[NTLUG:Discuss] pdf in Linux

[Kelledin]

On Wednesday 31 July 2002 02:44 pm, Fred James wrote:
> (1) I run Linux (Red Hat 6.2, 7.2, and 7.3) and most of the
> folks I work with are on some form of MS or MAC.
> (2) StarOffice, text email, and the occasional HTML, answer
> for most of my needs in documents that these and other
> non-Linux folks can view with ease and accuracy.
> (3) There are times when it would seem that maybe producing
> files in pdf would be the format of choice - but Adobe Acrobat
> doesn't seem to be available on Linux, except as the Reader.
>
> So, any thought or suggestions would be welcome.
> Thanks.

There are ways to produce PDF files in Linux.  The most common 
way is to first write your documents in SGML format, then 
generate PDF files from those SGML files using a utility like 
db2pdf.  AFAIK this produces PDF files in a somewhat old format 
that doesn't support all the latest Acrobat features (like 
document signing/security et al), but it's sufficient for most 
presentations.

One major advantage to this is that the SGML-formatted file can 
be used as document "source code" to quickly produce equivalent 
documents in RTF, PostScript, HTML, and other formats.  So far 
it can't grok MSWord format.

-- 
Kelledin
"If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does 
it still cost four figures to fix?"