first off get open office form openoffice.org and when you create a document their is a button to convert it to a .pdf file.

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That works, but even easier is if you have Mac OS X. When ever you want to print something you have the option to send to the printer, fax, or save as PDF. Then you can make any document PDF just as easier as printing it out:



So I have lots of PDF's now. It's just so easy. There might be a way to do that with Windows or Linux. I'm not sure, but for those using Mac OS, it couldn't be more convenient.

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why would i waste money on mac osx just to make pdf's when i get get windows cheaper and download open office for free?

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Gee... Are we on the cheapness tour?

Download fedora core 3 for FREE... from fedora.redhat.com, It's a free linux distro.

And Openoffice is included in the installer...

Try beat that Ryan

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soryy but wats the point making thse?

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whats the point making what ???

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Open Office seems much better on Linux than on Windows, its functionality and look, looks a lot better on Linux in my opinion.

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Hehehe, a fun topic

Well, for starters, I prefer openOffice over all other office suites. It is smoother, faster and looks better than M$ Office, I feel it's more userfriendly than STarOffice (I have used M$ Office, StarOffice, OpenOffice and back in the DOS days and 386, CorelWriter or something LOL - I can't remember). Now, I have tried all those options, to create pdf's like that. And I felt they lacked a lot of control.

In school, I was taught to use LaTeX, THE typesetting system. Yes, I will admit it, it takes a long time to learn the code, it's not the easiest way to do it. But you have full control. In Linux, this can be selected to install, or you can do it manually. In Windows, it's less easy (believe me it is sad).


That's what the code looks like So yes, I actually do use this, I've written a chemistry course this way (I felt the teach did a bad job, asked if she wanted a hand and I converted her word doc into Pdf this way )

Now, in Linux, this is the fun stuff. You just enter a few commands and you're set
$latex file_name.tex (this will create the dvi of the tex file )
$dvips file_name.dvi -o file_name.ps (this converts the dvi into ps - postscript , the -o tells dvips to save the conversion to an output file)
$dvipdf file_name.dvi file_name.pdf (Conversion from dvi to pdf)
$ps2pdf file_name.ps file_name.pdf (conversion from ps to pdf)
$latex2html file_name.tex (will make each chapter into a different html page with the link in order etc)

In windows, you need to get MikTeX first, install it (it's HUGE), get a dvi viewer (I think it does come with MikTeX - it's called Yap) and at this point I still haven't successfully created a website from tex in windows LOL

URLs (all for windows, since in Linux it's usually already there LOL)
TeX User Group
MikTeX
NotePadd++ to write the tex files WITH syntax (you'll be happy to have that LOL)
WinTEX 2000 (another Tex editor)

Well it seems this is longer than I intended LOL... maybe one day, I'll actually start a genuine tutorial for LaTeX LOL

 

 

 

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Actually maybe it would be good to have some pro's and cons

OpenOffice:
Free
Relatively small download.
Doesnt look the best (1.1.4, 2 looks much better)
Presentations need improved, very bad creation tools
Lots of support for millions of file types
Platform Independant
Open Source
Not too many templates.

MS:
VERY EXPENSIVE!
okay look
VERY EXPENSIVE
Good clipart
Used more commonly
Good support for prsentations


I suppose OpenOffice is good for Spreadsheets, Word Proccessing and such but its a nightmare for presentations, its just not as good. Theres a lot to be desired, like for example it took me 15 minutes to fugure to change the background colour.

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thanx for the tip ryan

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