Editor's note: As a service to its community, PDFzone is publishing a series of articles on free PDF-generation software tools and Web services that take a submitted Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format file and return a PDF of the file. In an effort to be all-inclusive, we invite vendors and end users alike to send us links to where we can download their favorites . No shareware, please.

In this installment of 10 Free PDF Tools, we examine a third set of free applications, utilities and Web services related to PDF generation. Always remember that these tools are free--don't forget the old cliche that you get what you pay for--and that more robust commercial software costs money for a good reason:

1.    pdfTeX: Those who have enjoyed the various and ubiquitous TeX publishing and editing tools over the years will be delighted to port their resultant files to PDF with this software widget. For those who haven’t, here’s a TeX FAQ.

2.    Elfima Notepad: Free for personal use, this piece of software is the number-one item "in the know" PDFzone site users have requested we share with the rest of the community in this series on free PDF utilities--high praise, indeed.

3.    PDF Creator: Almost as many people recommended this as Elfima notepad, and most of the recommendations were followed with a statement such as "I use only this, and there have been no problems so far."

4.    eZ publish: This open source content management system is free; however, eZ would like you to fork over the bucks to upgrade to the $499 boxed Pro commercial version. There's a lot more than PDF generation for free in this package.

5.    iText: A robust little software tool for generating PDFs on the fly that is not for the technically faint of heart. But the site's got a lot of helpful material and links to other users and educators, so if you feel like rolling up your sleeves, popping open the hood, and getting to work.

6.    Paperless Printer: Free for personal and nonprofit use, this software requires purchase for commercial or government use.

7.    WinPDF: Automatic conversion, batch processing, 128-biut encryption, and many more features are included in this little printer driver utility.

8.    PDF Machine White: Australian developer Broadgun Software recently released a feature-limited version of its $49 commercial application, PDF Machine.

9.    Volutive: This utility specializes in creating PDFs of reports, delivery notices, invoices, packing lists, etc. from databases.

10.  Text to PDF Converter: Mac-based utility that creates searchable PDFs with drag-and-drop ease.

For a full link of PDF conversion products--including those found in this story--please visit the PDFzone Buyer's Guide.