entire suite which installs very easily and viola! No more worries about the anti-software piracy firms and authorities banging on your door.

So why spend almost Php 10,000 to Php 15,000 on an office suite? Why even spend close to Php 5,000 when there’s an alternative office suite that is FREE and completely legal to use and even share like OpenOffice.org?