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n42
Known Participant
January 20, 2009
Question

FM8: Placed PDFs are sporadically changed to an image (WIN DIB) in PostScript

  • January 20, 2009
  • 16 replies
  • 3827 views
FM8: Placed PDFs are sporadically changed to an image (WIN DIB) in PostScript

Symptoms:
Placed PDF has same appearance in PostScript as in FM application.
Transparent PDF appears on a white background and not page background.
Colour changed.
Appearance is generally rasterized

Background:
We use FrameMaker for paginating directories.
Output in PostScript (+100.000 pages/year).

Why WIN DIB?
Within the affected PostScript we found these lines where actually an EPS has to be:

%%BeginDocument: Pscript_Win_PassThrough
gsave
803 3492 translate 0.0 rotate -803 -3492 translate
%%EndDocument
Pscript_WinNT_Compat dup /suspend get exec
Pscript_WinNT_Incr dup /resume get exec
Pscript_WinNT_Incr begin
%%BeginResource: file Pscript_Win_Dib_L2 5.0 0

/DeviceRGB dup setcolorspace /colspABC exch def
: 1039 165 24 0 1040 165 283 3410 F F 3 [ 0 0 0 ] F
X
doNimage
JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$JcC<$eGk+"JcC<$JcC<$

lots of binary

s3BO%cJSZIhuD!Zs3BO%cJSZIhu<~> Z
; 30000 VM?
Pscript_WinNT_Compat begin /$x mysetup def end
Pscript_WinNT_Incr dup /suspend get exec
Pscript_WinNT_Compat dup /initialize get exec
%%BeginDocument: Pscript_Win_PassThrough
grestore
;
%%EndDocument

Since we use FM8:
With FM6 that kind of error never occurred.
We switched from FM6 to FM8 in December 2008.
In the last 10.000 pages (FM8) we found 12 cases.

Unfortunately we cant reproduce these errors.
In some way it reminds us of the PDF text drop-out error.
At that time we found %%BeginResource: file Pscript_T3Hdr 5.0 0 as an indicator.
Now whenever an error occurs we found this line:
%%BeginResource: file Pscript_Win_Dib_L2 5.0 0

System: Win XP SP3

Any ideas?
Thanks
Norbert
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    16 replies

    Show previous replies
    N
    n42Author
    Known Participant
    January 21, 2009
    All graphics are imported by reference.
    There are no OLE Objects in our documents.
    The line %%BBeginResource: file Pscript_Win_Dib_L2 5.0 0 comes from the printer driver (invoked by FrameMaker) but never from the imported graphic.

    BTW
    We had a very special case:
    One graphic is placed on a page at different positions.
    Only one of these positions was erroneous!
    You dont believe that all positions were referenced. wont you.

    Thanks
    Norbert
    Arnis Gubins
    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    January 21, 2009
    Norbert,

    Have you applied the Microsoft Hotfix for the PDF drop out issue in
    all locations?

    It sounds like there's something going wonky in the MS GDI used for
    creating the output or there may be something corrupt on that
    particular, if it can't be reproduced on other installations. Is the
    error consistently repeatable (or just random) on the one
    installation?

    Are you doing a "Save As PDF" or printing directly to the AdobePDF
    printer instance and then distilling the postscript file?
    A
    Art Campbell
    Inspiring
    January 21, 2009
    Norbert,

    The SP3/OLE problem appeared in this and other FM forums almost immediately after the SP3 release.

    I think, given the nature of the error message, I'd poke around the creation process of the original PDFs and see if you can figure out where the Begin Resource note is coming from.

    Another user had a conflict that was resolved recently when the imported PDFs were written to the PostScript 2 spec and were causing problems because the final process that distilled the FM file was set to produce PostScript 3. So that's another possible thing to check, but...

    Art
    N
    n42Author
    Known Participant
    January 21, 2009
    The production is in different locations.
    In all locations FM 8.0p277 is used.

    Placed PDFs are always imported by reference (100%).

    There are SP3 installations in one of our locations only.
    That's the location where the errors take place!
    Im suspicious too.
    Did we overlook an official hint?
    But going back to SP2 in this location actually is not possible.

    Unfortunately we (myself and developer colleagues also have SP3 installations!) cant reproduce the error at all. In this certain location we cant reproduce the error for a specific page in a specific document. It just occurs here and there.

    Emulate everything in different locations would mean a lot of operating expense (e.g. let location A create PS from a document of location B and so on).

    We already eased the explosiveness of this issue after we found out about that certain line: %%BeginResource: file Pscript_Win_Dib_L2 5.0 0 in PostScript.
    Now, every time PostScript is created we let automatically scan it for this line.

    Thanks
    Norbert
    Arnis Gubins
    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    January 20, 2009
    Norbert,

    Have you checked the wayward imported PDF in FM using the Graphics >
    Object Properties? What does it report as the "facet" used? How are
    you "placing" the PDFs - import by reference or... ?

    Have you tried this on a XP SP2 installation? SP3 broke some aspects
    of OLE, so if you're placing the PDFs as objects instead of importing
    by reference, then I would be suspicious of this.
    A
    Anonymous
    January 20, 2009
    With respect to your comment about the "PDF text drop-out error", have you updated your system with the MS/Adobe fix:

    http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b5ba92/2
    A
    Anonymous
    January 20, 2009
    Norbert, which specific version, the "pxxx" numbers from Help > About
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