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Very slow printing to default Adobe PDF printer

Contributor ,
Nov 25, 2010 Nov 25, 2010

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I have a 150 page FrameMaker document (with lots of linked Illustrator CS4 files) that is taking 7 MINUTES to print to the default Adobe PDF printer. In contrast, an old QuickSilver / Interleaf document that is 200 pages long and contains even more graphics embedded as huge TIF files, takes 20 seconds to print to the same default Adobe PDF printer.

I have tried all the suggestions I can find on the web, including Adobe forums, but nothing works. Can anyone suggest why printing from FrameMaker 9 to Adobe PDF is taking such a long time? It would appear to be a FrameMaker problem, since every other application can print to the Adobe PDF printer without any problems, and so can FrameMaker... but only at a snail's pace!

I am using TS2 (FrameMaker 9 and Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended) on a 3.0 GHz Quad Core PC running Windows XP Pro.

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Enthusiast ,
Jan 14, 2011 Jan 14, 2011

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Assuming you rebooted after installing the hotfix to refresh everything.... I'd try:

* Opening all files in the book before printing. This should eliminate network slow-downs and anti-virus checking as files are opened.

* If you have the screen real estate, open Task Manger or a similar tool (process explorer) to see what processes are working hard when you do the PDF.

* Check your hard drive free space. Creating a PDF uses lots of temp space, and if you don't have a lot available, the process can slow down if files have to be swapped in and out.

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Explorer ,
Jan 14, 2011 Jan 14, 2011

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Thanks yall....will try on Monday.

I have 103G of free space on my computer.

Will try the other things though....

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LEGEND ,
Jan 14, 2011 Jan 14, 2011

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Check the Adobe PDF printer Properties > Advanced settings for spooling. Under XP, it should be set for: Start printing after last page is spooled, while under Vista/Win 7 it should be set for Start printing immediately.

Are you certain that it is printing to file? I do catalogues with hundreds of eps graphics and these only take a minute or so to create the ps file (running Distiller itself takes a bit longer and speed does depend upon the complexity and amount of the graphics). FM just dumps the EPS content to the print stream without any handling. On the other hand, if you have included PDF or SVG graphics, then FM has to run these through a conversion filter to create EPS content on output and this requires additional resources in both temp disk space and cpu. If you are pulling your content from network drives, then this will also substantially slow down the print process.

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Contributor ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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Arnis,

Thank you for your reply. I have tried all the suggestions listed by others, and by yourself above, and my little 76 page A5 document still takes around 4 minutes to print. 

Having made the switch to the all-Adobe route of FrameMaker 9 with Illustrator CS4/5 for graphics, I now have to wait several minutes to print a document to the Adobe PDF printer. I cannot understand why using the very latest Adobe software, which should be light years ahead of my old applications, is in fact so hopelessly slow. Surely, importing by reference AI files into FrameMaker should be the cleanest possible way to include vector artwork in a technical manual?

Why doesn't FrameMaker 'understand' AI files? And even accepting that it doesn't, then why is it so slow in its own processing of the AI data?

I do hope that somebody at Adobe is devoting their full attention to researching this fundamental problem with FrameMaker, as it ruins an otherwise excellent application.

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Advocate ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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Another thing to check, which I didn't see previously mentioned in this

thread, is your Acrobat installation. Adobe has warned us against

having more than one installation of Acrobat and/or Adobe Reader and/or

the PDF creation plugin that comes with FrameMaker installed on the same

machine. They can cause bad interactions with each other that don't

necessarily show up until specific settings or conditions exist. Then

you get a surprise.

So if there is a time that you have had more than one of any or all of

these installed on your computer at the same time, you need to go

through and uninstall all of them-- and then put back only Acrobat. Then

hope that fixes things up.

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Contributor ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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Mike,

Thanks Mike, that definitely sounds like another thing to try. But how do I know if I have the "...PDF creation plugin that comes with FrameMaker" installed?  I'm fairly sure I installed TS2 on a 'clean' machine, so I should only have whatever the TS2 installer decided to put on my computer. I don't appear to have a separate Adobe Reader installed.

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Advocate ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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But how do I know if I have the "...+PDF creation plugin that comes

with FrameMaker+" installed?

I'm sorry, but I don't know the answer to that. I've never used the

add-on because I always have the full version of Acrobat installed.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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TCS2 includes the full Acrobat Pro Extended version. AFAIR if you just installed FM by itself (no Suites), you got a "semi-crippled" version of Acrobat.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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From your reply it isn't completely clear if you are you importing native .AI format files or files saved in EPS format.

