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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

    A
    Anonymous
    January 22, 2009
    Your suspicions about the similarity with the missing text bug are intriguing, Norbert. I did many, many hours of sleuthing for my clients on the missing text issue and similarly found a pattern in the PS output which the clients then used to diagnose corrupted output files.

    Is there any commonality among the PDFs that you place in your documents, e.g. were they created by the same process / same software? Do they contain complex graphics or color graphics or ...? Are they a consistent PDF level?

    Edit: you mention in your first post "transparent PDF", could you elaborate a bit more on the transparency aspect? AFAIK FM doesn't support transparency.

    How much RAM is on the systems having this problem?
    N
    n42Author
    Known Participant
    January 22, 2009
    Thank you Sheila.

    Nevertheless I think that it's important that all user here should know about our problem and remember this thread when facing a similar situation.

    Submit an officially case will be very very difficult having a not reproducable error!

    Thanks
    Norbert
    Arnis Gubins
    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    January 22, 2009
    Norbert,

    FWIW, the PDF import filter converts the format internally to an EPS
    representation, before it gets output to the print stream. EPS files
    usually are passed straight through by the GDI. So effectively, the
    PDF is then out of the loop.

    For FM to be outputting anything in DIB (image format) for an EPS
    source, it could be thinking that the output device is non-postscript
    and just sending the preview image. However, why is this changing
    during the course of the job - either something in the PDF to EPS
    conversion or what the printer driver is telling FM/GDI what it is?

    The fact that it is non-reproducible and you're using a non-standard
    configuration (custom postscript printer instance) will be a bear to
    pin down.

    How many PDFs per document/book are involved? How many files in the
    books being generated? How many pages are being generated at a time
    when this error occurs? How big are the postscript files? I'm trying
    to get a feel if there might be some resource issues involved.
    A
    Anonymous
    January 22, 2009
    Norbert, we are a user-to-user forum ( not an "official" part of Adobe support) so in order to have your error officially submitted you need to contact Adobe directly.
    N
    n42Author
    Known Participant
    January 22, 2009
    Thanks for your input but I don't think it's the printer driver.

    I think Adobe FM8 is the culprit.

    Please reflect:
    Q: Where does the image we noticed in PostScript come from?
    A: Its from the printer driver. But printer driver dont interpret neither PDF nor EPS.
    Q: How does a printer driver know what image is at a certain position on a page and how does the image looks like?
    A: The printer driver gets the instructions from Adobe FrameMaker to build an image.

    In our case the printer driver did not get the instruction to pass through EPS.
    But that is exactly what FM8 has to do when a referenced PDF is placed on a certain position.

    The printer driver got the instruction from FrameMaker to build that image. It cant build an image itself from passed EPS!

    Therefore I believe the problem is within Adobe FrameMaker8.
    FrameMaker passed the image which it shows in its window.

    I tested in what situation an image occurs in FrameMaker PostScript.
    It does not occur if a PDF isnt referenced (still EPS is passed).
    It occurs (e.g.) if a TIF is imported.
    Because we never import bitmaps we can live with our WIN DIB recognition till Adobe solves this error;-))

    Thanks
    Norbert
    A
    Art Campbell
    Inspiring
    January 21, 2009
    Norbert,

    Installing a clean, known-good version is part of the process to isolate and identify the problem, not necessarily the end solution. It's a step in the process.

    Also, what happens if you don't do the intermediate step of generating a PS file from your custom print/PPD? Does anything change if you just print the document to the Adobe PDF Printer instance?
    N
    n42Author
    Known Participant
    January 21, 2009
    May be you are right, may be not.

    Probably you would have told me the same about our unique Printer/PPD setup when I reported you about our text drop-out error in summer 2003;-)

    BTW, all users have an Acrobat 9 Pro installation.
    With "Yes. It's the same distiller" I meant that we still use Acrobat 9 to distill our PS what we did already with PostScript from FM 6, but we still use our own printer instance to create PS.
    Arnis Gubins
    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    January 21, 2009
    Norbert,

    It's not related to what you're doing to the postscript after the
    fact, so I wouldn't worry much about which version of Distiller you're
    using (at this point).

    However, the configuration of the printer instance could be affecting
    things, since this is what the GDI uses to create the postscript. Have
    you tried editing the newer Distiller PPD from Acrobat 9 to add your
    customizations and then re-creating the printer instance on those
    machines? Even re-creating the original printer instance, since it was
    probably in place prior to the SP3 update, might help. Who knows what
    MS has done to the way some things work, just like it broke the OLE
    functionality with SP3.
    A
    Art Campbell
    Inspiring
    January 21, 2009
    You may want to download the current Acrobat evaluation to see if a more standard install resolves the problem, which may be originating from your unique Printer/PPD setup.

    It'd at least allow you to decide if the production process (FM and imported PDFs) were causing the problem, or if it was in the printing process (generating the final PDFs).
    N
    n42Author
    Known Participant
    January 21, 2009
    Yes. It's the same distiller.
    But anyway what distiller we use, the error is in the PostScript first hand.
    A
    Anonymous
    January 21, 2009
    What exact distiller version are you using? Is it the same distiller version as you previously used with FM6?
    N
    n42Author
    Known Participant
    January 21, 2009
    Yes we applied the Hotfix immediately after the error occurred for no avail.
    We use our own printer instance installed by AdobePS Printer with a customized distiller ppd (for years).

    The error isn't consistently on the same page, even not consistently in the same document.
    But 'often' it is in the same document again on a different page when reproducing the whole document.
    At this location are 5 users with identical installations.
    All 5 users got this error.

    But they have not that time to experiment on a large extent.

    Thanks
    Norbert
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