Free PDF Printer Driver for Windows
The procedure to set up a free mechanism for printing from any Windows application into PDF documents is not the easiest, but I don't like wasting money. If you're like me, you'll enjoy these instructions, which keep it as simple as possible.
- Download PostScript printer drivers for Windows. You probably want the Adobe Universal PostScript Windows Driver. (Scroll down to "PostScript printer drivers" and select "Windows".) Download, but do not install yet.
- Now you need a PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file for the generic Adobe printer, because our aim is to save to file. (Go back to the download page, scroll down to "PPD files" and get the "PPD Files: Adobe" one. You will want ADIST5.PPD from that Zip file.
- Allright, now you can install the driver. Tell the installer to use the "write to file" device, and point it to use ADIST5.PPD
- Now you need Ghostscript in order to have the "ps2pdf" command available.
- Finally, create yourself a "spool" directory where you'll be saving your .PS files, and create a .BAT file in there which you'll simply need to click on to convert any .PS files laying around into proper .PDF files. You'll need to tweak the paths, but here's mine:
@echo off set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.14\lib;C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.14\bin cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Stephane Lavergne\Desktop\Postscript" for %%f IN (*.ps) DO call ps2pdf.bat %%f erase /q *.ps
Note: Some guy suggests a rather funky command line to add more fonts and hard-code 1200dpi (both I have never needed so far): ps2pdf -I/usr/share/fonts/msttcorefonts ... -dPDFSETTINGS=/default -r1200 whew! And another guy talks about ps2pdf -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true