FM 2020: Do I have to switch to the Adobe PDF printer when I create the PDF via Distiller?

Report · Mar 24, 2022

Hi,

A few days ago I created a PDF via Distiller and not with the FrameMaker PDF engine.

I noticed that during the print process FrameMaker changed the line break of a paragraph. After the PDF was created, FrameMaker changed the line break of this line back. Bad as this was the title page.

My default printer is the local office printer.

The font is Google Open Sans.

When I changed the printer to Adobe PDF, I did not get this issue.

I did not know that FrameMaker changes the pagination with the printer (as Word does)! I had never noticed this although I work with FrameMaker for many years.

Probably I will check, if I can automate this with AutoHotkey or AutoIt. In FM 2020 the little SetPrint utitility does not work, probably because this was compiled for 32 bit and not 64 bit.

But still, why does FrameMaker change the line break?

Best regards

Winfried

Report · Mar 24, 2022

Great question, for which the answer was historically: yes
but might have since changed (and probably is no longer required for the Save-as-PDF or Publish paths).

If I were still using Print-to-Ps & Distill, I would still assume that the output is going to be constrained to the current printer driver. Indeed, just out of habit, I routinely setup the PDF printer model in FM whenever doing FM work (the default printer is otherwise an HP MFP in PCL6 mode).

From early-on, Windows WYSIWYG apps constrained their screen rendering based on what printer was currently the default. Configuring a daisywheel printer did impressive things to a page display in FM. I haven't experimented with this in at least a decade.

Report · Mar 24, 2022

Hi Bob,

Thank you very much.

30 years ago I also had a daisywheel printer connected to my HP UX workstation with FrameMaker, and as far as I remember the layout in FrameMaker did not change, when I switched printer. (Acrobat was developped a few years later.)

Anyway, here I have a regular OpenType font which changes its typography. There isn't a reason for this. Or at least I do not know this reason.

Best regards

Winfried

Report · Mar 24, 2022

WR: 30 years ago I also had a daisywheel printer connected to my HP UX workstation with FrameMaker, and as far as I remember the layout in FrameMaker did not change, when I switched printer.

My first use of FM was also on HP-UX (Unix), and when I bought a copy for home use on Windows, the difference in printer configurations caught my attention and I played with it a bit. My home printer was a dot-matrix at the time, and as default printer, caused the same FM doc (a CD-ROM label layout) to look dramatically different until the Postscript driver was selected.

Unix never did have the same sort of printer driver model API, that would inform a GDI API, on which the app relied for screen rendering, as to what the present print capability & constraints were. In retrospect, I presume that FM/Unix (which started on Solaris) simply had to assume a Postscript model at all times. And I have no idea how it behaved on a Mac.

Report · Mar 24, 2022

Thank you very much.

Obviously I had thought that this would be a FrameMaker property although it was a UNIX deficiency.

I will see, if I can start FrameMaker and switch the printer via AutoHotkey or AutoIt.