Working with PDFs


Portable Document Format (PDF) files are one of the most useful ways to output documents for electronic viewing. Any PDF document can be easily read by anyone using any computer platform. PDF documents maintain their appearance because they do not rely on fonts and other aspects of the system on which they are viewed.

Under Mac OS X, PDFs are a native file format. You can create PDFs from within any Mac OS X application, and you can read PDF files with the Preview application.

NOTE

The free Adobe Reader application is also available for Mac OS X. This application offers more features for viewing PDFs than does Preview, but either application will get the job done. To download a copy of Adobe Reader, visit www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.



Creating PDF Files

Creating PDF files is an extremely simple task:

1.

Open the document for which you want to create a PDF.

2.

Select File, Print.

3.

Open the PDF pop-up menu and choose "Save as PDF" (see Figure 30.23). The "Save to File" dialog box will appear.

Figure 30.23. You can quickly and easily create a PDF of any file by choosing "Save as PDF" on this menu.


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Another option on this menu is "Save PDF as PostScript." This creates a PostScript version of the file you are printing. This can be useful for a number of tasks, such as sending to a Bluetooth printer or to other printing service.

4.

Name the document and select a location in which to save it. Use the filename extension .pdf.

5.

Click Save. The PDF will be created in the location you specified.

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You can use Automator or other macro tools to create PDF workflows. You can add these to the PDF menu by choosing the Edit menu command. Use the resulting window to add workflows to the PDF menu. After you do so, they will be available to you on this menu.


One thing to note is that creating a PDF in this way does not create or preserve any hyperlinks in a document. For example, if you create a PDF of a web page, the links on that page will not be functional. Similarly, if you create a text document that contains a table of contents in which the entries are hyperlinked to the sections in the document, the resulting PDF will not contain active links. Basically, creating a PDF using the Print command simply replicates a paper document without adding any features of an electronic document. Even so, being able to create a PDF from any document using the Print command is useful when you want to send your documents to other people.

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Creating a PDF version of a document is also a great way to capture versions of that document at specific points in time for archival purposes.


To create PDFs that contain hyperlinks and other electronic document features, you need to use a more sophisticated application. For example, Adobe applications can save documents in PDF format and preserve hyperlinks within those documents. Or, you can use the full Acrobat application to create more sophisticated PDFs from any application.

Viewing PDFs with Preview

To view the document you created, open it. Unless you have configured PDFs to open in a different application, Preview launches and you can view the PDF.

To learn how to use Preview, p. 658.


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Because Adobe Reader enables you to take advantage of all the features PDF documents offer, you might want to designate it as the default application for all PDF documents so it opens automatically when you view PDFs.


To learn how to associate file types with applications, p. 201.




Special Edition Using MAC OS X Tiger
Special Edition Using Mac OS X Tiger
ISBN: 0789733919
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 317
Authors: Brad Miser

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