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Installation Page |
If you are wondering about any of the following are requirements, you should probably read (or re-read) the Doc2pdf Overview. Links to the sofware listed below can be found on the Doc2pdf Download page.
Dedicated Windows machine This means that you need a low-end Windows machine that can be made into a dedicated Doc2pdf robot. Viewers Available for download (free of charge) for most document formats. AFPL Ghostscript for Windows A "free" interpreter for the PostScript (TM) language Doc2pdf Software Software available for free download from this site.
Download and install the Microsoft Office viewers for Word, Powerpoint, and Excel documents. If you are interested in converting Lotus documents you'll also want to download the Verity KeyView for Lotus SmartSuite.
Open "My Computer". Select the "View" - "Folder Options" menu item. In the "Advanced settings" uncheck the box labled "Hide file extions for known file types".
Download and run the self-extracting AFPL Ghostscript installer. The AFPL installer offers a very simple setup tool. The only important bit of information that you need to remember is the installation directory. The default (c:\gs ) is usually acceptable.
The following instructions are for Windows 98, but they something very similar should work on other versions of Window.** Actually, the Generic Postscript Driver from Adobe works the best. For instructions on how to set this up, please read the FAQ.
- Open the Printers window by selecting START -> Settings -> Printers.
- In the printers window start the "Add Printer Wizard" by selecting "Add Printer".
- Click "Next".
- Select "Local Printer" and click "Next".
- Select a PostScript printer. I have found that the "HP Color LaserJet 5/5M PS" driver** works really well. Click "Next".
- The port you whant to use with your printer is "FILE:". Select "FILE:" and click "Next".
- Give your printer a name like "Print To File Postscript". Yes, you do want this printer to be used as the default. Select "Yes". Click "Next"
- No, you do not want to print a test page. Select "No" and click "Finish".
Download and run the self-extracting Doc2pdf installation. The installer will not perform any post installation configuration for Doc2pdf. Instead, Doc2pdf will prompt you for setup parameters when it is started.
Doc2pdf requires an email account to which email attachments are sent to be converted. It is highly recommended that this email account be something intuitive like "doc2pdf@yourdomain.com". The email account must have POP3 access, and mail must be able to be sent via SMTP. Before continuing, test the email account by sending and reading couple messages. DO NOT create extra aliases for this email address. Doc2pdf can only handle receiving email at one email address.
When started for the first time, Doc2pdf will display a Doc2pdf Setup dialog that prompts for the following information:
Ghostscript Directory This is the Ghostscript "bin" directory where gswin32.exe is located. If you use the default location it will be c:\gs\gs7.03 Spool Directory This should be the set to the Windows temp directory Mailbox Poll Interval: Number of minutes to wait before checking mailbox for new messages (only applies if a mailbox is set up) Directory Poll Interval: Number of seconds to wait before checking configured directories for new documents (only applies if a directory is set up)
Doc2PDF can be used to search for messages containing documents within a POP3 mail account, or it can be used to convert documents that are placed in a directory on your filesystem (ie can be used with an FTP server or Windows file sharing). Either operation is optional, but in order for Doc2PDF to work, you must set up at least one of these two operations.
The following settings are required to set up mailbox conversion:
Doc2pdf Email Address This is the email address from step 5 that is used to send email to doc2pdf. Incoming POP3 Server The incoming mail server that can be accessed via POP3 to read email Incoming POP3 User The user name used to authenticate to the POP3 server Incoming POP3 Password The password used to authenticate to the POP3 server Outgoing SMTP Server The outgoing mail server used to send email via SMTP The following settings are required to set up directory based conversion:
Directory to find files in This is the directory where Doc2PDF will search for .doc, .xls etc files to convert PDF Output Directory PDF Output Directory: After conversion, the PDF output will be placed here with the same filename (but with .pdf extension)
As explained in the Doc2pdf Overview, Doc2pdf converts documents by viewing and printing to files using Microsoft's own viewers and the AFPL PostScript interpreter. Until a better method can be found, Doc2pdf controls the Microsoft viewers by posting message to the viewer windows. In order to process messages, the focus must not be screwed up. While Doc2pdf is "Working..." DO NOT TOUCH IT or you may lose messages! You may only safely stop or exit Doc2pdf when the status says "Idle" or "Stopped". For more information, read the Doc2pdf Overview.
If things do not work the way that you expect, please read the Frequently Asked Questions document (FAQ). If the FAQ does not help, please email the doc2pdf-devel@lists.sf.net mailing list.