Comments on: ProBlogger Newsletter

By: Peter Mount

Peter Mount — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 00:19:15 +0000

That’s interesting about pdf creation being already in the Mac OS. I didn’t know that.

Have fun

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:51:14 +0000

If you’re not so bothered about precise formatting, PDF probably isn’t the best option – it tends to create weighty files. OK I guess most people reading this are on decent connections, but a RTF would be adequate, or even an HTML file with CSS.

By: Michele

Michele — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:30:04 +0000

Word is a proprietary document format. Most documents do not need to be saved in word format – rtf or pdf are much better options.

By: maruthi

maruthi — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:50:44 +0000

Peter, there is a MS Word viewer (also MS Powerpoint viewer etc) from Microsoft which i think is free. It’ll allow users to read the Word files, but not edit them.

By: Tim Flight

Tim Flight — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 14:21:48 +0000

Of course since Darren is on a Mac, PDF creation is built-in to the OS without needing any additional software. :) ‘File’ -> ‘Print’ -> ‘PDF’ -> ‘Save asPDF’.

By: BA

BA — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 13:54:30 +0000

For PDF creation I use PDF 995. It allows for “printing” to a PDF file. It’s ridiculously easy and because you are “printing” you can use it on webpages, emails, word docs, whatever. You can pay for it, or if you’re cheap like me use it for free and deal with their pop-up window everytime you print to pdf.

By: Peter Mount

Peter Mount — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 11:45:41 +0000

Hi Darren

If you want to consider saving such files in the pdf format, instead of as Word documents, you can download a free office suite called OpenOffice.org. It’s at http://www.openoffice.org/ and I notice there is also a version for the Mac. As a pre-requisite (for some features) you would need to download the “jre” (java runtime environment) from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html

With the pdf format people who can’t afford to buy MS Word would only need the free Adobe Reader from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/

As well as being able to save to the pdf format it can save and read MS Office formats as well, though they are still polishing off a couple of formatting bugs with that (like bullets).