problems with VP8 and pdf's

I ran across the strangest thing. I have Acrobat 7 and I also had an 
early jaws printer installed.

The other day i tried to distill a test page from Ventura 8 that 
included a small black and white photo. I left the photo external.

Acrobat distiller froze and would not distill at all. Jaws created a pdf 
but no matter what I did it placed the text and photo on a landscaped 
page rather than the portrait format I had selected.

Eventually I embedded the photo and Acrobat distilled fine although 
remarkably slowly. Jaws still would not work.

I got rid of (uninstalled) Jaws and installed several other free pdf 
printers such as PDFCreator, PDF995 and CutePDFWriter. All three worked 
fine...and almost instantaneously...although I have yet to try it any of 
them with an external (un-embedded) photo.

But my question...what is wrong with Adobe Acrobat and Ventura? Even 
with Acrobat 5, I found that other printers worked better and faster 
from Ventura. I couldn't rely on the combination to convert a whole 
chapter to pdf all in one go, much less an entire publication

I'm using Acrobat 7 now for about 6 months (after having upgraded from
Acrobat 5). It is slower than Acrobat 5, but my computer is getting pretty
old now too. It has the same slow printing from Ventura problem (documented
in the thread you posted into the first time) that Acrobat 5 and 6 had, but
this is pretty easily fixed.

I haven't noticed any other problems, though (with Distiller, at least). I
haven't actually run into anything it refused to distill. I haven't locked
it up yet. And I've distilled thousands of pages with hundreds of photos so
far. Entire pubs with 30+ chapters, 800 pages, TIFF photos, EPS graphics
from Illustrator. And no real problems except that it's slower.

What kind of photo? Are you sure the photo was actually available when you
were printing? Are you printing to a postscript file and then distilling?
What driver?

Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

Ken Benson wrote:
> I'm using Acrobat 7 now for about 6 months (after having upgraded from
> Acrobat 5). It is slower than Acrobat 5, but my computer is getting pretty
> old now too. It has the same slow printing from Ventura problem
(documented
> in the thread you posted into the first time) that Acrobat 5 and 6 had,
but
> this is pretty easily fixed.
> 
> I haven't noticed any other problems, though (with Distiller, at least). I
> haven't actually run into anything it refused to distill. I haven't locked
> it up yet. And I've distilled thousands of pages with hundreds of photos
so
> far. Entire pubs with 30+ chapters, 800 pages, TIFF photos, EPS graphics
> from Illustrator. And no real problems except that it's slower.
> 
> What kind of photo? Are you sure the photo was actually available when you
> were printing? Are you printing to a postscript file and then distilling?
> What driver?
> 
> Kenneth Benson
> Pegasus Type, Inc.
> www.pegtype.com
> 
> 
> 
Thanks for your reply.

I apologize to the group for posting twice. I didn't intend to. I am 
using SeaMonkey for my NG reader and even though I thought I had 
selected "compose" it went into an old group. Possibly because I 
inadvertently used the same title.

In any case, my photo was a black and white jpg. It was available. The 
Navigator frame on the right side of VP8 showed it with the correct path 
and it displayed correctly in VP. Only when I embedded it was I able to 
get it to distill...directly to pdf...using the Acrobat 7 printer driver 
that installs itself when you install Acrobat.

I am not an expert with VP but I have authored three books with it, and 
scanned in two other books, OCR'ing and pasting into VP so that the book 
will be searchable. When done, I converted all of these to pdf.

Acrobat has never been reliable for me across two systems and several 
versions. At least not for the conversion to pdf. Once the work is in 
PDF, Acrobat is the best that I've seen for editing and so forth.

Acrobat just upgraded itself (yesterday) to version 7.08. When I run 
across another photo, I will again attempt to leave it external and 
convert the page to pdf. I'll follow up then.

"DW" <frommer@bootmaker.com> wrote in message
news:45a64eec_3@cnews...
>
> In any case, my photo was a black and white jpg. It was available. The
> Navigator frame on the right side of VP8 showed it with the correct path
> and it displayed correctly in VP. Only when I embedded it was I able to
> get it to distill...directly to pdf...using the Acrobat 7 printer driver
> that installs itself when you install Acrobat.


I never use JPG, usually because I've worked on the picture and I don't want
to resave the picture. I don't know much about JPG, but I'm pretty sure
there are at least two kinds of JPG, progressive and regular. If you want to
email my your photo, I'd be happy to try the same thing here. I also have
Acrobat 7.0.8.

You might want to consider printing to a file and then distilling the file
instead of printing directly to the Adobe PDF Port. You change this in
Printer Properties, external to Ventura. The reason to change it is that
you'll be able to tell if the problem is Ventura printing or Acrobat
distilling.

I've had a super slow printing problem with Ventura 8 and Acrobat 5 and 7 (I
skipped 6, but I've read about the same problem with Acrobat 6). With
Acrobat 5, I fixed the problem using Rainer Strehlow's fix in the FAQ
(http://www.draw.nu/venturafaq/, look for "Acrobat 5 s-l-o-w!").
Earlier
this year, I detailed the method for making the same fix with Acrobat 7. If
you think this might be the problem, look for a thread in this group called
"Ventura 8 and Acrobat 7".

Eric, in that thread you say that you added this to the FAQ, but I don't see
it there now. Am I just not looking hard enough?

Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

Ken Benson wrote:

> Eric, in that thread you say that you added this to the FAQ, but I
> don't see it there now. Am I just not looking hard enough?


Ken --

Perhaps I should have been clearer. I added it to the FAQ source, but I
haven't republished in awhile, so it's not anywhere online yet.

Here's what I added:


For Acrobat 6 and 7, Ken Benson suggests this:
----------------------------------------
1. Go to C:\WINNT\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\ (for Windows 2000)
or C:\Windows\System32\SPOOL\DRIVERS\W32X86\ (for Windows XP).

2. Locate the Acrobat 6 or 7 PPD (ADPDF6.PPD or ADPDF7.PPD).

3. Make a copy of it somewhere safe.

4. Get the Adobe PS printer driver installer from their website:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=44&platform=W
indows
(you'll probably have to paste that URL back together)

5. Use the Adobe PS printer driver installer to install a printer using
the Acrobat 7 PPD. Set the Port to FILE. Name the printer instance
something like "Ventura AdobePDF 7". (You may also try setting the
port
to the Adobe PDF Port, but this does not always work.) Now you will be
able to create PS print files that can be distilled.
------------------------------------------


-- Eric
[C_TECH Volunteer]

Check out the Ventura FAQ at:
http://www.draw.nu/venturafaq/

or download a PDF copy at:
http://www.fhcomm.com/VenturaFAQ.pdf