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Compatible PDF-making software
Prep4PDF doesn't make PDFs on its own. You also need compatible PDF-making software to use with it.
Prep4PDF prepares your PowerPoint presentations so that when you make PDFs from them, the resulting PDFs retain most of the interactions, links, comments and other features you built into your PowerPoint presentation.
Compatible PDF-making software
- Soda PDF from LULU Software is free, and offers more than just a printer driver that makes PDFs. It comes with the Soda PDF Reader, an attractive alternative to Adobe's Reader that includes the ability to create PDFs from most applications (after a free, fast registration process) and also installs PDF-making add-ins directly into your Office programs, if you have them. Inexpensive upgrade versions of the product add even more features, bringing them into the Adobe Acrobat feature range, at a fraction of the price.
- PDF Creator from pdfforge is a free open-source project with quite a few similarities to Soda PDF. It also includes a free Reader-like program, PDF Architect, that you can add modular features to. When you install it, we strongly suggest the Custom option; it wants to add browser plug-ins and other "crapware" that has nothing to do with its core functions. Accepting the default install option may not give you the opportunity to refuse these. Don't let that scare you off, though. It's good, solid software, very well-regarded (particularly by the developer community, since it includes a programmable interface).
- Adobe Acrobat when used with Acrobat Distiller or one of the special Adobe printer drivers that automatically uses Distiller to create PDFs (Distiller Assistant, Adobe PDF, etc.)
- PDF Creator from Jaws Systems, makes it simple to print directly to PDF files from Windows apps. Fully functional demos available for Windows and Mac. PDF Creator is extremely fast and is easy to use. It's equivalent to the Distiller and Distiller printer driver portions of Acrobat. It lets you print to PDF files or convert Postscript or EPS to PDF, just as you can with Distiller.
- The free GhostScript can create PDFs from PostScript files much the way Distiller does. Also get GhostView, a companion "front-end" program that makes GhostScript much easier to use.
- PStill by Frank Siegart is available in various commercial/shareware/free versions for Windows, MacOS X, NeXTSTEP/OpenStep, Linux, Sun Solaris, SHI IRIX, HP UX and IBM AIX. We haven't tested PStill, but have been told that it supports PDFMark, which is necessary to using Prep4PDF.
- Free PrimoPDF uses GhostScript "under the hood" to produce PDFs and as its name implies, the price is right
- PDF995 is yet another option - their free PDF converter also uses GhostScript. It pops up a web-based nag screen each time you make a PDF, but it's inexpensive to register. The registered version doesn't include the nagware feature.
There may be others we don't know of. For a product to be compatible with Prep4PDF, it must interpret PostScript in order to produce PDFs, and the PostScript interpreter must support PDFMark code.
PDF-making software that won't work with Prep4PDF
- All non-PostScript products
- Adobe PDFWriter
- The Dane Prairie PDF driver
- PDFCamp PDF Writer from VeryPDF
- RoboPDF from eHelp
- ExpertPDF from BVRP
- PDF Factory from FinePrint
Please note: This is not a criticism of any of these products. Most of them are excellent programs that perform their intended functions very well. They simply use a different method of making PDFs than the method required by Prep4PDF.
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