Files in the current native .AI format use a PDF-like structure (that contains a lot more info than a PDF required for display), which FM assumes is a PDF file. When creating output, FM then tries to run this "PDF" format through it's internal filter to create an EPS representation, which takes additional time trying to sort out the Illustrator internal information from the PDF drawing information. The EPSLevelForPlacedPDF setting in the maker.ini file determines how the features are converted. By default this is set to the dumbest level (i.e. ancient Level 1 postscript).

EPS files are just simply dumped straight into the output stream (passed through).

On a fast machine, the resource hit from this sort of conversation may not be too noticeable for the occasional file, but with many .AI files, this could be more noticeable, though I doubt it's solely the cause of the larger times that you're seeing. Usually, if you have a properly configured AdobePDF printer instance set as your system default for FM, work on local drives, use EPS, TIFF, JPEG, PNG imported by reference, print to file to create .PS files, the process is very quick. All I can think of is to use a tool like Process Explorer to monitor what is happening when creating output from FM to try to identify where the slow down is occurring.

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Explorer ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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After reading all the msgs since Friday. I did try to open all the files in my book and print to a ps file. Took forever. Also, why do you have to reset every document in the book when FM crashes? I have to wait every time when I try these things because I don't want to have to do that. Seems just reseting the book file itself would work.

Anyway, I have attached a jpg of my current programs, add in's....ect. that seem to be maybe things I should get rid of. Would one of you take a look and let me know. Maybe that is my problem. I hope it is readable.

Thanks,

ls

adobe products.jpg

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Advocate ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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I see a potentially huge problem right off the bat. You've got both

Acrobat 8 and Adobe Reader 7 installed on the same machine! Adobe has

very strongly warned us against having more than one TOTAL of any of

these installed: Acrobat, Reader, or FM's optional PDF creation add-on.

So you need to uninstall both of those, starting with the last one

installed, then reinstall only Acrobat. Leave Reader off. Everything it

does is already contained in Acrobat.

I also see some things listed there as "Adobe PDFL..." I don't know what

those are. I don't have them on my computer and I've got tons of Adobe

software installed. I'm sure someone else will pop in with the answer.

But I see one of them is version 9, which may mean you have yet

another conflicting version of something on your machine.

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Explorer ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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Well, I got rid of the Reader 7. I don't see a Reader 8. What are Adobe Acrobat Connect Add-in, Adobe Help Viewer 2, and Adobe Extend Toolkit 2? The Adobe PDFL is for our ApplicationXtender Program.

Thanks,

ls

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Advocate ,
Jan 17, 2011 Jan 17, 2011

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Well, I got rid of the Reader 7.

Yes, but did you also uninstall and reinstall Acrobat 8? Since you had

both, you can't just uninstall the one you don't need. My understanding

is that Acrobat and Reader each can overwrite files of the other. So

uninstalling Reader may still leave messed up files or missing files for

Acrobat. You have to uninstall both, reboot, then reinstall Acrobat.

> What are Adobe Acrobat Connect Add-in, Adobe Help Viewer 2, and Adobe

Extend Toolkit 2?

>

The Help Viewer installs with FrameMaker. The other two install with the

the Creative Suites. Leave them alone.

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Contributor ,
Jan 18, 2011 Jan 18, 2011

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Arnis,

Many thanks for clarifying the situation with AI and FrameMaker. In conclusion, for other users coming to this thread:

* Importing a native .AI file into FrameMaker (using "Import By Reference" in my case) doesn't work as it should.

* FrameMaker doesn't interpret the .AI file correctly as simple vector artwork, but instead as PDF, and so makes very slow work of converting the graphic when printing.

* Outputting from Illustrator as .EPS instead of .AI should be much quicker when imported into FrameMaker, but not necessarily. Other unresolved issues might also cause slow printing.

I do hope a future update patch to FM10 will cure this flaw in FrameMaker's interpretation of AI files. Personally, I am not remotely interested in FM10's 'rich media', but would love it if FrameMaker could properly handle 'lean media', such a vector drawings made in Illustrator.

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Community Expert ,
May 07, 2011 May 07, 2011

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Still did a save as pdf that took 30 minutes. Was kind of scared to print to a pdf.

As Arnis suggests, print to .ps and Distill from .ps to pdf separately.

Report the time for each, and see where the time sink is.

