PDF is dead, long live XPS

Install the Windows Presentation Foundation, it's worth it. You will find yourself with a new printer, Microsoft XPS Document Writer. This does exactly what a PDF printer does, allowing you to produce an XPS file from anything that can use a printer.

What the hell is an XPS file? Effectively it's a PDF. Windows will open it in Internet Explorer similar to the way it handles PDFs, except that it loads faster and it doesn't pester you to install crap you don't want at times that don't suit.

More importantly,

  • You don't have to buy anything to get the PDF printer driver
  • There's extensive dotnet support for generating XPS programmatically
  • You don't have to buy the dotnet support

If you have Windows Update in fully automatic mode you may find this is already installed. Check your printers, if you have a printer called Microsoft XPS Document Writer then you already have both viewer and printer driver. Otherwise install the WPF which you can find using Windows Update. Depending on what you have installed on your system it may be listed as an optional update.

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