RTFM: files

At present, files can only be uploaded by the webmaster, who should be contacted by email.

Documents and PDF files

Any documents which need to be made accessible for downloading by web site visitors should almost always be in PDF format. This is a file-type which can be read on any computer using a freely available reader, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. Files saved in Microsoft Word .doc format are unsuitable for general distribution for several reasons. Firstly, Word files require the use of costly software if they are to be read successfully by anyone using a computer other than one running Microsoft Windows. Secondly, even when both users (the creator of the file and the reader) are using Word there may be discrepencies in their set-ups—or they may be using different versions—either of which may mean that each is not seeing exactly the same thing.

Similar circumstances apply with other software, such as Excel and the other Microsoft Office components. It is for these reasons that a truely robust method of publishing documents should be used, and in most circumstances when the document is not required to be edited by the recieving user, PDF is the most reliable and preferred vehicle.

Creating PDF files

Some computer systems are able to save documents to PDF in a similar way to printing, and just as easily. For other systems, creating PDFs requires software to do so, the most popular being Adobe Acrobat. Microsoft Word 2007 (in development at this of writing) will be able to save documents directly into PDF format.

Whichever method is used to create PDF documents, the process is relatively simple. However, one caveat is that not all systems are set up to embed the fonts in the document and this is a requirement if any other than the most common fonts are used. The solution is to check the settings when creating the PDF and choose the option to embed the required fonts.