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Subject:
From:
"Y&Y, Inc." <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 21 Dec 1998 13:44:38 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (122 lines)
At 11:38 1998-12-21 -0600, Randolph J. Herber wrote:

Got your gzipped file. It is identical to the one on the web server.
So its your PDF reading application that is at fault.

>When the Adobe PDF files are converted to Adobe PostScript language,
>the resultant files frequently contain among the code that is executable
>Adobe PostScript level 2 language elements.  These elements will not
>execute on purely Adobe PostScript level 1 printers.  I do not know
>why this is true; but, I have observed that it happens.

But that is then a problem of the printer driver not working correctly.
In Acrobat Reader, I select to print to whatever device and the conversion
happens in the printer driver.  Most PS printer drivers have an option to
use only PS level I.  This has nothing to do with PDF or Acrobat per se.

>But, PDF viewers that can handle almost all the Adobe PDF available from
>the open WWW were not and are not generally freely publically available.
>Even the Adobe Acrobat Reader requires a click-on license.

And this is a problem?

>And, what I was talking about is that most of the WWW browsers I have seen
>are set up assuming that Adobe PDF files can be sent directly to a printer
>for printing.  That is an incorrect assumption both from my experience and

I have never seen this.  The WWW browser doesn't get into the act in any case.
It launches your PDF viewer (Acrobat Reader for example) and printing is
then handled by the PDF viewer.

>from my understanding of your previous comments.  Adobe PDF files require
>a conversion from Adobe PDF format to Adobe PostScript language format
>before they can be printed.

Only if your printer is a PS printer.  Otherwise it gets converted to something else.

>The reason for this requirement is that the printers do not understand the Adobe PDF format.
>The reason for the false assumption on the part of the people setting up the WWW browsers,
>including the mime types and mailcap files, is that, like Adobe PostScript language,
>Adobe PDF are print files (which we both seem to understand they are not).
>Yes, supposedly, Adobe AcroBat Reader is capable of doing this conversion.

>Quite a few late Adobe PostScript level 1 language printers in fact have
>the capacity to do the critical level 2 commands or at least ignore them.
>A printer like the Apple LaserWriter gives errors on code that such
>printers find to be acceptable.  Is your printer one of these printers?

I ran an Apple Laser Writer II NX until recently.  It's as old as the hills.
No problems printing PDF (except running out of memory on large high
resolution graphics and taking forever).  Then I ran an ancient QMS
(level I, no level II extensions),  again no problems.

>generated partial fonts.  dvips when working from Type 1 or TrueType
>fonts generally has included the fonts into the file or page prologues
>intact, which therefore permits their ready extraction with a text editor.
>These extracted fonts readily can be used with many word processing system,
>particularly since the font metric files generally are available and
>reasonable approximate font metric files can be generated from the fonts.
>The form of the fonts in an Adobe PDF do not lend themselves to such
>ready inappropriate (illegal in many cases) reuse.

Well, (1) dvips started supporting partial font downloading as soon as
people actuallly started using Type 1 fonts more seriously and found
out what a pain it is to package all those fonts in the PS file (which is
why DVIPSONE was designed in 1990  specifically for partial font
downloading). And (2) Acrobat started off also including complete fonts.
Complaints from foundries in particular persuaded Adobe to change this.
So both have switched from including complete fonts to not including them.
I am not sure one can read any evil intention into either one.  In fact, since
Adobe's default is to include complete fonts if you use 35% or more of
the characters means that the main text fonts in most PDF files are
included in toto.  A misfeature in my opinion.

>|?  Isn't the licensing information on Acrobat Reader enough ?

>I have to extract that license from the Adobe Acrobat Reader materials
>(possibly from the executable itself), present the informatio to our
>legal department and obtain the legal departments approval before I
>am permitted to accept the Adobe license by, in this case, clicking
>on the ``Accept'' button.  Isn't that simple enough to understand---
>I do not yet have such an approval.

Wow!  I am sure glad I don't work there!

From your GS output I gather it actually works on pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
and then it runs into trouble  right at the end.  I believe this is
in the interpretation of the images (which originally where in GIF format).
I do recollect some errors in GS having to do with padding of bytes
in between lines.   You may want to try a more recent version or
report this bug.

>Page 6

>Error: /rangecheck in --get--

>Operand stack:
>   1   --dict:9/9--   --dict:9/9--   --dict:10/13--   --nostringval--
>--nostringval--   --nostringval--   0

>Execution stack:
>   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
>   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   2   3
>   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1
>   %stopped_push   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop
>   --nostringval--   7   1   10   --nostringval--
>   %for_pos_int_continue   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
>   --nostringval--   0   --nostringval--   %array_continue
>   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   --nostringval--
>   %loop_continue   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
>   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
>   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   5   9   %oparray_pop

>Dictionary stack:
>   --dict:770/809--   --dict:0/20--   --dict:47/200--   --dict:47/200--
>--dict:120/127--   --dict:111/152--   --dict:10/10--   --dict:1/2--
>--dict:16/20--

>Current allocation mode is local
>GS<1>quit

Y&Y, Inc.  mailto:[log in to unmask]  http://www.YandY.com

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