Glenn McCorkle wrote:
>Thank you for providing further proof that you were mistaken when
>you made the claim of:
>"In this case I can be absolutely sure
>that my recipient can view or print them exactly the way I intended to."
>
>Since you converted the first page of western.pdf to a format which I
>could not view using either GS for DOS v5.10 or Acrobat for DOS v1.0
As I was saying, I created the document in a way that I had used many times
before (in win9x). This means: I printed the document using a Postscript
printer driver. The driver outpot was set to go to a file instead of a
printer. The driver was configured to use ADSC (for portability) and to
"upload" all the truetype fonts. Then fired up Ghostview which is a handy
interface to Ghostscript (I use version 6.01 of Ghostscript). The file
containing the printer output was displayed correctly. All that was left
for me to do was to convert that into PDF format, using Ghostscript, of
course. I did it (PDF version 1.2 and 600 dpi), then I checked the resulted
PDF file to see if it could be displayed, both by Ghostscript and Acrobat.
It looked the same, viewed with them both, so I uploaded it to the server.
Today I have received your reply and immediately checked. Indeed, using
Ghostscript 5.10 for Linux, the file can't be displayed (GS issues an error
message) :-( I'll write about it later in this message.
>So, I fired-up W95 and was able to view west_new.pdf using Acrobat
v4.0
>http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/wn-aw-v4.gif
>(Is this viewed exactly as intended)?
( ^^^^^^^)
More than that. This is the same thing I can view using Acrobat Reader.
>I then printed west_new.pdf (with 4 possible printing options) <snip>
>Since all 4 are different from one another.
>(not one of them is EXACTLY the same as any of the others).....
>Only one of these (if any), can possibly be "printed exactly as
intended".
>Which one of them is exact?
It is because you have used letter paper (my mistake here; in Europe we're
using A4)
Both sheets *not* printed as image (the first and the third) are showing
*exactly* what the creators of the document intended you too see. I bet
they wouldn't
care if someone would tell them the printed image may be a
bit shrunk in order to fit to the page. The difference is only noticeable
when positioning the two documents side by side.
But I still have to accept it. You won!
Because I can't be *absolutely* sure any more, that some of the persons
intended to see the respective documents... will be able to see anything
of those documents in the first place. As i've sadly noticed (again), the
software used by either side may prevent them to do so. Even if the PDF
format tries to overcome the portability problems, it can't fight at all
against the buggy software.
This strucks hard. This is another bitter lesson.
Concluding this issue and hoping I have not made myself yet another enemy
:-)
Cristian Burneci
