Publishing Material/PDF Software

[Nat Mallet]

Just a quick question for anyone who's published ASL material in PDF format: what PDF software are you using? I've been looking for a package to do page layout in PDF, and I haven't found anything that suits me yet.

Adobe has Acrobat, but I find the 250$ price tag a little steep. I've tried using Troff and TeX, but quality leaves much to be desired (when looking at it though Reader; the printed output is decent).

I did find a PDF creation package in a local computer supply store for 40$, but I don't know if it's any good (I can't remember the name).

Thanks for reading,

Nat

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Nat,
Good to see the forums are still going.

I use Adobe Design Studio for pretty much everything but that's a chunk of cash. But if you're going to ever get serious about layout and design there's no better way to go IMO.

The latest version of Scansoft's-PaperPort has PDF creation in it, along with OCR, scanning interface, digital camera interface and storage for all. Very cool program for people that aren't computer geeks. You get a lot of functionality with it but it costs almost $200.

There are some free PDF creation tools that programmers use. I haven't looked into whether or not they can be used stand alone or not but its worth some research:
http://www.daneprairie.com/
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
http://www.globalgraphics.com/software/jaws_rip/index.html
http://www.pdf995.com/
(Pdf995 is basically a compilation of ghostscript which makes it more user friendly.)

 

[Pitman]

Adobe is pretty much the way to go. That's what I use. Bite the bullet.

 

[Virtual_General]

Quark for layout/Photoshop for graphics/Freehand for drawing

I prefer QuarK Xpress for doing layouts, it's the industry standard and familiar to every print shop from small to large. Unfortunately it is also very expensive. You still need Photoshop for raster graphics, plus a vector drawing program -- I prefer Macromedia Freehand, but Adobe Illustrator works also, as does Corel Draw (although i've gotten .eps weirdness from CD before). Quark will produce good multi-page pdf layouts if you want pdfs, but you still need Acrobat distiller. Overall you need to budget about $2000, since you may want to buy some font collections as well--and they aren't cheap. These programs are available either PC/Mac. The majority of designers/printers are Mac-based, but most printers will handle both now. Font issues are the main problem.

David

 

[Brian W]

Re: Quark for layout/Photoshop for graphics/Freehand for dra

Overall you need to budget about $2000, since you may want to buy some font collections as well--and they aren't cheap.

Ouch! I thought I was doing just fine with just a copy of CorelDraw 10. Of course I am only designing scenarios and counters for d/l off the web. If I had to go to a publisher I would probably have to do something about the counters, although I think the scenarios would be ok.

CD can produce funky ps, but 10 was a big improvement over 8. Not sure if 11 is worth it.

 

[Virtual_General]

Ouch! I thought I was doing just fine with just a copy of CorelDraw 10. Of course I am only designing scenarios and counters for d/l off the web. If I had to go to a publisher I would probably have to do something about the counters, although I think the scenarios would be ok.

I was suggesting an overall graphic design setup for doing both online and print work. But yeah, you can certainly get by with less, especially if you are submitting files for printing. Corel is probably the best all-in-one package out there. I don't like it personally, but I know many people do and it certainly will get the job done.

David

 

[Virtual_General]

correction

But yeah, you can certainly get by with less, especially if you are submitting files for printing.

Oops, I meant if you are not submitting files for printing.