I am using an online PDF generator to generate the attached PDF.
While the PDF opens and looks OK on adobe Acrobat (I tested several different versions including Reader and Pro) the transparent layers are printed as white boxes when sent to printer (either a real printer or another PDF printer like PDFill PDF&Image Writer.
Any idea what's wrong with the transparent layers and how to fix them?
This is the file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18517313/flyer.pdf
There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the file to me, and it prints apparently correctly for me when printed from Adobe Acrobat. How are you printing the file ?
One workaround would be opening the file in Acrobat Pro, and use the Flattening Preview (to be found among the Print Production Tools) to flatten the transparencies.
When you print a PDF (or any other format) from an application, several sub systems are involved. The application (such as Adobe Reader) makes calls to the graphics subsystem of the OS (such as GDI on Windows). The OS, in turn passes these calls to the printer driver which is responsible for converting these calls (such as draw line, fill path, etc.) to instructions that are understood by the printer that you selected. These instructions are referred to as the page description language or PDL. Examples of PDLs are PostScript and PCL. This abstraction is good because applications no longer need to ship their own printer drivers. The downside is that the API of the graphics subsystem and the PDL both put restrictions on the richness of your graphics.
Transparency is a typical feature that is present in PDF but only limited available in PostScript. To achieve the same visual result, the feature is approximated. In case of transparency this is called flattening as Max Wyss points out.
By the way, applications (such as Adobe Acrobat) may choose to by-pass the OS and driver and generate the PDL themselves. This is referred to as pass-through printing. Although this circumvents the limitations of the graphics subsystem, the output is still bound to the PDL of your printer.
Related
Does anyone know if there is a function in PDF's to allow them to auto-adjust the view depending on whether it is on a desktop or mobile? Or even by screen size?
I am looking to prepare PDF material for distribution, however, on the user group includes a mix of desktop and mobile, so instead of creating two PDFs I would like to have a single PDF which adapts to the users screen?
This is not possible with PDF files up to PDF version 1.7, the most commonly used on out there.
PDF 2.0 which was released three years ago has such a feature but it depends on the viewer implementing it and the PDF writer correctly annotating the PDF. I guess there are PDF viewers out there that can already do this but I'm not specifically aware of any.
If I were you, I would write the document in a format like LaTeX that can easily be converted to both kinds of PDFs, one for desktop and one for mobile.
I've been tinkering with Ghostscript with a port monitor(on a HP PCL 6 Universal driver) to convert print job into PDF. I've tested with a few applications such as Words, Excel, Adobe Reader, Microsoft Edge etc and they are all working properly.
However upon testing Microsoft Powerpoint 2016, it seems like there are some graphics that are unable to be rendered properly through Ghostscript.
Actual Slide Below
Output From Ghostscript in PDF Below
I've tested this even with some other PDF generators such as BioPDF,CutePDF as well as AdobePDF and they would all result in the same output as above.
Just wondering has anyone tried and have faced similar issues before? if so could someone point me in the right direction??
What you are doing isn't a single step PowerPoint to PDF and Ghostscript is not rendering the PowerPoint. In fact if you are creating a PDF file Ghostscript isn't (ideally) rendering anything.
What's actually happening is that you are asking PowerPoint to print to a canvas, which is then passed to the PostScript printer driver. That produces PostScript which is sent to the Port. Your (and others) Port Monitor then sends the PostScript to the 'Distiller' (in your case Ghostscript and the pdfwrite device). The Distiller reformats the vector drawing commands into a PDF format and builds a PDF file from them. It doesn't render (turn into a bitmap image) anything unless forced to.
Obviously there are several places along that road where the problem could creep in. Given that you say that the Adobe product (the others you mention al use Ghostscript) has the same problem, I think its safe to assume that the problem isn't Ghostscript.
This also means that you aren't using the driver you think you are. Adobe can't handle PCL as an input medium as far as I'm aware, and nor can Ghostscript. GhostPCL will handle PCL as an input, but that's not what you say you are using.
Of course you haven't linked to an example file to demonstrate the problem, nor supplied an example command line, so this is all supposition.
