I used (an old version of) Publisher to do a magazine for new writers and poets in the late 1990s using MS Publisher, creating a PostScript file and then a PDF. It was fine.

More recently, at the tail end of last year John Wilson's sister typeset a book in publisher that I then PDF'd using Distiller. It printed perfectly via LULU, so I am utterly confident that the file was robust and standards compliant. (I did some tweaking in Publisher to the layout and it was pretty easy to use.)

Basically, I prefer using InDesign because of my own familiarity with it, but if you have Publisher 2003 (or whatever) then it works fine and is reasonably intuitive to use.

So, I say use it!

Last time I used it it created file bloat, so the pdfs it produced were huge. This shouldn't be a problem for sending it to print, but might cause problems if you plan to release a pdf version. Other, more technical types might know how to solve it though.

As long as whatever you use can boot out a quality PDF, best from Acrobat, you should be fine.

Beware of programs that don't use Acrobat PDFs, they can be screwy. For example, PDfs created by the Mac's default PDF printer can be full of miss-embedded fonts and all kinds of gumpf. Same of many freebie PDF producers.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I've recently heard the same thing about PDFs produced by Pages on the Mac, which is annoying, since I was hoping that by upgrading my OS and getting pages I would avoid the need for some other PDF tool.

The advice is to print to Postscript and then Distill to PDF afterwards, which I hope would work.

You get pretty dumb PDFs though, no chapter lists or internal links or the like, I've no idea how I would produce those without other tools.

I'm facing the same question for Eeekamouse. It's all written in Word (my standard) and I am wondering how I will get a PDF for Lulu out of that.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper-labs/245/desktop-publishing-software/products.html

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

Exactly Tim, the only ones that work on a Mac are £600 +

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Which is less than the cost of a decent PC ;)

While you can get a bunch of third-party "PDF creators", including the built-in print to PDF in Mac OS X, the PDF format is owned by Adobe, and the only way to create a true PDF would be via Adobe's own Acrobat software, or directly from Adobe InDesign.

Adobe are very keen, of course, to keep it that way.

Anything else will be pseudo PDFs, and besides the fact you can't control the output settings at all, add links etc., it's probably going to pose problems at the printer end.

The good news is that if you own Adobe Acrobat, it allows you to create proper PDFs, with you controlling every aspect of the final output file including resolution, security settings, fonts, colours, backwards compatibility etc., even from a less than satisfactory piece of software like Publisher.

I'm not sure how much control you have if you only have InDesign and not Acrobat, my guess is less.

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

InDesign exports PDFs to Acrobat standards natively, so you don't need to have Acrobat Professional too. (In fact, InDesign now does pre-flight checking too.)

On file bloat, my experience with Publisher was that the book file I worked on was ~0.5 GB in Publisher (which I managed to get down to 0.25 GB by saving it as Publisher 2003). I then made a PDF using Acrobat Distiller, which was 5.7 MB.

So, as long as you have Acrobat and know how to use it then you will be OK.

Acrobat 9 is what, around £150?

I guess I am after PDF software that is *cheaper* than the whole game I want to make, not more expensive!

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

On windows:

We get folks using, from publisher.

http://www.primopdf.com/

It produces, quality work for print, for various small documents, where print issues are very important.