PDF creation tools

[Cat]

I was talking about converting text documents (like rtf or html) to LaTeX and converting LaTeX to other things than PDF (like rtf or html), preserving as much of the layout as possible. That's "back and forth" for me ... It all depends on what you want/neeed to do with a document.

 

[RacerX]

Okay, more for curiosity than anything else...

I was talking about converting text documents (like rtf or html) to LaTeX and converting LaTeX to other things than PDF (like rtf or html), preserving as much of the layout as possible. That's "back and forth" for me ... It all depends on what you want/neeed to do with a document.

But isn't (or wasn't ) the subject of the thread PDF creation tools? And even in your original post where you used the back and forth term, the only other format mentioned besides LaTeX was PDF.

It had already been suggested that you can print to PDF from any app in OS X, but jdaly said to keem em coming ... so without knowing anything specific, LaTeX seemed like a possible solution. *shrug* I have to convert back and forth all the time, so it's not that odd to me.​

So were you thinking that jdaly needed more text document solutions? I gathered he was looking for more PDF solutions, which other than outputting to PDF (which any Mac OS X app that can print can do) would mean PDF specific abilities... which LaTeX doesn't have.

And when you specified PDF format at the beginning of that post and that you go back and forth without specifying back and forth between what, it sure seemed like we were all still on the subject of PDF. And as there are apps that can read, write and edit PDF format, back and forth with PDFs isn't that far fetched.

Like I said, I misinterpreted your reason for throwing out LaTeX/TeXShop into this thread. It wouldn't be on any list of PDF solutions I would advise someone to use... specially if they were asking us to keep those solutions coming.

The logic in your explanation of why you brought it up (which was the back and forth part) seem to be missing that it had nothing to do with being a PDF solution. And giving you the benefit of doubt, I asked if I had missed the importance of LaTeX/TeXShop in the area of PDF solutions.

I guess in the end I, again, don't see where LaTeX/TeXShop is any better than TextEdit, Word, AppleWorks, Mellel or Nisus Writer Express (or any other native Mac apps that work with text) as a PDF solution. In fact it is a worse solution (if it is a solution at all) because of the amount of time it takes to become productive at using any TeX-based layout application.

So the back and forth you were talking about would have been the inclusion of a lot of work in learning a new way of doing things to make simple documents... all to make PDFs?



So now we're back to the original question: why did you think that LaTeX was a possible solution? With back and forth having nothing to do with the PDF format, then it seems this is a solution for an unasked question... like What do you use for word processing and page layout?


And yes, this is all because I'm curious...

 

[Cat]

Well, I still stand behind my original post:

"create pdf documents out of pretty much any text document."
Try LaTeX, install via Fink use with TeXShop.

jdaly asked for a way to convert text to PDF and seemed not to want to/be able to use the print-to-pdf feature.
My suggestion in extenso would have been to include, convert or even simply copy-paste the original text and graphics into a LaTeX document using an available template. Although I should probably have gone into more detail, using Unicode there is very little to learn if you just need to "create pdf documents out of pretty much any text document". Conversion tools will do that for you, and TeXShop is otherwise very well suited for beginners with extensive macros and drag and drop functionality, as you probably are well aware of.

Indeed, I understand the confusion about the converting back and forth. To me it was clear what I was saying, but perhaps I should have given more details. I meant converting the source, not the end product. I have to write a lot of stuff for different enivronments. For me LaTeX is a good solution to most text production, as it can generate PDF as easily as RTF or HTML. I rarely have to edit a PDF, so I never really thought about the back and forth being potentially confusing, I always deal with the source.

I guess in the end I, again, don't see where LaTeX/TeXShop is any better than TextEdit, Word, AppleWorks, Mellel or Nisus Writer Express (or any other native Mac apps that work with text) as a PDF solution.