Now if, somehow, you are using a PCL6 device, then the problem is most likely due to the presence of rasterOps in the output. Rasterops are part of the PCL imaging model which do not exist in PDF and are a form of transparency. There are three ways to handle such content for a PDF output device; firstly render the whole page content to an image, secondly ignore the rasterOps objects, thirdly treat the rasterOps as opaque.
GhostPCL and the pdfwrite device take the third option. So, its just conceivable that your original content has some transparent objects which are being handled as rasterOps by the PCL printer driver, and then rendered as opaque by GhostPCL and the pdfwrite device.
If that's somehow the case then the solution is simple; don't use a PCL printer driver, use the PostScript one.
If you post a link to a (simple, eg single page) example of what you are sending to Ghostscript, and a command line, then I can look at it. Please don't send me the PowerPoint, I can't use it and even if I could, my print setup would not match yours. I need the data being sent to Ghostscript.
[EDIT after looking at files]
Don't mean to sound like I'm lecturing, the problem is people find these result on Google searches and then try to apply them based on a poor understanding of what's happening. So I find it best to be really clear in my answers about what's going on. It saves questions later :-)
The first thing I see is that the PCL is indeed PCL, and if you try running that through Ghostscript it throws horrible errors and exits. So presumably you aren't doing that.
The PostScript file contains nothing except huge images, rendered (presumably at 600 dpi) contains 2 pages, the two pages look like your images above. Which is why the PostScript is better than 20 times larger than the PCL file.
But.... If I open the .ppt file with OpenOffice (4.0.0 is what I have to hand) I see exactly the same thing. I don't, I'm afraid, have a copy of Microsoft PowerPoint, but from what I see here there are two conclusions;
firstly that the PDF I get looks pretty much like the PowerPoint when viewed with OpenOffice at least. So there's something 'interesting' about your PowerPoint.
secondly, even if that's not what you expect, its what's in the PostScript program. That means that either PowerPoint rendered the slide to a bitmap or the Windows printing system/HP driver did.
Now, if I run the PCL through GhostPCL instead of Ghostscript (rendering, not producing a PDF) then the result is more like what I think you are expecting. However, when sent to a PDF file the result is horrible. Which strongly suggests to me that there's some form of transparency involved, PostScript doesn't support transparency at all, and PCL does it through rasterOPs.
I'm afraid that this means that the problem lies either in PowerPoint, the Windows print system or the PostScript printer driver you are using. Since the PCL is at least close to what you expect, I suspect that this means PowerPoint is doing the right thing, and its the printer driver messing up. It appears you are using the Windows PostScript printer driver.
So there's no way you can 'fix' this for files like this, at least not with Ghostscript. You would need to 'fix' the Windows PostScript printer driver, or possibly the Windows print system. You could try reporting a bug to Microsoft, presumably these files print incorrectly when sent to physical PostScript printers too.
I'm looking for accessibility tool , to make it easier to read pdf's.
In short, it should be possible to easily see which line is being read ( a bit like a ruler,when it comes down to text ), to avoid losing the line that is being read.
I was wondering if anyone knows any solution for this , for example a plugin for Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc...
Any suggestions are welcome.
I don't think there is a plug-in for Acrobat Reader. You may want to look at ZoomText or ClaroRead. Of course these only work if the PDF has text, but not images of text.
A low tech solution would be to open a Notepad doc and size it how you need. If you are on Win7 you could do this with sticky notes.
Another approach I've used is to convert the PDF to HTML and then run a server with it. This is fairly simple to accomplish using Live Server in VScode.
In the Chrome browser, we may then use accessibility extensions, such as ReadingBuddies, that have reading ruler functions.
Otherwise consider,
Use a PDF reader that has a built-in reading ruler feature, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader DC or Foxit Reader.
Use a PDF reader that allows you to add a reading ruler as an annotation, such as Xodo PDF Reader.
Use an online tool that allows you to view PDFs with a reading ruler, such as Smallpdf's PDF Reader.
Use a screen ruler tool, such as the one offered by How-To Geek, to measure the PDF on your screen.
