| 1. | Choose Export... from the 'File' menu or
press Ctrl E keys. |
| 3. | To avoid a new file overwriting an existing file with the same name, tick Do not overwrite files: see Overwriting files. |
| 4. | Choose PDF document as the 'Format'; |
| o | a wild-carded filename (with extension .PDF) and folder are supplied. To create a different filename or extension, type in the new name. To select a different folder to store the file, use the Browse button. Or |
| o | check the LPR box; the filename will be supplied automatically. |
To make 'PDF document' format the default, click Save format.
| 6. | Tick the Force monochrome check-box if required. |
| 7. | Choose a Duplexing option from the drop-down list: |
| o | Long edge force duplex, long edge binding |
| o | Short edge force duplex, short edge binding |
| o | As in the file use the option specified in the input file. |
| 8. | Tick Run the associated program after creating the file if you want  EscapeE to open the file immediately using your preferred program, e.g. Adobe Acrobat or EscapeE. See Associated programs. |
| 9. | If you have defined data fields on the pages, EscapeE can create a .LOG file automatically: |
| • | Comma separated (default) |
| o | Further Log file options may be set up from the 'Log File' page of the Configuration dialog: click Log file.... |
| 10. | Click OK to export the pages. |
|
Tip: When viewing the PDF output in Adobe Acrobat, you may need to turn off the smoothing options. These may be found on the 'Preferences' dialog in the Acrobat 'Edit' menu.
Notes
PDF can be viewed directly with a browser and creates documents which can be searched for text strings. The fonts required to display the document are often included with the PDF file, but this can make the file very large. To reduce the file-size, PDF files may include references to external fonts instead – unlike PDF/A document files. This is helpful when the referenced fonts are installed on users' systems already: see PDF export options. If you are not happy with the appearance of fonts in the output file, please contact RedTitan for more help with fonts.
If you are using EscapeE to view a PDF file which includes referenced fonts that are not available on your system, EscapeE uses the fonts which best match the requested fonts' properties from the fonts which are available. Thus, while the major attributes of a font's style will be honored, minor features may differ and so the display will not be an exact image of the original document. For example, if an italic font with a custom underline has been requested, the font used will be italic but the default plain solid underscore will be used for the underline. A message detailing the attributes of the fonts requested and used will be placed on the Error messages page of the Console notebook when this happens. See also Setting up a Font Substitute file.
Fields may be defined to enable the export of unfilled PDF forms using a number of special options: buttons, borders, check-boxes, editable boxes, lists. See Special fields for PDF export.
By default, EscapeE will use substitute fonts for any printer-resident fonts (e.g. Courier, CG Times and Univers) and any downloaded fonts will be converted to bitmap fonts and included in the PDF. These defaults can be changed – see PDF export options. You can opt to create a 'Table of Contents' from selected fields, or from tags: for example, special font definitions.
There are two methods of generating PDF files with security restrictions. The original method used two passwords: one to allow full ownership access including changing the security options, the other for general users: see PDF export options. The alternative method uses "public" and "private" keys to digitally sign and/or encrypt the document: see Security options for PDF export.
There are command line options which enable the PDF document summary elements Title, Description, Author, and Keywords to be defined: see PDF document summary.
There are command line options for setting up preferences regarding the display of a PDF document: see PDF viewer preferences.
Links
PDF export options
PDF/A document file export
