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Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

Posts

Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#1

Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

Dominic Greco

>Hi everyone,

Did you ever get so much great information here at Wood Central that you want to save it? But you want to save it JUST the way you saw it here? Something to carry out into your shop and refer to as you work? Or maybe you just want to save an entire thread to your computer (discussion) so that you can have an archive of all that was imparted to you during your "search for woodworking knowledge"?

If so, I just thought I'd pass this simple "archiving" tip along to you all.

First off, you need a program that will allow you to write to a PDF. While there are many out there, the one I use is a free ware program called PDF995. Using this link, you can download and use for free. This file will add a PDF995 Virtual Printer. Simply print to this "Printer" and it will create a PDF file.

Secondly, set your forum preferences Display Style to "Guestbook", and Sort Order to "Oldest First". This way, it will display and print out your question first, and all the replies you've gotten after.

After you've successfully completed the steps above, browse to the discussion thread you want to save and bring it up. Then use your browswer's PRINT command to print to the PDF995 Printer.

The discussion thread will print just as you see it on the screen. The nice thing is that you can now save this PDF file to your own Woodworking Wisdom directory.

And,....that's it!

See ya around,

Dominic

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#2

Bart Goldberg

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

Bart Goldberg

>Dom,

Long time no speak to - Hope all is well with you.

A great piece of info. If I may add a bit here.

I've used PDF995 and it works fine. However, there is a free

PDF writer that does not include any annoying pop-ups

that is part of the GNU General Public License and has no pop-ups - just google PDFCreator.

Bart

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#3

Cool....but can a fella post that pdf format too?

SanMan

>

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#4

I tried it, I like it, I'll keep it. Thank-you!

mdclor

>

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#5

Ellis Walentine

Neat one, Dominic.

Ellis Walentine

>I wonder how difficult it would be to put a simple "print this thread" command into the perlscripts somewhere.

Hmm. Into the suggestion box it goes. Thanks.

Ellis

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#6

But I print to PDF all the time. *LINK*

Craig Daymon

>Hey Dom,

Thanks for the sort tips. That's a real help. I'll set it up right away.

Not running Windows, I forget how hard it is for you to generate PDFs. Linux doesn't have such limitations. ;-)

There is another free program that works very well with Windows for creating PDFs from any program called, PDFCreator. Probably works the same way as your current program, inserting a printer driver that prints to PDF, so you just select that driver instead of your standard printer. The link below offers PDFCreator as well as several other programs that might be useful to Windows users. It's a site that has put together a CD of open source Windows programs to try to interest Windows users in open source software. Some really cool stuff and it's all free. Desktop publishing, 3D ray tracing/modelling/animation, vector graphics, office suite, outstanding screen savers, and more.

(Sorry for rambling on, but it is worth a look.)

-Craig

P.S. See you at Bucks next Monday?


The Open CD

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#7

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

Robert Hutchins

>Hi Dominic!

Great suggestion!

I'm a little slow on these things; so pardon me for demonstrating my ignorance, but how do you make all the posts in a thread display simultaneously? Suppose, for instance, I wanted to save all the replies in a thread I started a few days ago asking about cordless drills. Is there a way to open my post and have all the responses open, too, so that I can 'print' them all to a PDF file?

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#8

Ellis Walentine

Set your preferences to Guestbook style

Ellis Walentine

>

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#9

Very Good! Works a Charm!

Robert Hutchins

>

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#10

I use CutePDF writer.... *LINK*

Tim Greif - West of Chicago

>I've also used pdf995 as you indicated, but I dislike the nag screen popups and watermark brands that some freebies put on the pdf. Look for CutePDF Writer. It creates prints exactly like Adobe, it's free and there's no popups or watermarks. I've been using it for a few years now.


CutePDF Writer

Re: Tip: Archiving your WC aquired knowledge

#11

Thanks Dominic, Bart, and Craig. Works great!

Don in Northern Arizona

>Thank you Dominic for the idea and the display style and sort order. Now I can save threads and keep the pics even if posters take them down. Thank you Bart and Craig for reminding me about PDF Creator. I use Open Office and am a big fan of GNU.

Don

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