The academic term is sometimes called RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation), there are patented hardware and software versions but in principle it is simply a translucent masking added to the viewport. see https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/28582/is-there-an-equivalent-to-a-reading-guide-strip-for-windows-os-x-or-linux and http://www.see-n-read.com/products/esee-n-read-2/
10 years later and its 2023 so software such as browsers should include such features here is Edge in some sites where Immersive Reader is supported but not StackOverflow !! The above example is using an edge extension. https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/screen-mask/dfanfcmhbdocjfpmnoebccndgmhlincl others are available for other browsers https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reading-ruler/phiedfcbjfjagnjikfbobmldbpmdcpfk
To get the Reader Mode options on Chrome: or Edge look at the available flags
However if you save page as PDF and read aloud it is then used there !
Some PDF readers like Mac Skim include such accessibility option.
However, simplest is :-
Most PDF readers can be reduced to focus viewport on single lines and with auto scrolling that allows for more focused "line by line" reading without the audio, plus fast and easy adjustments/enlarging for PDF variable lines with illustrations.
Note as per above PDF where much of the text is actually one or two lines out of order it is not trivial for a PDF reader to understand which text base line is independently to be used next. in reality "Read Aloud" will read two variable height lines then jump to top of page then back to the second visible line. PDF lines are not the visible order nor a constant height/spacing, you might expect.
I'm generating PDF files and they look OK in Acrobat Reader. However, when I try to print documents to different printers, selecting the same "Fit To Page" scaling option, the results are a bit different.
One printer leaves a bit different page margins and space between characters.
Is it generally possible to achieve exactly the same looking printouts on different printers with the same scaling options? If yes, is there some sort of check-list for that?
You can never guarantee the output from device to device. This is because the printer interpret what you send it, and often uses built-in fonts and other resources that might be slightly different from manufacturer to manufacturer. You could do the following to help:
Embed all fonts into the PDF (including system fonts)
Force the printer driver to download all fonts and not use the ones internal on the device
Whenever possible, don't scale, send it down in the native size. This might mean that you have to make the output small enough to fit in the print window of a wide range of printers
The other thing to keep in mind is that when printing PDF files, if you use Postscript, there is a high likelihood that Acrobat Reader will do the PDF to PS conversion and pass it through the driver. You probably see an option in the print driver relating to this. Leaving it on pass-through should give you more consistent results.
There is also an option in Acrobat Reader to "print as image". This will slow printing dramatically but could assist.
If you have an application that is sending this file to print keep in mind that many newer printers support native PDF printing. This means you can simply fire the PDF at the device itself and not have to view or print it from Acrobat. In this case you are doing one less conversion / interpretation, so it could help.
Well basically I'm finishing school in mid December so I'm just brushing up my resume and I'm wondering if there's a way to use custom fonts (in this case Calibri and Cambria) in a PDF file and make them render correctly on all computers.
Thanks in advance!
EDIT: I'm using MS Word 2007, but am open to suggestions
PDFs don't store text and fonts like other documents, they actually convert the font to vectors, that way no matter what font you use, the document displays exactly as expected. This is why searching for text inside the PDF is such a problem for 3rd party PDF Readers and why even Adobe themselves use to distribute 2 versions of Acrobat (one with text search, one without).
Another thing to keep in mind is, PDF isn't pixel exact, it's ratio exact. PDF readers generally do not use a 100% zoom level, instead most people read them at "fit to screen" or "fit to page". I point this out because I'm guessing the reason you are trying to use those new Vista/Office 2007 fonts is because of their LCD subpixel support (improves readability on LCD screens). This feature will not translate into the PDF, since the letter becomes a vector, subpixel information is lost, and even if it wasn't, becomes useless because the vector will be sized to something other than you intended at view time.
The PDF format is capable of embedding fonts, if the font has been marked embeddable by its creator. You'll have to check the software that's creating your PDF to see if it has the capability and how to enable it.
theoretically speaking, on technical side, embedding/not embedding ability, regarding the fonts, is settled with a special flag in font file (ttf or opentype or type1)
you can view this special embedding flag with any font editor program (I recommend
FontCreator (by High-logic)
http://www.high-logic.com/font-editor/fontcreator.html
with a free trial fully operative and without limitations
you can also change embedding/not embedding flag, but legally speaking, for the 99% of fonts commercially distributed, this breaks the license of font