The Fearless Blogger

I found a handy (and free) little utility via TUAW (that’s “The Unofficial Apple Weblog” for those who may not be familiar) today that I thought was worth sharing with you guys.

My Quandary
I wanted to print out the free meal coupons KFC offered through Oprah’s website.  Unfortunately, my printer is out of ink and coupons.com does not support Mac’s built in “save as PDF” option to save and email the coupon to my sweetie to print for me (instead it opens and prints straight to your default printer).

The Solution
I figured there had to be a way to set up a virtual printer that would output to a PDF file and a quick Google search pointed me to the TUAW post about CUPS-PDF by codepoetry.

The Skinny
As described by codepoetry:

CUPS-PDF is a backend module for CUPS (Mac OS X’s printing system) by Volker C. Behr that, rather than printing to a device, prints straight to PDF files.

Why use this rather than a simple “Save as PDF” in the print dialog?

- Pressing return is faster.
- Batch-print through the writer to convert documents to PDF.

More Simply Stated: For anyone who uses the “save as PDF” option often, you may have noticed that it takes a few extra clicks above the usual “command-p“.    Furthermore, (at least before Leopard) this is not something “apple scriptable” – so there isn’t an easy alternative (not sure if that’s changed with Leopard’s release since, frankly, as it wouldn’t have addressed my particular issue since the “save as PDF” wasn’t even an option for this specific site – so I didn’t really dig further).

First Impressions
Installation was easy (you do need to provide your admin password) and it worked exactly as described.

I did notice a comment on one of the sites that this method creates pdfs that are significantly larger in file size than the usual “save as” – a consideration if you plan to use the feature frequently and/or need to upload or e-mail the resulting files.

At the End of the Day
You need to install coupons.com’s app to print their coupons to begin with.  Unfortunately, even though CUPS-PDF solved my initial problem, the coupons.com app wouldn’t install, so I still wasn’t able to print my KFC coupon!

Still, it pointed me towards a handy utility – so I figured I’d share it so at least one of us could benefit!!

(For those wondering why a vegetarian would even care about a free chicken dinner – I have to confess that KFC’s coleslaw is one of my favorite side dishes. I’ve actually been know to swing by KFC after buying Morning Star veggie chicken wings to get my fix!  As for the chicken – I planned to save that for my meat-eating beau!)

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

similar posts you might enjoy

• I Know Which Launch Party I’d Rather Go To!
• FINALLY! Starbucks says: There’s an app for that.
• Play Games, Save Kitties (and puppies too!)
• MacHeist: Strain Your Brain for Free Software