I hate worrying about font issues or even formatting issues when I send documents to friends or family. I also prefer writing in the ODT format but unfortunately that leads to compatibility issues. When I am using Ubuntu Linux it’s not a problem to export to pdf format. Many of the programs have it as a standard option but not so in Windows.
It’s easy to open pdf files using Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader no matter what computer you are using, but creating PDF files in Windows used to mean buying Adobe Acrobat. Not anymore, I’ve been using PDF creator for the last year. PDF creator is free and it is open source. It is so easy to use it and make pdf file as easy as printing a file.
PDF creator installs itself as a virtual printer. From any Windows program, just select print and when the list of printers appears, just choose PDF creator and it pull up a screen to specialized the PDF, just hit enter and it will make the pdf for you. It’s cool because whatever your program is showing that is what you get. It’s a great tool that you need to be using.
PDFs are the way to go – just about every machine can now read them – and see what you wrote as you wrote it. This is particularly important for forms or pitches.
I convert almost every document I send out into PDF. With different versions of applications and operating systems, it just makes life easier when everyone sees the same thing.
PDF format is my favorite also. It preserves the fonts (and I like using neat fonts) and inserted images and everyone can see it the same way I created it.