Re: Why is PDFing sometimes quick and sometimes glacial?

[Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Actually, one of the things that CAN and DOES slow down Macintosh
applications is font enumeration. It would appear that when checking
fonts, all the font files and suitcases are opened. In the case of
Distiller, it goes through a fairly extensive font enumeration 
process if it believes that any fonts have changed since the last
time it ran. And if you have Far Eastern language support installed,
it also goes through a CJK CID font initialization process. Trouble
is that the criteria for "fonts have changed" appears to yield quite
a few "false positives." You can see a similar problem elsewhere on
the Macintosh if you have a large number of fonts installed and you 
start up Microsoft Word. It often goes through its extensive caching 
process even though it would appear that no changes have been made
in which fonts are installed or active.

Solution (yes, I know it is a lousy solution if a solution at all) is 
to dramatically reduce the number of fonts installed at any one time.

        - Dov


At 6/13/2002 12:56 PM, Jim Drew wrote:
>At 8:10 AM -0600 6/13/02, Bart Windrum wrote:
>>I've got a 130 page book that sometimes PDFs in 2 minutes and I've had it
>>take as long as 12. How come?
>>
>>Mac OS9.1/Frame 6 latest Adobe driver/createPDF components. Frame memory
>>partition 34MB; Distiller 12MB.
>
>Anything else running on the system at the same time?  That can have a major effect, if your e-mail or web browser or Photoshop are trying to do things while Distiller is running.
>
>Jim


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