Cheap PDF Solution

[Clay]

I just found a great solution for PDFs that doesn't require too much technical know-how.  It does, however, require that you have access to a UNIX machine with kde and koffice installed. The new koffice has the ability to print to a pdf file.  

If you haven't seen it, koffice is a very excellent MS-Office replacement.  It includes a very capable word processor that can handle reasonable page-layout requests.  It also has a visio like tool for making charts and diagrams (hint: for you sorcerer mini-supplement authors, this is great for relationship maps).  Best yet, it's all free!

There is a precaution: most unices by default only come with bitmap fonts.  You'll want to install postscripts and only use those in your document (in kfont, set anti-aliased fonts on to enable this by default).  If you have a good font server, or you're running under version 4 of X-windows, you can also use truetype fonts and have them embedded automatically.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Clay -

Rock. I'm going to try this tonight. I've always been a GNOME fan, so I haven't checked out KOffice, but if it works well, I'll use it for Donjon.

[Clay]

Clinton,

Make the effort to get XFree86-4 working.  In case you're wondering, bitmap fonts do work, but the results are interesting.  Truetypes will be embedded seamlessly.

Also, make sure you get at least kfont installed out of the KDE kit (although I think you'll have to install most of it, because it contains the Qt libraries that koffice wants). If you don't set the KDE system to use anti-aliased fonts, you won't see truetypes at all.

Right now I'm having fun grabbing fonts that can be used on my UNIX computer.  Font collecting has been a long-term bad habit of mine, but until I found this koffice thing I  didn't have a real use for them.

[Buddha Nature]

If you are running Mac OS X, go into your favorite program, go to print.  Click the Preview button.  This will launch the Preview application.  Go to the file menu and pick Save as PDF -> voila!

-Shane

[Reimer Behrends]

I just found a great solution for PDFs that doesn't require too much technical know-how.  It does, however, require that you have access to a UNIX machine with kde and koffice installed. The new koffice has the ability to print to a pdf file.

Actually, it prints to PostScript and invokes Ghostscript to generate PDF. Which you can also do with any other application that generates PostScript.

If you haven't seen it, koffice is a very excellent MS-Office replacement.  It includes a very capable word processor that can handle reasonable page-layout requests.  It also has a visio like tool for making charts and diagrams (hint: for you sorcerer mini-supplement authors, this is great for relationship maps).  Best yet, it's all free!

KWord is still lacking features that are absolutely essential for even the most basic publishing tasks, such as automatic hyphenation (or manual hyphenation, for that matter), or the ability to generate an index. It also does not allow you currently to give sizes for most things in units other than millimeters, which makes figuring out the details for, say, 11/13 text a major pain. While it looks promising, it's not yet there.

-- Reimer Behrends

[Clay]

KWord is still lacking features that are absolutely essential for even the most basic publishing tasks, such as automatic hyphenation (or manual hyphenation, for that matter), or the ability to generate an index. It also does not allow you currently to give sizes for most things in units other than millimeters, which makes figuring out the details for, say, 11/13 text a major pain. While it looks promising, it's not yet there.

It's true that you're not going to get the best quality, certainly not what you'd get with a professional page layout program or LaTeX. This is merely presented as an alternative for those that didn't want to pop for a DTP (or like us UNIX users, can't find one), and didn't want to learn LaTeX.

For any serious publishing, I'll still stick with LaTeX

[Chris Passeno]

Not all pdf's are equal.  If you aren't going to press with it, then you can be a lot less picky about it.  But, if you or your customer are gonna have it printed out at a copy shop or printer, it's a completely different ball game.


PDF tip:
Don't just "save as" a PDF.  Print to a Postscript file first, then distill it into a PDF.  Printing to a print file could also work, if you don't have any postscript drivers.  If you do it this way, there is less of a chance that the PDF will crap out when printing.  It also makes sure that the full images are included in the PDF, not just the previews, EPS's are known to do that.

Later,
Chris

[Valamir]

Ok, so I'm getting the message about this all PDFs aren't created equal thing...but I'm having trouble visualizing what it means.

Are you saying that PDFs created in different utilities will look different when opened on a different PDF utility.  In, other words, what I see on my screen, is not what I get on the printers screen?

More detail please.


Also, Chris...have you ever run across a complete collection of Walter Slovotskies rules?

[Chris Passeno]

Ok, so I'm getting the message about this all PDFs aren't created equal thing...but I'm having trouble visualizing what it means.

Are you saying that PDFs created in different utilities will look different when opened on a different PDF utility.  In, other words, what I see on my screen, is not what I get on the printers screen?

More detail please.


Also, Chris...have you ever run across a complete collection of Walter Slovotskies rules?

A Copy-Shop or Commercial Printer is set up to print files that are created in professional prepress programs such as Pagemaker, Quark, or Indesign and printed to Postscript devices.  Now-a-day's some places are going to a pdf work-flow.  This work-flow is intended to work with Adobe PDF's.  There are routines used to compress and uncompress items inside the Adobe PDF.  These routines control stuff like image quality, color profiles, etc.

