Can't generate PDF

[_te-au-si_]

I get the following message which relates to my TOC and other cross references/links. I generated the file using Framemaker 8.



PDF/A Compliance Report

1. Content

[Violation] The F key in the Annot dictionary is missing or has an invalid value.
Page 3, Occurrences: 34
Page 4, Occurrences: 27
Page 266, Occurrences: 3
Page 268, Occurrences: 1

Violations: The total found in this section was 65.

2. Summary

Warnings: The total found in this document was 0.
Violations: The total found in this document was 65.

This document does not pass PDF/A-1b:2005 compliance checks.



%%[ Warning: Did not pass PDF/A compliance tests. No PDF file produced. ] %%

Another message says:
This problem can occur when a document that was created using a release of FrameMaker earlier than 6.0 has not been optimized for PDF file size.

But this file was created about a month ago in Framemaker 8.

Any help appreciated,

Simon

[_te-au-si_]

This seems to be something to do with the option I chose when saving the file as a PDF.

Using the Save As option, then choosing the RGB option in the settings, the file size is good (10MB), the images are OK, but the links seem to cause a problem.

Although I was told to use Distiller to create the PDF the file size ends up being huge (200+MB).

Is there a way I can reduce the file size and keep the images OK...

If there are any tutorials on this I'd appreciate it.

[_Kenneth_Benson_]

> Is there a way I can reduce the file size and keep the images OK...

In Distiller, Settings > Edit Adobe PDF Settings. Under the Images tab,
try reducing the downsample numbers. Be aware, though, that image
quality and file size exist in an inverse proportion: more quality =
bigger file, less quality = smaller file. If you have a lot of images in
your PDF, you're going to have a big PDF. You can probably tweak the
numbers until you find tolerable quality and tolerable size, but you're
going to have to give something up.

If the PDF you were getting with Save As PDF was smaller, it's probably
because Save As was using a lower-quality job options file (PDF
settings) and Distiller was using a higher-quality job options file. If
the Save As PDF was decent quality, try using the same job options file
in Distiller.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

[_te-au-si_]

Thanks for your reply to my garbled message...!

Despite producing PDFs of various sizes, I've never produced one whose images are as good as in the source file (ignoring the file size for now). The images are alwasy slightly fuzzy. I'd like to produce a "perfect" looking PDF, and then work on the file size from there.

How do I make the PDF have the same quality of images as the sources? I seem to be missing something here...

As users have the PDF on screen as they follow the instructions in the software, the quality of the images is something they can't ignore.

[_Kenneth_Benson_]

Your images are color screencaps? Try using Zip compression instead of
JPEG (in Distiller), and set it to something higher than the original
resolution. Obviously, your screencaps themselves should be saved as
something other than JPEG (TIFF, probably).

There's a whole science to screencaps, and I'm not an expert, but I
believe you're best off if you can keep them at original resolution and
size, or multiples of original resolution and/or size. And if you're
producing them for display (not for print), keep them in RGB.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

[Art Campbell]

The quality of the PDF is controlled by what job option you select.
The default, Standard, is probably what you're using.

Go into the PDF printer's Properties page and either select the High Quality Printer or Press Quality job option, OR edit your Standard setting to turn off Image Downsampling and compression. Save your changes.

Art

[_te-au-si_]

Thanks Kenneth,

They are screen caps, I've saved them as PNGs without changing them. I think the source images are OK. I can see why you say there's a science to this.

I've tried lots of options, including switching off compression, but haven't found the "killer" option that makes the images look perfect...

Any other tips appreciated...

[_Kenneth_Benson_]

In Acrobat, play around with the settings in Preferences > Page Display.
In particular, try turning off "Smooth images", but I'd would want to
play around with custom resolution. I'd also make sure I was viewing at
100%. Your killer solution may lie in making Acrobat show it to you the
right way, not much of a solution, I know...

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

[_te-au-si_]

... and thanks Art,

I've tried playing with the settings as you suggest, frustratingly, despite everyone's generous advice, I'm not getting the images as clear as the originals... in fact, I'm not noticing my change at all, which is why I assume I'm missing something.

I'm pretty sure that the images are OK as I work with graphics people here, no-one really knows about Framemaker, and Distiller, so I think the solution would be there somewhere.

Was hoping Framemaker would offer some simple solution to this but looks like I might have to avoid PDF altogether and go for some sort of HTML file.

Frustrated but grateful for everyone's help!

Simon

[_Kenneth_Benson_]

I've been through something similar (though not with screencaps) so if
you want to send me a sample file, with graphics and a PDF that looks
fuzzy, I'd be happy to try and figure out why. kbenson at pegtype dot com

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

[_Ian_Hawkins_]

The problem with fuzzy screen caps in PDF is usually more a function of
monitor technology and Acrobat than FrameMaker. I'll see if I can explain.

Suppose you have a screen cap that is 200 pixels wide, 100 pixels high.
To get this to display properly on a monitor, you want each one of those
pixels to correspond exactly to a physical pixel on the monitor. If they
don't match, then Acrobat has to interpolate, which leads to loss of
quality.

So as you zoom in and out using Acrobat, you are changing the mapping
between image pixels and monitor pixels. For any given image in a PDF,
there is only one perfect Acrobat zoom level.

You have control over the size of your image in the PDF, but you have no
control over how users view it in Adobe Reader. The best you can do is
try to lead your users to an optimal zoom level. This is imperfect at best.

Try this:

1. Create an empty FrameMaker document

2. Import a single screen cap. Set the DPI to custom, 96 DPI.

3. Create a PDF.

4. Open in Acrobat, and view at 100% zoom (what Adobe calls "Actual
size"). How does it look?

If it is still fuzzy, open your Acrobat preferences (CTRL+k). Open Page
Display, or Display Options, or something like that (it seems to move
around in different version of Acrobat, and all I have in front of me is
version 6). Somewhere, there should be a display resolution option. If
you want a screen capture to be perfect in Adobe Reader or Acrobat, then
you should import images at that resolution, then display the PDF at
100%. On Windows, the default system setting is 96 DPI, but users can
change that.

You have no way of controlling how your users have set up their systems,
so you have no way to ensure that they can find the proper zoom level.
HTML works differently. Images are supposed to display at 100%, where
every pixel in the image corresponds to a single pixel in the display.

HTH,
Ian

[Art Campbell]

Simon,
What version of Distiller are you using?
And which Job Option are you selecting?

Art

[_te-au-si_]

Ian, halleluyah!

For some reason the default system setting had changed to 110dpi (even thought I'm the first person to use Acrobat on this machine and I've never touched the setting). I changed it to 96dpi and it now looks perfect - I suspected I was missing something simple!

So I can't control whether other people are viewing it at 96dpi?

Thanks Kenneth and Art too, despite my frustration, this has been a great learning experience.

Simon