Framemaker 10 prints very slowly to pdf

Check your printer driver settings. The tips below were posted by Dov Isaacs, PDF expert at Adobe, many years ago, but some of them may still be valid.

Printer driver instance:

Properties => Advanced (tab)

         Change "Print directly to the printer" to

         "Spool print documents so program finishes printing faster"

                 with "Start printing after last page is spooled" (**)

         Why? Speeds up spooling process dramatically!

Properties => Advanced (tab) => Printing Defaults ... (button) => Layout (tab) => Advanced (button)

         Open trees and make sure that the following are set

         (other options leave at original default settings):

                 Graphic => Print Quality => 600dpi

                 Why? Gets around known Windows 2000/XP GDI bug associated

                 with large point size & high resolution text being converted

                 to outlines. Also gets around FrameMaker bug associated with

                 higher resolution settings in combination with large page sizes

                 (similar bug in other applications as well). Using this setting

                 does not restrict the resolution at which the PDF file can

                 print and has no known bad effects.

                 Graphic => TrueType Font => Download as Softfont (*)

                 Why? Turns off damnable font substitution mechanism.

                 Document Options => PostScript Options =>

                         TrueType Font Download Option => Native TrueType (*)

                 Why? Assures that proper font type is selected, even if not

                 embedded in job stream at this point. "Automatic" should work,

                 but this is explicit.

Properties => Advanced (tab) => Printing Defaults ... (button) => Adobe PDF Settings (tab)

         Choose appropriate joboptions

         Check ALL the boxes.

         Why? Best options for making sure that the correct fonts are

         embedded properly in the PDF file, that you are properly prompted

         for location of the PDF file being produced, that you are warned

         if overwriting an existing PDF file, and to display the resultant

         PDF file delete the log file if and only if the distillation is

         successful.

Properties => General (tab) => Printing Preferences ... (button) => Layout (tab) => Advanced (button)

         Open trees and make sure that the following are set

         (other options leave at original default settings):

                 Graphic => Print Quality => 600dpi

                 Why? Gets around known Windows 2000/XP GDI bug associated

                 with large point size & high resolution text being converted

                 to outlines. Also gets around FrameMaker bug associated with

                 higher resolution settings in combination with large page sizes

                 (similar bug in other applications as well). Using this setting

                 does not restrict the resolution at which the PDF file can

                 print and has no known bad effects.

                 Graphic => TrueType Font => Download as Softfont (*)

                 Why? Turns off damnable font substitution mechanism.

                 Document Options => PostScript Options =>

                         TrueType Font Download Option => Native TrueType (*)

                 Why? Assures that proper font type is selected, even if not

                 embedded in job stream at this point. "Automatic" should work,

                 but this is explicit.

Properties => General (tab) => Printing Preferences ... (button) => Adobe PDF Settings (tab)

         Choose appropriate joboptions

         Check ALL the boxes.

         Why? Best options for making sure that the correct fonts are

         embedded properly in the PDF file, that you are properly prompted

         for location of the PDF file being produced, that you are warned

         if overwriting an existing PDF file, and to display the resultant

         PDF file delete the log file if and only if the distillation is

         successful.

Properties => Device Settings (tab)

         Open trees and make sure that the following are set

         (other options leave at original default settings):

                 Output Protocol => Binary

                 Why? Much more efficient than ASCII, PostScript file size

                 reduced by up to 30 to 40% (your mileage may vary!).

                 Sent CTRL-D Before Each Job => No

                 Sent CTRL-D After Each Job => No

                 Why? CTRL-D is inconsistent with binary PostScript interpreters

                 even though Distiller has hackery to try getting around such

                 spurious characters.

                 Convert Gray Text to PostScript Gray => Yes (*)

                 Convert Gray Graphics to PostScript Gray => Yes (*)

                 Why? Normally, black and grayscale text and vector artwork

                 is output as RGB values. These options convert any R=G=B text

                 and vector artwork to PostScript grayscale. This is much more

                 efficient and can avoid improper "rich black" syndrome on

                 certain PostScript color output devices.

                 Add Euro Currency Symbol to PostScript Fonts => Yes (*)

                 Job Timeout => 0 (*)

                 Wait Timeout => 0 (*)

                 Why? This eliminates the possibility of jobs being prematurely

                 terminated if some other task on your computer hiccups too

                 badly for too long.

Did it recently get slow, or has it always been slow?

> The pdf file links are cad drawings and they can be pretty complex.

What is the typical file size of one of these?

Open in Acrobat Pro and re-save to verify that some compression is applied.

At our shop, the general rule is that if the compressed PDF of a vector illustration is over 250KB, we take steps, which might include:

• Open the vector art in Illustrator, perform an Object > Path > Simplify, re-save and recheck size. This can usually cut the vector count in half or more.
• Trim/delete excess content in the source art, particularly if cropped by the import frame anyway.
• Look for degenerate objects in the source, and fix them. In our case, we have many images with what appear to be polygons with solid fill, but which are actually polygons containing bazillions of cross-hatch lines, because CAD apps are decades behind DTP on basic 2D object appearance rendering.
• Render the source art to raster bitmap in Photoshop and import as 600 dpi TIFF. This typically collapses MB vector art to a few 10s of KB.

Of course, the slowness may have little to do with the imports themselves, but where they come from. If they are all on a remote corporate server strangled by an overused T1 line, rendering will be slow.

Ditto for where the temp files and .pdf or .ps output is going. It needs to be to the local machine for max performance.

And even the local machine can be slow if the file system is nearly full.

Another possibility is the importing of PDF per se. We don't do it, because it's unstable in FM7.1, but I'm wondering if there's some overhead for PDF import, compared to say, importing the same objects as EPS (which is what we use).

How do you print the document to PDF?

Have you tried Save as a PDF...?