From Word to PS

Believe it or not, Word document are not the ideal format for information interchange. It can be difficult to open a document and have it display properly under different versions of Word, let alone when you use some non-standard font. The reasons not to use MS-Word documents are many and well explained by Jeff Goldberg. I am here to explain how to generate a PostScript file that you can guarantee will display and print the same, anywhere.

PDFCreator is now a nice, bundled version of this with point and click install. Just get the latest version and install it.

If you are confused or just the kind of person who would rather throw money at a problem, you can buy Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader), but it will hurt you 299 $US. It's much easier and idiot proof to use, but the following solution is free.

Setting It Up

This is an of the setup process Windows 2000. Any screen where I just clicked Next was skipped.

1. Open My Computer, then Control Panels, then Printers.
2. Click on Add Printer.
3. Follow the wizard to add a Local Printer on the port FILE: using the Apple LaserWriter NT driver.
4. Name the printer Generate PostScript and click Next.
5. Keep clicking Next but skip over the test page.

And that's it. If you really want to make me smile, hunt around in the Properties and make it use SoftFonts. The location of this option varies on different versions of Windows.

Generating PS

1. In any application, choose the Print command from the File menu.
2. Select Generate PostScript as the printer and click Ok.
3. After a moment, a save box will appear. Save this file and distribute it.

This is a demonstration of generating a PostScript file using WordPad in Windows 2000.

Converting PS to PDF

For the Adventurous

If you get GSView, you can not only view PS files, you can convert them to the more common PDF. You'll have to install GhostScript first, then GSView. You can open your files with GSView and then choose File and Convert. Select pdfwrite as the device and choose Ok. Save the file with a .pdf extension and you're done.

To all those who do this: Thank you.