It looks definitely better. Lots of little typesetting and layout stuff being done automatically and better than in the other apps. Word breaks, gray levels, line spacing, word and letter spacing etc. etc. Moreover, as it is a command based layout engine, LaTeX gives you much more control over all kinds of details. Perhaps jdaly wasn't interested in all that, but LaTeX/TeXShop can easily produce a nice PDF from pretty much any text. As soon as he would have expressed interest into how to do that, and given more details, I would have provided him with more specific advice. Now that it is clear that he is talking about Word documents and forms, it is clear that LaTeX is not the optimal solution.

Regarding what is more efficient, it all depends on what kind of document you are starting with. As jdaly simply said "text documents" with some graphic elements, at that stage LaTeX was as good as anything else. jdaly didn't tell us absolutely anything about the text documents under question. He just made it clear that print-to-pdf wasn't working for him for what ever reason. What other options are there then? Screenshots? Won't work for multipage documents. Buying Adobe? He asked for a free solution.

So now we're back to the original question: why did you think that LaTeX was a possible solution?

Because it works for me. And my answer was given entirely in the same spirit as yours:

other suggestions to see what else is out there? Assuming the second

Moreover, you said

was the question about a word processor type of application or something that would assist in creating PDFs from any application?

To which the answer is no, it was about creating PDF from any text file, not from within any application. The tile of the thread is "PDF creation tools", not about PDF editing tools, and LaTeX is a pretty good PDF creation and manipulation tool.

 

[RacerX]

Thanks for tolerating me inquiries...

Moreover, you said To which the answer is no, it was about creating PDF from any text file, not from within any application. The tile of the thread is "PDF creation tools", not about PDF editing tools, and LaTeX is a pretty good PDF creation and manipulation tool.

See, it looks like it comes down to semantics... LaTeX (to me) is a content creation tool that (like any other Mac OS X app) happens to output PDFs. Where as Print Services in Mac OS X, PStill and Acrobat Distiller are all PDF creation tools that operate independent of the content creation tool.

As for PDF editing tools, like Create and Illustrator... those are by definition PDF creation applications as it is one of there native file formats. They do what other applications can do with PDFs and take that a number of steps further. Saying that these are PDF editing tools is like saying that TeXShop is a TeX editing tool or that Word is a DOC editing tool.

And we seem to be going down this road again, how can LaTeX manipulate PDFs? It can only be use to create content and then output it to PDF... where is the manipulation of a PDF? If LaTeX has no way to natively read PDFs how can it manipulate them?

Another (small) point...

He just made it clear that print-to-pdf wasn't working for him for what ever reason. What other options are there then? Screenshots? Won't work for multipage documents. Buying Adobe? He asked for a free solution.

Actually what he said was:

"Ideally the program would be free or low cost."​

Further, at this point I'm not convinced that he is even using Mac OS X (starting to sound like his systems are Mac OS 8/9).

 

[Cat]

And we seem to be going down this road again, how can LaTeX manipulate PDFs? It can only be use to create content and then output it to PDF... where is the manipulation of a PDF? If LaTeX has no way to natively read PDFs how can it manipulate them?

Like this and with the pdfpages package (for which some useful scripts are available). Also, you can include PDF's as graphics in your document (and hence also scale, rotate etc. them).

We see LaTeX differently because we appear to use it differently and we understand "creating/editing PDF" in different ways because of the programs we use to do it. I know that LaTeX is not a PDF creation tool in your sense, but it does create PDF from text. Once produced, it can only manipulate PDF in a very basic manner, and certainly not edit it, in my sense.

Let's try an analogy here. Would you say that XCode is an Application editor? Or rather that it is an Application creator? Or all of the above? What if I said code editor?
To me LateX is a PDF creator and TeXShop a LaTeX editor. Create and Illustrator are PDF editors, as they take PDF as their source. I can undersatnd that you would be inclined to phrase this differently. jdaly asked about a PDF creator, not something that took PDF as input, but as output.

