KDE To the Rescue
There is a general strike at my local sorting office, so post is not getting through reliably. As a result to exchange documents with people my Dad is having to scan them in as images and email them (before you mention OCR, I've tried, it just doesn't work well enough). The documents involved span multiple pages, so to avoid having to deal with lots and lots of image files we decided to combine the images for each document into a single pdf file.
I asked various people about the easiest way to take groups of images and turn them into pdfs. Most people suggested using openoffice, inserting each image individually, and then exporting to PDF. I guess this isn't too bad, there are only about 50 images spread across 7 documents or so. When I asked about automation some people suggested writing OOo macros.
Fortunately, KDE provides a far easier and quicker way. All you have to do is create an icon on the desktop which invokes the following command:
kprinter -P "Print to File (PDF)" %U
And then when you want to turn some images into a pdf you just select them and drag them onto the icon. Give the output file a name, click print, and you're done.
This exemplifies what it is I like about KDE. It is full of programs which contain features you don't need very often, but are incredibly useful when you do need them. The best example of this is DCOP, which allows scripting access to almost every KDE app in existence. Want to display the song currently playing in amarok in your display name in Kopete? No problem. Want to make a shortcut to minimise all open browser windows? No problem. Want to turn a bunch of images into a PDF file quickly and easily? No Problem at all.