I never save as PDF or print to PDF anymore, because the Distill path provides much more control (plus, I'm usually printing to PS from FM7 on Unix, and Distilling on Windows 7 with CS5 Acrobat(9)).

I only see serious slowdowns when there are network issues, or the PS or TPS object is really huge (2-4GB) due to some imports.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 14, 2011 Jan 14, 2011

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Nope - this is a user to user forum. Don't expect them (Adobe) to chime in anytime soon.

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New Here ,
May 06, 2011 May 06, 2011

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This is a rather long thread, but I want to add my 2 cents.


Rendering my company's book, (500 pages, containing 1 png per page or so) takes roughly 30 minutes. Horrible.

If we had known about this issue we probably would not have bought Framemaker. Our previous tool rendered the same content in a couple minutes.

Hopefully, this could be improved in future updates.

-Ian

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Advisor ,
May 06, 2011 May 06, 2011

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Ian, would you re-post your O/S info, and whether you're on a 64-bit system and/or in a VM?

Sheila

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Contributor ,
May 09, 2011 May 09, 2011

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Iangull249: I sympathise with your comments entirely.

A technical writer using Adobe products is expected to wait minutes to output his/her work to Acrobat, when other ancient non-Adobe applications (and all other current non-Adobe applications I use) take seconds. Using the PS first / distill later method makes little difference - I'm still waiting several minutes, even with a fresh install of TS3. And why should one have to operate a kludge like that, having just paid a large sum to Adobe for their very latest software?

The problem seems to be FrameMaker, since all my other non-Adobe applications output to the Adobe PDF printer at a perfectly acceptable speed.

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Community Expert ,
May 09, 2011 May 09, 2011

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... Using the PS first / distill later method makes little difference - I'm still waiting several minutes, ...

Yes, but how long in each phase?

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New Here ,
May 12, 2011 May 12, 2011

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I'm replying mostly so I can follow the topic, but we also experience profoundly long PDF rendering times (30 or more minutes for a ca. 500 page book), regardless of settings.

Our old tools (open source toolchain based on latex/docutils) took about 5 minutes.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

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Contributor ,
May 13, 2011 May 13, 2011

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ddsbleton: I have tried all the recommendations, but none have any effect.

I recently 'upgraded' to TS3. After first uninstalling TS2, I then followed a detailed list of Adobe instructions about how to eradicate all traces of Acrobat left behind by the uninstaller. I then performed a fresh install of TS3 (from the DVD). The printing problem from FrameMaker (incorporating Link By Reference'd AI Illustrator files) to Acrobat has not improved at all, so for me output to Acrobat PDF remains terrible.

As a technical writer I have bought all of Adobe's latest programs, but I must not expect them to work together properly. I am expected to waste time producing an intermediate format for all of my illustrations, because FrameMaker doesn't understand Adobe's own flagship drawing program. And that's clearly not the only problem, as has been highlighted by so many people on this thread.

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Explorer ,
May 13, 2011 May 13, 2011

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You can use a different program to create PDFs.  I know it boggles the imagination that Adobe's own product should have trouble with PDFs, but they do.

I use CutePDF (www.cutepdf.com), but there are lots of others out there.  They may not offer the same level of customization with regard to file size, but can certainly be faster and more robust than the home-grown variety.

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Contributor ,
Oct 06, 2011 Oct 06, 2011

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And now the problem has really hit home. I have nine different multilingual manuals, with native speakers sending me their corrections. After each set of corrections are applied I need to reprint the manual and make it available for further checking. It has just taken 18 MINUTES to print a 100 page manual to the Adobe PDF printer - and that's just one manual, following one pass of corrections.

**** ADOBE: FRAMEMAKER'S PRINTING PROBLEMS ARE HAVING A DISASTROUS AFFECT ON MY WORKFLOW! ***

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Contributor ,
Oct 06, 2011 Oct 06, 2011

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dcrouse10 wrote:

You can use a different program to create PDFs.  I know it boggles the imagination that Adobe's own product should have trouble with PDFs, but they do.

I use CutePDF (www.cutepdf.com), but there are lots of others out there.  They may not offer the same level of customization with regard to file size, but can certainly be faster and more robust than the home-grown variety.

It's not good, is it?

Things have got that bad now that I have to pdf in Foxit, manually add bookmarks and remove the Foxit mark manually in Acrobat, as this is faster/more reliable than using Adobe pdf.

As I said, not good at all.

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