Can Create and Illustrator take a Word DOC as input and produce a PDF from it? LaTeX can: Save the doc in word as rtf, convert rtf to latex, typeset. Depending on the complexity of the layout some LaTeX source editing might be required. That is where the learning curve kicks in, but for simple documents with just a few graphic elements not much is needed. Simply saving your rtf as plain text and including/copy-pasting it into a suitale LaTeX template could be enough. Judging from jdaly's first post, it could have sufficed.

Thanks for tolerating me inquiries...

No worries!

 

[RacerX]

Let's try an analogy here. Would you say that XCode is an Application editor? Or rather that it is an Application creator? Or all of the above? What if I said code editor?
To me LateX is a PDF creator and TeXShop a LaTeX editor. Create and Illustrator are PDF editors, as they take PDF as their source. I can undersatnd that you would be inclined to phrase this differently. jdaly asked about a PDF creator, not something that took PDF as input, but as output.

It should be noted that I didn't bring up Create and Illustrator as options to jdaley's request. I suggested Acrobat (Distiller) and PStill as tools that would create PDFs from any content creation application.

See, the problem is where does the content come from in this work flow? I see it as such:

idea -> content creation app -> PDF creator -> PDF file​

And in the case of apps that use PDF as a file format:

idea -> content creation app <-> PDF file​

Now in the case of LaTeX and TeXShop... LaTeX is a typesetting language... TeXShop lets you edit that language and then another agent (included with teTeX) is used to generate a PDF (or DVI on most other systems).

For most Mac OS X apps, the PDF creator is Mac OS X's print services. Also Distiller and PStill are PDF creator apps. But in the case of Create and Illustrator, they not only output to PDF (which is what we are talking about) but can also go back and edit their output.

Your characterization makes it sound like Create and Illustrator can only edit PDFs once made, but both of these apps are content creators just as Word, TextEdit, AppleWorks and, yes, even LaTeX/TeXShop are. It isn't that Create and Illustrator do something different... it is that they do something more.

Can Create and Illustrator take a Word DOC as input and produce a PDF from it? LaTeX can: Save the doc in word as rtf...

But doesn't that actually mean that LaTeX can't? Sounds like you need Word to do that? It can't take a Word DOC file and convert it to PDF on it's own with only the DOC as input. You have to take a number of steps in Word to finally output a PDF. Taking those steps... yes, both Create and Illustrator can.

Though not being developed any more (because TextEdit can open most Word documents), the Stone Studio included an application called DOCtor which would convert DOC files into PDF files without Word.

Also, once you have a RTF file you can drag and drop it (the icon of the RTF file from the Finder) into a Create document and it'll become a text field (with all it's previous formatting retained). As Create is not only an illustration app but also a page layout and wed design app, you can do whatever you want with the text from there. And yes, I have full control over line spacing, word and letter spacing etc., as you can in most Cocoa apps that use Mac OS X's Text Services. Install TextExtras and you can have that type of control in TextEdit.

As for Illustrator, if you have Word you can print to file (Postscript) and Illustrator should be able to open it and save as a PDF. But in a case like that both Acrobat Distiller and PStill would be better as they are designed to do that one task (converting Postscript files to PDF files).



The problem here is that you seem to think that taking all these extra steps qualifies as making LaTeX a suitable solution to the question at hand... I feel than having to convert to a LaTeX format to get a PDF is an unnecessarily burdensome task to suggest to anyone. PDFs should be accessible from what ever application the person feels comfortable using.

LaTeX would be that solution only when LaTeX is the app you feel most comfortable using for content creation (as it is for you). And this is why I found the suggestion of LaTeX to be so completely off base in this thread.

This is why I didn't suggest Create or Illustrator, because you would have to bring the content into them to finally get a PDF.

PDF generation should be a task that takes seconds... not days.

 

[Cat]

Sounds like you need Word to do that?

Word, or any other app that can read microsoft's proprietary .doc format, like OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Abiword, etc. etc. including TextEdit. IIRC OpenOffice (and its derivatives) can export to LaTeX.

