PDF Research Links... Solutions Training Services Specialty General

Troubleshooting and Solutions... Accessing Adobe's Acrobat Product Information Finding Other Troubleshooting Resources Solving PDF Printing Problems Working with Fonts Deciphering Postscript Errors

1. Accessing Adobe's Acrobat Product Information

Adobe's Acrobat Home Page - This is Adobe's home page for access to current on-line information regarding the Acrobat suite of programs, their requirements, and their capabilities.

2. Finding Other Troubleshooting Resources

Acrobat Troubleshooting - This is Adobe's top issues listing of troubleshooting tips and tricks for the full range of Acrobat products. Acrobat Reader Troubleshooting FAQs - This is Adobe's complete listing of available FAQs for troubleshooting the most common Reader problems. Instructions for receiving these sheets via, internet, fax, or BBS are also provided. AcroBuddies - A fellowship of Acrobat users and developers, offering a "clicklist" of over 150 people who are all willing to help each other directly through e-mail. A completely free service, requiring only sign-up. Adobe's Acrobat Links A listing of Adobe Acrobat Links as summarized by Gordon Kent in his book Internet Publishing with Acrobat. Blueworld Acrobat Troubleshooting FAQs- This is an interactive listing of available FAQs for troubleshooting the most common Acrobat problems. INFOCON AMERICA This company takes a whole installation view of PDF publishing solutions. It represents products like Pitstop™, Infolink™, and EasyView™, and provides website, training and installation support through its partner company relationships. PDF-L Forum Archives Sometimes the best answer for a particular problem can be found by searching the hypermail archives of user Forums. The search engine at this site helped me solve a specific (but company-wide) problem in no time flat. Pre-Press User Forum Most PDF User Forums deal primarily with IT (Information Technology) issues. However, for those interested primarily in pre-press issues, subscribe to the Infomania Pre-Press User Forum. Seybold Seminar's PDF Bug List This is an informal listing of Acrobat bugs discovered by users of the program's components - Distiller, Exchange, etc. Many of the bug listers have provided workarounds to the problems they have uncovered. Xplor International A useful site for finding the answers to mostly EDS (Electronic Document Systems) questions - many related to Capture issues - is the Bulletin Board at Xplor International.

3. Solving PDF Printing Problems

Getting Postscript errors when you print your PDF files? It probably has something to do with the version of PSPrinter that was used to create the postscript file and the Printer Driver you are selecting when you set up your pages. According to a PostScript Class from Adobe Systems: LaserWriter 8.3.1 or 8.5.1 and PSPrinter 8.3.1 or 8.5.1 are specifically engineered for PostScript Level 2 printers. Older printers that may have Level 1 capability only often balk with these drivers, and must use the older LaserWriter driver, or the print driver specific to that device in order to process jobs correctly. In general, it is a good idea to specify Postscript Level 1 when creating Postscript files. This should pre-empt users having a problem when printing the files. If you are having a problem with someone else's PDF file that will open but not print, try re-outputting it to Postscript (specify Level 1) and re-distilling. Either downloading the Postscript file to your printer or printing the PDF from Reader should work (see our Postscript Utility... how-to for more on this technique).

4. Working with Fonts

Questions about fonts invariably arise when working with PDF files. There "appears" to be a difference between working with Truetype fonts and working with Type 1 fonts. Then there is the evolving OpenType font technology that is being jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft. For now (8/98), here is the latest on PDF font support, from Dov Isaacs, Director of Technology Analysis, Printing & Systems Division,Adobe Systems Inc. (Macintosh users, please note the bolded type): "All Adobe PostScript implementations of recent years provide FULL NATIVE SUPPORT for TrueType fonts. Adobe drivers download TrueType fonts as "Type 42" fonts. These are not "converted to Type 1" fonts, but all the TrueType font information in a PostScript "wrapper." Adobe not only licensed the full, official TrueType rasterizer, but also fixed bugs and performance problems found in the code. There is absolutely no quality or performance loss engendered in using TrueType with Adobe PostScript imaging software. Similarly, Adobe Acrobat fully supports TrueType as Type 42. "Assuming that you have a well-crafted TrueType font from a reliable font foundry, there is no technical reason why TrueType fonts should not be used in PostScript and PDF workflows! OpenType is effectively a repackaging of both TrueType and Type 1 formats into a common packaging scheme for common handling by operating systems, drivers, and applications with more rational functionality for applications. "Having said that, I would emphasize the 'well-crafted TrueType font' that I mentioned above. I will extend that to "well-crafted Type 1 font." One reason that TrueType has gotten a bum rap amongst publishing professionals is due to older imagesetters didn't directly support TrueType as Type 42. Most such early Adobe PostScript Level 2 have upgrades that do support Type 42. "However, we believe the biggest problem is that there are very many TrueType fonts 'floating around' out there as freeware, shareware, or pirated-ware that are either poorly crafted or n-th generation conversions (via Fontographer or other conversion means) of Type 1 fonts -- each conversion losing some of the original design subtleties. By the way, poor conversions of TrueType fonts to Type 1 show similar quality degradation. "Problems do occur when both TrueType and Type 1 fonts with the same NAME are installed on a single system. The symptoms you report above are very real and do occur. This is generally a problem on the Macintosh due to Apple's insistence on shipping TrueType versions of Courier, Times, Helvetica, Palatino, and Symbol. Anyone using Adobe PostScript printing on a Macintosh should install ATM (Adobe Type Manager) with the Type 1 versions of these fonts after having deleted the TrueType font suitcases of TrueType Courier, Times, Helvetica, Palatino, and Symbol. "This needs to be done on any new Macintosh or after ANY MacOS upgrade! Note that ATM and base fonts ship with all Adobe PostScript 3 printers these days." All this having been said, the rule of thumb that seems to work best is to use Type 1 whenever possible. If the file you are converting has TrueType and no Postscript or EPS imports, then PDFWriter conversion is a viable option (this holds true for most Microsoft Office application documents). Otherwise, convert files to PDF by making Postscript intermediates and using Acrobat Distiller.

5. Deciphering Postscript Errors

Part of the beauty of PDF is that you can see problems in your source files and can get some General Information on your files (under File). However, sometimes getting from Postscript to PDF can lead to problems that greet you with a postscript error dialog box filled with programmer's shorthand. To interpret this shorthand, go to the Quite Software About Postscript Errors webpage. Or you can go to Imation Publishing Software's webpages for Postscript Error Troubleshooting.which adds program specific error message descriptions. Return to PDF Research Companion home page. a production of Performance Graphics ©1998 The Miller De Wulf Corporation