PDF problem: colors and file sizes

["Thomas Michanek" <thomas.michanek@xxxxxx>]

We have 3 different systems:
A) Windows 2000 SP1, FM+SGML 5.5.6, updated PSCRIPT driver
B) Windows NT 4 SP5, FM+SGML 5.5.6, AdobePS 5.1.2 driver
C) Windows NT 4 SP5, FM+SGML 5.5.0, AdobePS 5.1.1 driver
All systems have the same version of Acrobat 4.05a.

We print an FM document with color screendumps to PS file
using the Acrobat Distiller printer, with Acrobat Data turned on.
We manually distill the PS file with downsampling set to 72 dpi
and Automatic compression.
The on-screen PDF results are as follows on the 3 systems:

A) Clear, crisp screendumps in color
B) Muddy, very low-res screendumps in black-and-white
C) No PDF created, due to a know bug in AdobePS 5.1.1
 
A and C are as expected. The only work-around for C,
without updating the driver, is to use a physical color
printer when producing the PS file.
The problem is with system B. We found out that if we
go to the printer Properties for the Acrobat Distiller
printer (using FM), we have to manually change it to Color.

Why doesn't this happen by default when the Acrobat Distiller
printer is created? Is the reason that we updated the AdobePS
driver on system B from 5.1.1 using the Universal Installer 1.0.2?
Do we manually have to check the Color setting each time?

Another thing is the size of the intermediate PS files.
They are much larger on system A using the Acrobat Distiller printer
(17 MB), compared to system B (4.5 MB) and compared to if we use a
physical color printer on system C (2.5 MB).
(The resulting PDF files are roughly the same size.)
Any ideas why we get so large files on system A?


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Thomas Michanek, Technical Writer
IAR Systems AB, Sweden: http://www.iar.com
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@iar.se
Tel: +46 18 167800, Fax: +46 18 167838
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