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Workaround for Apple's Pages software to generate non-crap PDFs

Started by Clinton R. Nixon, September 29, 2005, 09:21:53 AM

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Clinton R. Nixon

Apple's Pages software is getting used more and more to generate print-ready PDFs. It's a decent piece of software, but its PDF generation is for crap and can result in bad printing issues.

I've composed a workaround to make decent PDFs from Pages. This was primarily written because of problems Lulu had printing The Shadow of Yesterday.

The workaround's at http://www.anvilwerks.com/pages_workaround/.
Clinton R. Nixon
CRN Games

Per Fischer

I get a time-out error trying to access the link.

On another note, I haven't got any good experiences trying to generate PDFs from non-Adobe software, at least not if you want to print from the finished file. I used to work for Adobe Acrobat support, so I may be biased here, but any problems printing especially professionally from PDFs were usually caused by such 3rd party PDF generators. Apple's built-in print to PDF is a good example of one of the more crappier ones, I am sorry to say being a Mac user myself ;)

I don't know if it's a problem with copyright and stuff, but Lulu could simply offer to generate the final PDF with Adobe Distiller from a Postscript file provided by the customer - that is the normal way to avoid fuck-ups. Trouble is, of course, that PS files are damn huge.

I don't know - just a couple of thoughts :)

Per
Per
--------
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Nathan P.

I've been using OpenOffice to do quick PDFing, but I haven't tried printing them. Any word on that PDF quality? If it's better than Pages, there's a couple of OpenOffice ports available for Mac. I use NeoOffice/J, mainly because it's icon involves a pirate ship, and I have had no problems a'tall.
Nathan P.
--
Find Annalise
---
My Games | ndp design
Also | carry. a game about war.
I think Design Matters

Per Fischer

OK, I can see the webpage now :)

Clinton's workaround should actually work from any application, not just Pages, so you could do the same from NeoOfficeJ I suppose.

Do you know what PDF settings/quality Preview uses when converting to PDF, Clinton? I suppose they are fixed.

Per

Per
--------
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.