For those who just need simple PDFs for office or Web, here's a stripped-down PDF creator that does the job. And no more.As the uses for PDF files have multiplied—especially in print publishing—so has the complexity of creating them. At some point option paralysis sets in, and even creating the simplest of PDF files becomes a chore demanding high-end expertise. Enter novaPDF, which strips PDF creation back to its basics, with only a few frills and fillips added in. This will make the program a welcome relief for many, as will the stripped-down price (as low as $19.95) that goes with it.
novaPDF comes in three versions: Professional ($39.95), Standard ($29.95) and Lite ($19.95). These three labels are strictly relative, as novaPDF's Professional version would rate as Lite (maybe even Extra Lite) when compared with competitors such as ARTS PDF's Nitro PDF Professional and Acrobat Standard. Nevertheless, novaPDF doesn't claim to do all that much, and it does what it claims to do quite well.
How It Works
novaPDF only creates PDFs—to display them you'll need a viewing program, such as Adobe Reader. novaPDF appears in your applications' Print dialog box as an alternative printer, and by using it you "print" a PDF file to disk. (When installed on a printer server, an entire workgroup can share a single copy if the program.) To control this process, you can create any number of Profiles, which contain all your settings to define how the PDF file is created. Like so many inexpensive programs, though, novaPDF is cursed by scanty documentation, which describes features without explaining how to use them, and figuring out how to create and control your Profiles takes some time experimenting.
Need a more powerful PDF creator? Click here to read about Nitro PDF.
Given the range of prices, there's little reason to settle for less than novaPDF Pro. The $10 step up from Standard isn't much to pay for the ability to automatically include links (to URLs as well as to local files) in your PDFs or to be able to encrypt them. With encryption comes the ability to control the ability of the file's users to edit, print, modify or annotate them, as well as the ability to password-protect them.
What you lose (in addition to these features) by opting for the Lite version is more substantial: controls over compression of text and images, font embedding, and creation of Profiles. You do, however, have control over output resolution. But no matter which version of novaPDF you opt for, the PDFs you create will be substantially larger in file size than those created by Acrobat.
Although the program has relatively few features (which many users will find refreshing), some are quite thoughtful for an inexpensive program, such as its ability to create custom page sizes that can be added to a pop-up list of standards (Letter, Tabloid, A4, etc.). You could, for example, create an 8.5-by-30-inch page for those long Web pages that you want to save as PDFs.
Learn how to manage your workflow with multiple PDF applications. Click here to read more.
novaPDF Professional's security features aren't bad either. If you opt for 40-bit encryption, you can selectively prohibit printing, content editing, text and graphics extraction, the filling of forms, and the modification of annotations. You can also assign owner and user passwords. Up the encryption to 128 bits, and you can prevent the PDF files content from being rearranged or reoriented in a large number of ways.
You can also prevent printing at high resolution, which is handy for assuring that a file is used for proofing only. Given the program's poverty of publishing features, though, it's unlikely that it will be used much for high-resolution output in the first place.
Next Page: With less money comes less responsibility and fewer features.
Compromises
Clearly, when you're only paying $39.95 for a PDF program, you're going to have to do without some bells and whistles that are familiar in competing programs. novaPDF's file-compression tools, for example, are serviceable, but they don't create great results. For color images, you can choose between ZIP and JPEG (for which you have five possible degrees of compression). For text, color graphics, and indexed and monochrome graphics, you have one option: ZIP. You do, however, have three ZIP options: Fastest, Normal and Maximum.
In a test of a 300-page, 3.9MB Word file, these options produced files of 2.92MB, 2.53MB and 2.48MB, respectively. Adobe's PDFMaker (which also works by impersonating a printer), using settings as similar to novaPDF's as possible, created a comparable file of only 796KB.
The biggest problem with novaPDF is that it doesn't support PostScript Type 1 fonts, which, outside of the core font set that ships with Windows, are the most popular fonts in the world. While the program's documentation acknowledges that it can't embed PostScript fonts, in fact it won't even include in the PDFs it creates any text formatted with PostScript fonts. This is a serious problem, as few computer users are religious about using only TrueType and OpenType fonts. Softland says this will be addressed in an unspecified future revision of the program.
novaPDF also offers no choice of which version of the PDF spec to use—you get 1.4 (Acrobat 5), love it or leave it. In truth, though, this is still probably the most common version of PDF in use today, mainly for the sake of compatibility with older viewing software.
Although it's adept at translating URLs in the text stream of a document into live hyperlinks in the PDF files it creates, it demands a peculiar syntax for doing so with the names of local files. To create a link for the file C:\publish\novaPDF.doc, for example, the pathname has to be typed C:///publish/novaPDF.doc. While this creates a functional link, the syntax may confuse those familiar with DOS and Windows pathname conventions.
In short, the link is machine-readable but not necessarily people-readable, and manuscripts will have to be rewritten to accommodate this. (The company says the next version of the program will be able to read the more familiar "backslash" syntax.)
In addition, pathnames can't contain word spaces, à la Web URLs. You have to substitute "%20" for each word space, but if this expression is followed by a number (e.g., "novaPDF 2.0.doc" becomes "novaPDF%202.0.doc"), the phrase becomes ambiguous, and novaPDF can't parse it.
Note also that the program does not translate existing hyperlinks in text per se: It needs the entire URL or file pathname to be explicitly typed out so it can create the link itself.
Conclusion
Inexpensive software is always a risk. Programming, debugging and documenting are time- and money-consuming chores. It's hard to get high technology at low prices. But whether you call it "bang for the buck" or "value for money," novaPDF does OK on this score. Its two big drawbacks are lack of PostScript-font support and the relatively large files it creates.
To give it a trial run, download a free, fully functional, no-time-limit version from Softland's Web site. (Until you pay up, a one-line blurb saying "Created with novaPDF Printer" along with the company URL will appear at the bottom of every PDF page you make.) Presuming its collection of features suits your needs, for the price of a cheap dinner for two (with tip) it's a good deal.
