What do you use for PDF Generation?

[Syed Zaeem Hosain]

Ron Teplitz wrote:
> Every copy of Frame I've seen for a long time included Acrobat 
> Distiller, going back to at least FM 6.0. Distiller does all of what 
> many folks need in the way of PDF generation. What version of Frame do 
> you have? Have you checked to see if your distribution included Distiller?
> 
> Cheers,
> Ron

Oh, I should have been clearer. I definitely use Acrobat Pro 7 for
my PDF creation! With output from FrameMaker and all other programs
too. :)

My questions related to the fact that we need to get PDF creation
ability for *all* the employees in our company, and the price of
Acrobat Pro (or Standard, too) would be very prohibitive. These
folks mostly do not use FrameMaker ... most are simply using Word
and Excel for their daily stuff.

Right now, I am leaning towards either Acrobat Elements or PDF995
as the "preferred" solution for this new policy ... those seem to
have garnered the most "votes" too, but I do plan on quickly looking
at some of the open-source freebie stuff as well.

What I have tried and did NOT like: PDF-Xchange. This came as a
freebie demo with some app that I got, and it simply crashes too 
often on my system. Not good enough.

Another one that was still a tad bit too expensive (as an Enterprise
total cost) was PDF Convertor 3 from Nuance. I liked it (I use my
copy of the PDF to Word convertor on occasion), but the total cost
is a bit high.

This is why PDF995 is leading the pack right now ...

Thanks!

Z

>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 16:01:28 -0700
>> From: Syed Zaeem Hosain <Syed.Hosain at aeris.net>
>> Subject: What do you use for PDF generation?
>> To: framers <framers at frameusers.com>
>> Message-ID: <4470F148.1010807 at aeris.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> Hi, all.
>>
>> Pardon the slightly unrelated to FrameMaker questions, but I am figure
>> I am not too far off the mark here, since you all are likely to be very
>> familiar with similar polices to what I describe here.
>>
>> We are standardizing on a new policy that documents/files sent "outside"
>> the company must be in PDF form only. No Word or Excel (typically) or
>> FrameMaker (of course! :) ) files. And, obviously, it does not include
>> text e-mail!
>>
>> This means that we must install PDF creation software on all our user
>> computers ... including laptops and ones that may not be connected to the
>> Internet at all times.
>>
>> Acrobat Professional is too expensive a solution for this, plus it is
>> overkill for most of our employees. We have some people who only create
>> documents and files in Word or Excel for example.
>>
>> Hence, my questions:
>>
>> 1. What are you all using for PDF file creation?
>>
>> 2. Does it allow forms? I.e., for external folks to fill in fields and
>> send back the form!
>>
>> 3. What would you recommend we do, if you were setting up a similar
>> policy?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Z