Implementation
The application is written in Microsoft Visual Basic and released to the public at no charge. It works with 64-bit and 32-bit Windows versions including Windows 7, internally using mostly 32-bit code. The actual PDF generation is handled by Ghostscript, which is included in the setup packages.
Besides being installed as a virtual printer, PDFCreator can be associated with .ps files to manually convert PostScript to PDF format.
PDFCreator can convert to the following file formats: PDF (including PDF/A (1b) and PDF/X (X-3:2002, X-3:2003 and X-4), PNG, JPEG, SVG, TIFF, PS, EPS, TXT, PSD, PCL, BMP, PCX, RAW. It also allows to digitally sign PDF documents.
Between 2009 and 2012 the installation package included a closed-source browser toolbar that was considered by many users to be malicious software. Although technically an optional component, the opt-out procedure used to be a two-step process (prior to version 1.2.3), which was considered by many to be intentionally confusing. In addition to the spyware activity described below, the toolbar allowed one-click creation of PDFs from the current webpage and included a search tool. As of version 1.2.3, the opt-out procedure only required unchecking one checkbox during the installation process.
Since version 0.8.1 RC9 (2005) PDFCreator supports access to its functionality via an ActiveX interface, allowing any COM enabled application to make use of its functionality.
PDFCreator allows the user to disable printing, copying of text or images and modifying the original document. The user can also choose between two types of passwords, user and owner, to restrict PDF files in several ways. The former is required to open the PDF file, while the latter is necessary in order to change permissions and password. Encryption can be either 40-bit, compatible with Adobe Acrobat 3.0 or 4.0, or 128 bits for Acrobat 5.0 or higher.
Starting with version 0.9.6, there is full support for Windows Vista and version 0.9.7 provides support for Windows 7.
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