RE: Distiller Trivia (WAS RE: Frame 6 files only distilling in Black and White - help!)

["Richard Combs" <richard.combs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Art Campbell [mailto:campbell@sandmail.sandburst.com] wrote:
 
> And, what, pray tell, makes you think that line breaks and related 
> formatting would change when a .pdf is printed on _any_ kind of 
> printer? It's called a _portable_ format because it can travel.

They won't, and I never suggested they would. What makes _you_ think they'll change if you use the Distiller printer instance instead of your physical printer instance? You had replied to Dov: 

> the simple formatting and line breaks are more
> critical to me than the issues you raise. 

And I responded that it's not an issue. 
 
> My point was that the PostScript needs to be the same for us to
> ensure that what we .pdf matches what we print. I'm talking about
> pre-distillation; PostScript.
> 
> Dov's point was that generating PostScript from other than the
> Distiller instance is sometimes problematic. He's talking about
> pre-distillation; PostScript.
> 
> And your point on wondering about customer's printers dealing with
> a .pdf, post-distillation is??? 

As Dov pointed out, you're creating PDFs from _device-dependent_ PostScript. That means the _limitations of your preferred printer_ (printable area of page, resolution, color management, etc.) are necessarily imposed on the PDFs you produce. 

Line breaks aren't the issue, either for the PS or the PDF. So why do you think the PostScript needs to be the same? If your printer has a 3/8" unprintable margin, why do you want your PDFs to have that too? If your printer is a monochrome laser, do you insist on no color in your PDFs? 

You're right, Adobe intends for PDF to be a _portable_ document format. But the way to optimize the portability is by creating the PDF as Adobe intended, using _device-independent_ PostScript. If the PostScript is limited to what a _specific physical printer_ can handle, then the PDF created from it inherits those limitations. The output stream can't contain what's removed from the input stream. 

But, hey, if it works for you... ;-)

Richard



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