1<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
2      type="topic" style="task"
3      id="convertpdf">
4
5  <info>
6    <link type="guide" xref="index#tips"/>
7    <desc>You can convert a document to PDF by "printing" it to a file.</desc>
8    <revision pkgversion="1.25" version="0.1" date="2021-03-13" status="final"/>
9    <credit type="author">
10      <name>Phil Bull</name>
11      <email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
12    </credit>
13    <credit type="editor">
14      <name>Anna Philips</name>
15      <email>anna.cs.au@gmail.com</email>
16    </credit>
17    <license>
18      <p>Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0</p>
19    </license>
20
21  </info>
22
23<title>Converting a document to PDF</title>
24
25<p>
26You can convert documents of the following format types into PDF format:
27</p>
28<list>
29 <item><p>Device Independent file format (.dvi)</p></item>
30 <item><p>PostScript (.ps)</p></item>
31</list>
32<p>
33This works by opening the file in <app>Atril</app> and "printing" the document as a PDF file.
34</p>
35<steps>
36    <item>
37      <p> Go to
38      <guiseq><gui style="menuitem">File</gui>
39      <gui style="menuitem">Print</gui></guiseq>
40      and
41      select <gui>Print</gui> or press
42      <keyseq><key>Ctrl</key><key>P</key></keyseq> on your keyboard.</p>
43    </item>
44    <item>
45      <p>
46      Select <gui>Print to File</gui> and choose PDF as the
47      <gui>Output format</gui>.
48      </p>
49    </item>
50    <item>
51      <p>
52      Choose a name and folder in which to save the file, then click <gui>Print</gui>.
53      The PDF will be saved in the folder you chose.
54      </p>
55    </item>
56</steps>
57<note>
58<p>
59You can't select text in PostScript or .dvi files, but you usually can do
60this in PDF files. Converting .dvi or PostScript files to PDF will not make
61the text selectable. This is because the text itself isn't stored in the file
62(it's just an image of what the text looks like), so there is no way to recover
63it and put it in the PDF. You can use <em>Optical Character Recognition</em>
64(OCR) software to extract the text from files if you need to.
65</p>
66</note>
67
68</page>
69