[Coco] Re: scan documents and turn into pdf

[Joel Ewy]

farna at att.net wrote:
> ... There's not much better for both graphics and text, and it's widely used now that the patents have run out! 
>   
Didn't know the patents had expired.  That's cool.

> There is no need to rescan the documents assuming you're running on a PC or Linux machine. There are utilities that install as a printer and will generate PDF output. The one I use most is "PDF995" (www.pdf995.com). There is a $9.95 registartion fee or the program will display an ad banner while it's processing the file or for 30 seconds or so, whichever comes first. It's not intrusive at all. I don't know the name of such utilities for a Linux box, but I'm sure they are out there. Just load your files into whatever program you use to edit them then "print" using the driver. It creates a PDF file. At the PDF995 site there are also free (with the reasonable ad, or, you guessed it, a $9.95 registration fee) utilities to merge multiple PDFs into a single file and to edit PDF files. I use PDF995 extensively in my little magazine publishing ventures, and to create the latest revision of "Tandy's Little Wonder". 
> ...
>   

As for creating PDFs, you don't need a special print driver if you use
OpenOffice.org 2.0 (actually, I think it might apply to 1.4 as well.) 
It has an "Export to PDF" option right there in the file menu.  Free,
Open Source, runs on Linux, Mac OS X, or that M'Soft system a few people
are still using.  On the latter it can be installed to the hard drive or
run as a portable app on a USB drive, in case they won't let you install
your own programs at work... :)

JCE