The Portable Document Format and You
^{How to get the most out of the new .pdf upload option}

So the .pdf upload option has finally arrived for the literature community to start using. But what does it mean to have this option? And how do you go about making a .pdf for your watchers to marvel at? Well, before we tell you how to go about it, let's have a look at the advantages of the portable document format.

The advantages of the .pdf

Greater control over formatting
When you convert a text document to .pdf, all the formatting that you have placed into that text document is preserved. No more having to mess around with crazy html codes for a blank space. Those interested in producing dynamically spaced poetry should be especially interested in this, as it saves a lot of frustration, clicks of the '*preview' button, and pages of &_nbsp;**.

Professional presentation
The term '*professional presentation' here can mean a lot of things. For prose monkeys, it means that you can insert a cover image and title page, contents page and dedication for your story if you so wished. You can choose which font you would like to present your text in. You can choose to include margins, page numbers, footnotes, all the things that make reading a professionally produced book that little bit nicer. And if you get into good habits now, your editor will love you when you're a literary megastar!

Ease of distribution
The .pdf format is widely recognised as having lived up to its name. It is able to be ported across all popular operating systems where other formats -- such as .doc -- are somewhat harder to. This means that if a person using Windows likes your stuff, he or she can send it to a person using Linux or Mac OS and have it be perfectly reproduced.

Archiving
Though this may be only relevant to people such as myself that like to hoard things, having an option to download and store deviations is great in order to be able to keep a history of pieces that I like. Not only that, but by converting your own work to .pdf and archiving it properly, you'll be able to keep a nice, ordered writing folder!

...okay, so maybe that last point is just for me. In any case, now that you've heard the advantages, let's move onto how you can start taking advantage of the .pdf format.

Reading .pdf files
There are a lot of programs available for the reading of .pdf files. The most obvious program, and the one that a lot of people automatically reach for, is Adobe Acrobat Reader. Now I'm a great supporter of Adobe, they're a good company and what they've done for digital illustration programs alone should make them worthy of anyone's praise. Which is why I can be completely honest in saying that Acrobat Reader is not the best program for reading in .pdf files on your average user's computer. As ~OmniaVanitas said in a recent poll of mine, "Opening .pdfs are the death of my computer."

It doesn't have to be like this!

There are plenty of alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Reader for the opening of .pdf files that won't cause your computer to choke. The most popular and reliable one on the market at the moment is FoxIt Reader. It's a freely available, quite small program that will open .pdf files in an instant, without causing your computer to hang. You can download it for Windows here and for Linux here. Unfortunately there isn't any distribution for Macs users as yet, but since Macs come with a built in alternative reader, they probably aren't reading this.

Okay, now that we can read .pdf files without a BSOD, let's move onto making them!

Writing .pdf files
Once again, there are alternatives to buying Adobe Acrobat Professional if you want to get your writing out there in a .pdf format. I'm going to direct Windows users once again to FoxIt Software, as they have made available a freeware program for the creation of .pdf files. You can download their '*PDF Creator' here. The program works by adding a .pdf printer to your list of printers when you print any .doc, .xls, .ppt, .txt, e-mail or .html file (i.e. any file that you might want to convert to a .pdf). So, for example, if I wanted to convert a Word document to a .pdf, I would simply load up the document in Word, click File>*Print, and select the FoxIt PDF Creator from the list. And away it goes! Simple as that.
The only disadvantage to this piece of software is that it creates a stamp in the top corner of your finished .pdf document with the FoxIt Software website. If you are serious about presenting profressionally, it's recommended that you can either buy the upgraded version of the PDF Creator software, or that of Adobe Acrobat.

Anyway, so concludes my little tutorial on how to start using and appreciating the .pdf format. Please, please feel free to ask any questions and discuss any aspects of the .pdf option in the comments below.




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*_{Would someone please fix that fzcking emoticon.}
**_ inserted as the code tags don't seem to be working.