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

[n42]

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

[AxialInfo]

Norbert, which specific version, the "pxxx" numbers from Help > About

[AxialInfo]

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

[Arnis Gubins]

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.

[n42]

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

[Art Campbell]

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

[n42]

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]

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?

[n42]

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

[AxialInfo]

What exact distiller version are you using? Is it the same distiller version as you previously used with FM6?

[n42]

Yes. It's the same distiller.
But anyway what distiller we use, the error is in the PostScript first hand.

[Art Campbell]

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).

[n42]

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]

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.

[Art Campbell]

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?

[n42]

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

[AxialInfo]

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.

[n42]

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]

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.

[AxialInfo]

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?