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Hello All,
What about an open source PDF Printer Driver like PDF Creator.
Start it up from the USB Drive and then generate PDFs till the cows come home.
I'm pretty sure it's a little more complicated. Is it possible? Can it just run in the background without being installed on the local machine?
Druthers
Because almost all (maybe all) PDF creators aren't free.
PDF Creator, the one the original poster mentioned is free and open source. It is not a PDF editor, it is print driver that has to be installed onto the PC, then to create a PDF from any existing document, you have to "print" it with PDF Creator set as the printer.
To the original poster:
As PDF Creator is a print driver, it must be installed onto the pc and therefore cannot be made portable as far as i know
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I don't believe in signatures
I was looking at this the other day and it is not possible because it installs as a print driver.
Edit: Oops, didn't notice your post above 
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Ryan McCue.
Blog.
So all that Airbus-delay trouble over here in Europe is because of YOU!
Simeon.
The following portable apps allow you to export to PDF:
From this site:
OpenOffice (you can make documents or drawings)
From PortableFreeWare.com
IrfanView
X-Inkscape
Scribus
and (if you can find it) FastStone Capture 5.3
With just OpenOffice and FastStone Capture, I can make a PDF out of almost anything I need to!
P.S. PortableFreeware.com also has a utility called Portable PDFTKBuilder, that allows you to combine, split, watermark, or rotate existing PDF docs.
Solanus, The East Wind
You should try TomahawkPDF... http://www.nativewinds.montana.com/
It is freeware and there is also a paid version (Tomahawk Gold)
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I have no signature again... 
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
Hi, I use to create pdf document :
http://www.highdots.com/rtf-convertor/
Is not exactly a pdf creator, but can convert many file into.pdf format and is all portable !
I definitely think it is possible.
At the moment I am using Ghost Script and a few other tools to manage printing to a PDF file on my laptop from a Terminal Server session (which isn't possible to do using PDF Creator, Primo PDF etc. I have tried and failed). I learned this trick from expdf.blogspot.com (a manual is available on the site).
I think, using the same tools and writing a batch or a VBS script to initiate printing, it will be fully portable. Maybe some other tools may be necessary? Would like tips and/or help to try to complete it...
/dlarson
I know its a virtual printer driver, but the little program DoPDf is the closest I've come to it and the results (from work) are as good as the full Acrobat version I have at home.
However it does not create hyperlinks, but good for posting word files in a safer 'no fiddling with my work pal' format.
Its Vista compatible and its is actually free, no nags, no watermarks, no costs. Brilliant on the whole.
Archie
The no cattle droppings approach to reality
Problem is this is not portable.
Just use OpenOffice. Works fine, and it's already portable and on this site.
Can it convert a web page that I'm viewing in Firefox to a PDF?
"File" "Open" "www.whateverwebpage .com/mystuff.html" then convert to PDF. Or https://www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp
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"Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between the arms, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river." -- Cyril Connolly
openoffice cant open snp files (which is the bane of my existance) so this solution does not work for me.
I don't know of ANY PDF creators that support SNP directly. So you need to use a print driver PDF creator. Which, by its nature, is not portable.
Muchas gracias!!!!
I wrote this small application which uses OpenOffice portable to create PDF's from most of the OO readable formats, including images. If you like, you can use it. It is free to use and the source code is included.
http://mohansandesh.blogspot.com/2008/05/pdf-creator-based-on-openoffice...
Your website is blocked I can't download anything.
This might be little off track, but I carry this freeware program around on my USB drive. TopOCR can import txt, unicode txt and rtf. Also it can do a ocr scan from a photo taken from your camera - great for field use. Once the file is imported into the program you can add drawing objects, pictures etc. The main part of the program looks like a wordprocessor. It can save in the same formats that it uses for importing plus pdf & html. I used uniextract to unpack the files then upx to compress giving me a no-install package of about 6.5mb. I have not checked to see what registry entries that it leaves because I only use it on my own portable devices. The website is here http://www.topocr.com/
I realise this is a very old subject, but why are pdf creators limited to print drivers?
I used have a download program that had a small window that floated a drop point. You wanted a page/file downloaded you'd just drag it to the drop point.
Is there any reason this could not be created for a pdf creator? This would allow a portable program that effectively just converts/encapsulates rather than prints. I can see that it would need a few minutes to convert/encapsulate the file but surely that would be feasable.
Sigh, I wish I was up to programming this but I can barely program ``Hello world''
I don't know of a program that does this.
Probably because it's the only way to ensure standard output from all applications. If you convert documents from their source format then you'd have to take into account every possible document type ever, that's a little impractical. However, printing documents is universal so you can always be assured of consistent output data to be converted.
Basically, it's the easiest way to ensure that any application can communicate with the PDF Printer software. I don't really know for sure but that's just my guess.
It is unfortunately not so simple to convert *anything* into pdf.
If you want convert html page into pdf, well thats one thing, html is one way of describing a page, pdf other, widely known formats, conversion between those is not a problem.
Open office, and also the 7-pdf maker, use the ability of one part of the open office, simply to open and read, thus be able to analyze, certain most common pictures as jpg or bmp, document formats as doc etc.
It definitely can not convert any file into pdf, since it needs at least to be able to open them to see what is inside and what has to be converted.
Example: I have a binary file called interface.pcbdoc
this is a graphic file, but it contains also other things. But for pdf only the graphic part would be essential just to make a bitmap picture of it and transform it into pdf format.
But neither open office, nor the 7-pdf maker will be able to recognise what is inside the file, since this is proprietary and can be opened only with very expensive special software software. So if the pdf creating programm can not see if this is at least any graphic parts in it or what, how on the earth should it find out what to do with the file and how to convert it.
On the other hand, when I have the expensive special software (would be Altium Designer Layout Software in this case) and the file is open, I can see the graphic part of the information on my screen.
From now it is not so difficult to print it , since printers do simply place the displayed information to paper or similar. This is more basic function implemented into the operating system. Operating system like windows or linux etc are able to take graphical information and send it to a printer, they do it simply so. If there is some fake printer at the other end and it is called pdf creating what ever, then it will take the info and do someting with it. So the only universal useful interface is the printing interface in such case.
After all, one can also just make print screen and this is just the copy of the visual information and this can be printed and since pure graphical info an nothing else, it can be converted to pdf by open office or similar.
Can you see now the need for printer or not?
But I know I am not very good in explaining complex things simply, sometimes Jimbo will write a lecture abt it... 
A way to by-pass the problem is to install Portable-VirtualBox (http://www.vbox.me/) on your USB device and create a virtual machine in which you install PDF Creator.
run windows within windows and need 2 liscenses for windows too. not very practical in a financial sense.
You need administrative rights - which you don't have on the physical machine.
So, you run a portable virtual machine, which you do have rights on.
Thus you can use the software you need, on hardware which isn't yours.
I think it's possible to make an application that install a printer when running and uninstall it when close. That would be portable and let the system unchanged.
installing drivers is allowed only for admin rights users and not for normal users. So there is no point in making it portable as you can use it only on your home computer.
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