Oops — may have run…

Oops -- may have run into a hitch with this making-books project. You need to submit a PDF to the Cafe Press people, and if you don't have Adobe Acrobat (expensive) to make PDF's with, they point to something free...which doesn't appear Mac-compatible. Dangit. Any ideas on a workaround here? I'd really like to try making at least one of these books.

14 thoughts on “Oops — may have run…”

  1. C. J. Czelling

    If you do not know about http://www.journeyed.com, you should check them out. Academic customers can obtain deep discounts, e.g. Acrobat for Mac for $99.98. You will need the University to certify your status as a student.

    With all of love,

    C. J. Czelling

  2. Good to know, C.J., but alas, still out of my current budget. I’m afraid my current budget is $0 for these books. I still have hope, though. 🙂

  3. Mary Anne, this isn’t a perfect solution, but if you know someone who has the Acrobat software to turn files into PDFS — Acrobat Distiller — you could email that person, they could wave their Distiller wand, and email you back a PDF.

    Someone like me, for example, could do it. Email me an RTF or DOC file, if you want. It’d take me 2 seconds. 🙂

  4. Mike, that’s a sweet offer, but I just know I’m going to need to tweak the design a few times; it’s not like I’ve done this before and have templates all set up. Would it drive you crazy if I sent you back little e-mails saying ‘umm, could you try the headers two point sizes larger’, etc. and so on? That’s the main reason I didn’t ask Jed to do the conversion for me in the first place — I know he would, but he’s so overbooked with stuff right now…

  5. Also, with MacOS X, printing to PDF instead of to a printer is one of the default choices. Edit in your editor of choice, and print to file.

  6. Someone else sent me this suggestion, but I’m confused. I don’t see this option in MS Word — is it because I’m still back in the dark ages of 5.1? Or am I missing something obvious?

  7. Heh. Okie, but it’s not likely to happen today. I’m about to head downtown to run errands, and it’s possible that I’ll be able to put a book together this afternoon when I get back, but it seems more likely that I’ll just go to sleep instead. But if not today, tomorrow — and thanks!

  8. On the “printing to PDF with OSX”
    you need to set up a Postscript printer.
    I can’t recall the exact steps, but (surprisingly!)
    if you search in MacOSX help for
    “setting up Postscript printer” and so forth,
    it should come up.

    Also, in Appleworks, if you choose “Preview”
    from the printer panel, it should open Acrobat
    Reader and bring up a PDF of the file
    you’re trying to “print”.

    Hope that helps.

  9. Yep – it’s because you’re using Word in Classic, which is a copy of OS 9 running in a window. With your new and improved Office X you’ll be able to do it, no problem. Hit print in this window, for instance – and you’ll see in the row of buttons on the bottom of the print dialog “save as PDF”. Pretty neat, huh?

  10. Back about a year ago, when I needed to make some PDF’s using Mac OS X but a Classic version of Word, I printed to PostScript and then used a little freebie Unix tool to convert to PDF. (I think it may have been called ps2pdf.) I can get more specific details for you when I’m at home and have access to the computer I used. (If you’re not already drowning in options.)

    Alternatively, since I now have the shiny new Word X, you could e-mail me your Word files, and I could print them to PDFs and e-mail those back. Think of it as distributed computing. 😉

  11. Wow, y’all know a lot! I think the plan is:

    a) try making a file in the Word I have and sending it to Mike, just to see if I can get something up and running soonly — I’m thinking “Esthely Blue” and “Silence and the Word”, since Zak can do the illo…

    b) when I get the copy of new Word X, after I get back from Europe, then I can just use that to make PDF’s, and I’ll do the other books then.

    Thanks for all the advice!

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