And yes, I have full control over line spacing, word and letter spacing etc., as you can in most Cocoa apps that use Mac OS X's Text Services. Install TextExtras and you can have that type of control in TextEdit.

I will give it a look, but I honestly doubt that it equals the level of micro-typesetting LaTeX has.

The problem here is that you seem to think that taking all these extra steps qualifies as making LaTeX a suitable solution to the question at hand... I feel than having to convert to a LaTeX format to get a PDF is an unnecessarily burdensome task to suggest to anyone. PDFs should be accessible from what ever application the person feels comfortable using.

To which I agree and repeat that I only did so after he seemed not to want to/be able to use the built-in print to pdf function. Moreover, in his first post he spoke of "text documents" without specifying anything else. If it would have been "plain text" documents, copy-pasting them into a suitable template with a unicode package, would not have been such an enourmous hassle.

This is why I didn't suggest Create or Illustrator, because you would have to bring the content into them to finally get a PDF.

I would never have suggested LaTeX/TeXShop either, if he had made it clear from the start that he was talking about Word documents. For plain .txt files, the issue of converting/importing would hardly have been an issue at all. Even for RTF, as you observe, there would have been little to no problems.

PDF generation with LaTeX for me indeed takes seconds, not days.

I could also have suggested to print the files out and scan them to PDF ...

 

[RacerX]

Word, or any other app that can read microsoft's proprietary .doc format, like OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Abiword, etc. etc. including TextEdit. IIRC OpenOffice (and its derivatives) can export to LaTeX.

Oh... I forgot (mainly as I still use 10.2) that in 10.3 Create inherits the ability to read .doc files from TextEdit (it provides it as a service to Cocoa apps that are able to take advantage of it)... so just as I can drag-n-drop a .rtf document into a Create document on my system, anyone with 10.3 could do the same with a .doc document.

I will give it a look, but I honestly doubt that it equals the level of micro-typesetting LaTeX has.

Well, I would hope that it wouldn't... but it has the LaTeX learning curve beat by a mile.

GUI controls from TextExtras​

To which I agree and repeat that I only did so after he seemed not to want to/be able to use the built-in print to pdf function. Moreover, in his first post he spoke of "text documents" without specifying anything else.

I can understand where your coming from there. I took text documents as being an unspecified app rather than needing an app that could deal with text and output PDFs.

PDF generation with LaTeX for me indeed takes seconds, not days.

Well, it was only a joke...

I could also have suggested to print the files out and scan them to PDF ...

...though that is a better one than mine was!

 

[Cat]

Well, I would hope that it wouldn't... but it has the LaTeX learning curve beat by a mile.

Few worthwhile things are easy.

TextExtra's certainly looks nice, but what does the fine print mean: "Not all supported attributes are preserved when saving documents as RTF"? What file-format would be needed to preserve all the settings?

 

[Viro]

@RacerX
Ugh, look at those Jaguar stripes .

 

[RacerX]

TextExtra's certainly looks nice, but what does the fine print mean: "Not all supported attributes are preserved when saving documents as RTF"? What file-format would be needed to preserve all the settings?

PDF.

TextExtras works in a number of different applications (it is a service) and not just TextEdit. Nisus Writer Express, Mellel and Create can use TextExtras.

Besides, not everything that you can do in TextEdit is saved in RTF format. For example page breaks can not be saved. This is a limitation of the RTF format and not TextEdit. In order for RTF to handle these things, the format would need to be changed, which if Apple does this would make it not compatible with other apps that use RTF. It is a trade off. Same thing with .doc documents in TextEdit... it is not perfect, but that limitation comes from compatibility.

And Apple has gotten around this issues with Pages by it having it's own format.

Ugh, look at those Jaguar stripes .

Jaguar is a great operating system! I do everything on my PowerBook running Jaguar and it has been the perfect system for me. I'm currently at 112 days of uptime and have gotten as high as 231 days.

Stripes are a small price for a completely trouble free operating system.