Adobe may have invented the Portable Document Format (PDF) standard, and its free Acrobat reader is, without doubt, one of the most downloaded tools on the Web. However, it doesn't have a total monopoly on the PDF market and several vendors offer alternatives to Adobe Acrobat creation tools. One such is ActivePDF, whose recently released Composer makes creating a PDF file as easy as printing a document from the desktop.

The ActivePDF software can be installed on any PC running Windows 98 or later and, like other creation tools, it works by converting PostScript versions of documents to the PDF format. This can be done in several ways, such as dragging an existing PostScript or EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) file onto a desktop "ToPDF" icon, created during setup.

PostScript files can also be sent to Composer in Windows Explorer or, easier still, you can "print" direct to PDF, leaving Composer to generate the intermediate PostScript code as well as the resultant PDF for you.

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A special printer definition enables any Windows application to use Composer, with enhanced integration with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, to allow so-called "intelligent" PDF files to be created. Among the features this adds is the ability to convert headings to bookmarks, cross-references to hyperlinks and comments to PDF sticky notes.

For all documents, fine control over a wide range of range of PDF settings is possible using Composer. For example, you can embed special fonts in the file for use by viewers, and compress embedded images. Multi-page documents can also be optimised for page-at-a-time Web display so that users don't have to download whole documents before viewing them.

However, for the most part there's very little need to change anything in order to produce good looking documents. Instead you simply choose one of the pre-set configurations optimised for ordinary desktop laser printing, commercial reproduction or Web publishing.

These pre-set configurations work well and can be further customised for those with more advanced requirements. Additional custom configurations can also be generated to, for example, attach and e-mail PDF documents automatically, or password protect and encrypt files for security. Plus it's possible to disable printing of the PDF files in client viewers, prevent text and graphics being copied, pages removed or added to and so on.

Performance depends very much on the processor involved and the amount of memory available, but even on quite modest hardware it works well and the documents are indistinguishable from those produced using Adobe Acrobat tools. You don't get the review management and commenting tools available with some of the Acrobat products, but if you just want to create PDF files quickly and easily then ActivePDF Composer could be just the ticket

This low cost alternative to Adobe Acrobat makes the creation of PDF files as easy as printing from a Windows application. Customisable templates make the software simple to use with no need to manually generate intermediate PostScript output. Viewing controls, password protection and encryption are other key features.