Richard,
> The only reason why I assume there might be a license is because acrobat
> costs so much?
:-) Well, yes... there *are* licenses for Adobe's "Acrobat" *product*, as
well as their "Distiller" product. But as far as I can tell, the "Acrobat"
*format* is free, and anyone can generate PDF files using other tools. I
have sent off the question to a list of people who should know (docbook-apps),
so I'll let you know.
> Yet there are no 'freeware' or opensource windows PDF makers.
Sure there are. A search on Freshmeat for "PDF" generates all sorts of
entries:
http://freshmeat.net/search/?site=Freshmeat&q=PDF
Many of the ones I see are Java-based, which means they could be used on a
Windows box just as well as on Linux. I don't know if they have a nice
Windows GUI, but I know they will work on Windows. One that I know many
people use is 'htmldoc':
http://freshmeat.net/projects/htmldoc/
In fact, the folks over at the Linux Documentation Project use that tool to
generate PDFs from their HTML. (And the HTML pages were actually generated
from DocBook SGML or XML using DocBook processing tools. The resulting HTML
pages are then converted to PDF using htmldoc.)
As Des mentioned, there is also Ghostscript.
> So if the
> whole open source community is making PDF's for free? Why? If the standard
> was open - why is acrobat the only expensive option for the windows desktop?
It is not the only option. See above. I do not know what other commercial
apps are out there for Windows, but there may be some.
Hope this helps,
Dan
--
Dan York, Director of Training [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph: +1-613-751-4401 Mobile: +1-613-263-4312 Fax: +1-613-564-7739
e-smith, inc. 150 Metcalfe St., Suite 1500, Ottawa,ON K2P 1P1 Canada
http://www.e-smith.com/ open source, open mind
----- End forwarded message -----
--
Dan York, Director of Training [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph: +1-613-751-4401 Mobile: +1-613-263-4312 Fax: +1-613-564-7739
e-smith, inc. 150 Metcalfe St., Suite 1500, Ottawa,ON K2P 1P1 Canada
http://www.e-smith.com/ open source, open mind
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