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Vamitul wrote:
(…)
Another would be to make your cover page bigger as to "fake" the slug area, and export the pdf, but this will mess up the pdf page/trim etc boxes.
Hi Vamitul,
I'm trying to understand that particular issue (as I'm not very skilled in PDF exporting.) What exactly would be messed up with respect to the result obtained by combining two distinct PDFs?
Say I have faked in InDesign a slug area on page 1, as you suggest. Something like this:
After exporting these pages I get this result:
I do not pretend there is no problem, my problem is I can't figure out what is the problem 😉
Thank you to enlighten me.
Best,
Marc
So the question amounts to, could we hack PDF's inner data in a way that restores actual values for page size, bleed, slug etc?
Sure. But it requires writing a jsx PDF parser. Not quite impossible, particularly that there are a number of JS based parsers on GitHub, but I never had the energy and the need to go into it in more detail.
You, on the other hand, I can't think of anyone better suited to build such a thing 
And there is (or at least was) also a way to concatenate several PostScript files (with different PDFBox settings) using Acrobat Distiller. With Distiller 7 that once worked as expected. For Distiller 8 and 9 this method would require a change in com.adobe.distiller9.plist on Mac OSX. Did never test that with Windows. And I never tested this procedure with newer versions of Acrobat Distiller and newer OSX versions.
It was fun digging out this old method of the "Golden Age of PostScript" 🙂
As I said the method requires some preparation:
Acrobat Distiller restriction on directory access
Beginning with Acrobat 8.1, Distiller® restricts the directories that PostScript® file operators can access. The new default behavior limits directory access to the temp and font cache directories. Earlier versions of Distiller allowed PostScript file operators to have unlimited directory access.
The following Distiller settings enable unlimited directory access. Such unlimited access can pose security problems.
Microsoft® Windows®: -F command line option
UNIX®: -allowfileops command line option
Apple Mac OS: AllowPSFileOps user preference
The change in com.adobe.distiller9.plist should be done with the Property List Editor.app of Mac OSX. Don't know, if ExtendScript is able to it as well. At least you'd need some admin rights on the system, I think.
Here a screenshot from OSX 10.6.8 with an unchanged Adobe Distiller 9 plist file:
Property AllowPSFileOps should be changed from No to Yes.
The core of this method is the following text file, that will be:
1. Stored in a watched folder of Distiller with a dedicated joboptions-file
2. Can be dropped to Distiller
3. or opened with Distiller
and will concatenate all files with suffix *.ps in a folder you define in the text file by using the below PostScript functionionality.
Best use a text only file with a suffix that is not *.ps. For details read the instructions in the comment section below.
The name of the distilled PDF will be the name of that text file.
%!
% PostScript program for distilling and combining an entire folder or
% directory of PostScript files.
% When embedding font subsets, it is highly recommended you use this technique
% to distill multiple PS files so only one font subset is used for each font.
% Edit the next line to point to the folder containing the PS files:
/PathName (Macintosh HD:ACROBAT_Distiller9_RunDirEx:*.ps) def
/RunDir { % Uses PathName variable on the operand stack
{ /mysave save def % Performs a save before running the PS file
dup = flush % Shows name of PS file being run
RunFile % Calls built in Distiller procedure
clear cleardictstack % Cleans up after PS file
mysave restore % Restores save level
}
255 string
filenameforall
} def
PathName RunDir
% INSTRUCTIONS
%
% 1. Place all PostScript files to be distilled and concatenated in a single
% directory. For example, here are example names of PS files that might
% be used to distill a book:
%
% ac001.ps Cover
% bt001.ps Table of Contents
% ch001.ps Chapter 1
% ch002.ps Chapter 2
% ch003.ps Chapter 3
% in001.ps Index
%
% 2. Make a copy of this file and give it the name you want to have as the prefix
% for the resulting file. For example, you could name this file MyBook.txt.
%
% IMPORTANT: Don't use the .ps suffix if this file is in the same folder as the
% rest of your .ps files. The RunDir command will execute all files that end in
% .ps and this file will be distilled twice!
%
% 3. Redefine the variable "PathName" above to point to the folder/directory which
% contains your PS files.
%
% Macintosh pathname syntax: /PathName (Macintosh HD:Folder:*.ps) def
% Windows pathname syntax: /PathName (c:/mydir/*.ps) def
% UNIX pathname syntax: /PathName (.\\/mydir\\/*.ps) def
%
% Note: The syntax for Windows may look strange, but double escaping the
% backslash character is required when using filenameforall.
%
% 4. Distill the file on the machine running Acrobat Distiller.
Cheers,
Uwe
EDIT:
Added here the path to the plist in OSX 10.6.8
/User/[Username]/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.distiller9.plist
If you want to test this with e.g. newer versions of Distiller look for e.g.:
/User/[Username]/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.distiller10.plist
/User/[Username]/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.distillerDC.plist
So, yes ExtendScript has access to that plists.
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