HOWTO: Install Cups-PDF

[davegk]

Wait, couldn't you just use the 'Print to File' printer and select pdf as the output type? That way, you even get to set the name and location of the resulting pdf!

Yeah, but again - no way to select the resulting properties of pdf file (not that I expect "Print to File" to do that). And the main thing - "Print to File" is not available from certain application, namely Acrobat Reader. Both Cups-PDF and Print to File are okay for very basic "let's grab that page" kind of thing, but no use if you need to create a pdf file with specific qualities.

Incidentally, I have found a program, PDF Studio (not OSS, unfortunatelly) - looks almost as good as Acrobat Pro - basic editing, typewriter, interactive form handling. No way to create or edit interactive fields though, and no printing control comparable to Distiller ...

[jdsumsion]

Actually, the whole situation with fillable pdf forms - especially creation and editing, is really bad, or to be precise, totally absent from Ubuntu. PDFEdit is a complete rubbish, and I am not aware of any other application that even close to Acrobat Pro in functionality. I have now moved to linux completely and am determined not to use Windows at all. Acrobat Pro and CorelDRAW are the two progs holding me back. Any help greatly appreciated

You may want to try Scribus. It's a desktop publishing app. Still has a few rough edges, but its PDF fillable forms stuff works ok.

The downside is that you have to lay your whole page out by hand. I couldn't get the pdf import stuff to work.

[davegk]

You may want to try Scribus. It's a desktop publishing app. Still has a few rough edges, but its PDF fillable forms stuff works ok.

The downside is that you have to lay your whole page out by hand. I couldn't get the pdf import stuff to work.

I did actually try it, although not for pdf handling - I was trying to get it to work with Corel's converted (from cdr to svg) files - it was a total disaster: Scribus couldn't open a sigle file correctly, even most simple ones were horribly messed up... Perhaps I should try it again for pdf? I've decided to purchase PDF Studio anyway. If only they could make a proper launcher ...

[rygle]

I did actually try it, although not for pdf handling - I was trying to get it to work with Corel's converted (from cdr to svg) files - it was a total disaster: Scribus couldn't open a sigle file correctly, even most simple ones were horribly messed up... Perhaps I should try it again for pdf? I've decided to purchase PDF Studio anyway. If only they could make a proper launcher ...

Inkscape should be able to import PDFs and convert them to SVG, plus it will also do the CDR to SVG conversion, as long as you have uniconvertor installed, which I think is a prerequisite of the 0.46 package anyway.

[rygle]

Inkscape should be able to import PDFs and convert them to SVG, plus it will also do the CDR to SVG conversion, as long as you have uniconvertor installed, which I think is a prerequisite of the 0.46 package anyway.

You can also use OpenOffice to do basic form stuff if you import the PDF (there is a plugin from Sun), then put text boxes in the appropriate spots.

[Maddog Battie]

Just in case somebody is wondering how to print to PDF in 9.10 it is as simple as the following:

sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

You will then have a PDF printer option available with the output going to a PDF directory in your home directory.

[pt123]

good hopefully no messing around with app armour

[HandeH]

good hopefully no messing around with app armour

That's true. In Jaunty I only had to manually make PDF directories to my users' home folders and then correct the folder permissions of the home folders:

cd /home
chmod -v o+x [USER_NAME]

(^could also be applied to /home/[USER_NAME]/PDF)

This way you will avoid security risks mentioned in a bug report

[corny]

ok. i lost cups-pdf upgrading from 8.04 to 9.4 too. installing cups-pdf via synaptic brought it back ready installed as printer. i could print with it, saw the print jobs in the queue but nothing in ~/PDF. i did not want to change access rights on home directories as mentioned elsewhere.

for me this from launchpad did the trick:
sudo vim /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.cupsd

and edit the line:
/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf {
in order to get:
/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf flags=(complain) {

restart AppArmor:
sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor restart

[moreback]

Hi! I was having problems to create my PDFs until finally I commented the line

Out ${HOME}/PDF

in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf. Now my PDF goes to /var/spool/cups-pdf/${USER} but at least gets printed