Regardless if the use of pdf’s is considered useful for your site visitors or cumbersome, they are a part of the everyday web. Often this is the most functional method for distributing complex documents to any platform.
If your Linux workstation or server includes Ghostscript, you have some excellent open-source alternatives for creating and optimizing PDF files.
Ghostscript is an interpreter for PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) files as well as complex image files. It can translate and output files to a viewer (Ghostview for one, as well as Acrobat Reader) on numerous Unix variants including of course Linux, as well as translate PostScript files to print to a non-postscript printer.
Within the Ghostscript application there are two utilities, ps2pdf and pdfopt. ps2pdf enables you to generate pdf files completely compatible with Acrobat Reader, including the ability to tweak Adobe Distiller parameters (dozens) and to set resolution for output, such as for screen viewing, for printing and even for pre-press.
Also available is a nice little utility called pdfopt, which allows for the optimization of pdf files, often shrinking file size as much as 50 percent or more.
For information on these tools, see the links below:
Ghostscript –> Complete Overview
ps2pdf –> Create PDF files without Acrobat/Distiller
pdfopt –> PDF Optimizer
Blane Warrene