Using other programs, such as any MS product or the like are created to print out on your home PCL inkjet or laser.  PCL is a completely different language than PS.  Not much of the vital information is saved in the file.  You may have noticed that if you open a MS file on someone elses computer, it will cause the text to reflow and your margins might be different.  On top of that, they use the RGB color spectrum (which means that all colors are made from Red, Green, and Blue.  Including white and black).  You can attempt to make an Adobe PDF, from these programs, but it's a crap-shoot.  It may look right on the screen, but the screen is RGB.  It certainly won't color seperate worth a darn.  You may notice a light screen of color where things are supposed to be white.  That's caused by the printer trying to print something RGB-white on a CMYK printer.

Taking the above programs and using something other than Acrobat to make into a PDF will take all of the problems above and add more.  The routines for handling the extra's that are need by the printer are proprietary.  It will be a PDF, but will it work correctly with a PDF work-flow.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Also keep in mind that a PDF is final.  If there is a PS error in that file, there isn't much you can do about it.  You would have to correct the original file and make another PDF from that, hoping you got all of the problems worked out.

What you see on you screen may not look like what will be printed, even if you used the correct programs.  The color definately won't be the same.  The font's may have been substituted, the image quality may have changed.  These are just a few problems that may occur if the PDF isn't made correctly.

Hopefully this answers some of your questions.  If anyone has any corrections, please post them.

As to the Slovotsky's Rules, try http://hamlinx.com/personal/quotes/quotes_slovotsky.html

Later,
Chris

[Clay]

Chris,

From what you say, Clinton and I would be okay as far as our layout was concerned, because these apps all work on the assumption that they'll be dumping to postscript (in fact, going to anything else is very difficult). Also, I have verified that with both LaTeX/dvipdfm and koffice, the fonts are embedded as postscrpt (even if it started life as a truetype).  The little bit of reading that I've done on publishing suggests that embedded postscripts are handled well by most printers.

Where I'm less clear is the whole color issue.  Honestly I don't use a lot of color in my work, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to some day.  Is there any way to tell if my color images render properly in a CYMK color space (short of actually doing the separation)?

I suspect that most reputable printers would be willing to accept the PDF for testing before burning the plates, and allow/insist on corrections.  Do you happen to know if this is the case, or does caveat emptor apply here?

[Chris Passeno]

Clay,
You and Clinton should be OK if the PS fonts and images are embedded and you are having it professionally copied in black and white or viewed on screen. Those are the two most common errors.  

Color is tricky period.  Monitors are RGB.  Even if you spend thousands in calibration equipment, the fact of the matter is that monitors are RGB.  When something is printed in full color it is CMYK.  With digital printing (toner-based, not ink-based), the only way to get exact color is trial and error with each file.  i.e. print one and compare it to the sample, make color correction.  Print one and compare it to the sample, make color correction, etc.  This will go on until someone says, "Close enough."  Most times they just print the job at whatever the settings are and say close enough.

Even having something printed off the press (ink-based, not toner-based) in full color, the only true representation of what that color will be is a press proof.  No matchprint, epson print, or dye-sublimation print will ever be 100% accurate.

Going from an RGB image to a CMYK image will alter the color, sometimes in very noticable ways.  Convert the image to CMYK right after you scan it in or just create it in CMYK from the beginning.  Even so, expect the color to shift.

Make sure that your pdf is preflighted ASAP, this is usually done for free.  If the printer has to monkey with it to find out what the problem is, and attempt to fix it, they will charge you.  In my neck of the woods, that means $85.00 per hour.  I once had someone bring me a catalog job as a pdf, there were problems with it.  By the time it was printed, I had close to $500 in fixing the darn pdf.  It would have been cheaper to have me reset the whole darn thing.

Reputable printers make you sign-off on a proof before they image a plate.  

Most Commercial printers produce what they call "pleasing color" not "exact color".  This is jargon for "what we think looks good"

Hope this rambling helps.
Chris

[Clay]

Clay,
Hope this rambling helps.
Chris

It helps a good deal.  I have CYMK separation capability through Gimp, so should theoretically be able to hack it.  Again, not that I'm using color right away.  I actually want to use black & white photos, which I suspect brings up the ugly issue of halftoning.

An interesting revelation took place last night related to our discussion of bum PDFs.  I understand now why Microsoft geneated PDFs have problems.  When converted to postscripts, many truetype fonts seem to change their metrics in insidious ways.  My generated postscript and PDF both looked radically different than my screen presentation.

I did not have this issue previously, when I generated by document using postscript fonts from the word go.  I begin to understand a couple of things.  First, there's a reason that layout packages all work with Postscript fonts.  Second, I know why there's a commercial market for postscript fonts that doesn't seem to exist for truetypes. Having a couple of hours worth of layout tweaking shot down the tubes by a funky font conversion did not make me particularly happy.  Having a few days shot would make me even less happy.

[Chris Passeno]

If you are gonna have the picture in B&W, then make sure that it's a greyscale image, not CMYK.  All CMYK would do in that case would make the file huge, without improving image quality.

Halftoning shouldn't look ugly, just make sure that the printer is using a high enough line-screen/frequency.  The higher the better.  Most quick printers fall in the 85-120 range.  In comparison, cheap newspapers use 65, which produces a noticable dot.

Later,
Chris