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At 5:32 PM -0400 8/7/03, Todd Kueny wrote:
We have adopted the following sequence of tests to validate a PDF file's structure as "suitable for commercial printing use".
OK, that's a good stake in the ground...
To us this means that the file can be expected to RIP without error on any PDF-consuming device or application.
Are you defining a level of PDF consuming? 1.2? 1.3? 1.4? 1.5?
In this case we are not concerned with output quality - only file structure correctness relative to the PDF Standard.
Does that include stream data validation as well? Invalid content streams? Invalid image data? Invalid Font data?
1. File must open in Acrobat 4.0.5 & Acrobat 5.0 on PC/Windows and Mac OSX & OS 9 without error and without Acrobat requiring you save the file when you close it.
Why 5.0 and not 5.0.5?
Why both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X?
What version(s) of Windows?
Do you attempt to view every page in the document or only validate the ability to open and view page 1?
3. The file must open and RIP in Ghostscript on both Mac OSX and PC/Windows (we use either GNU or Aladdin (SP?) - same version)
What version of Ghostscript? Which -sDevice(s) do you use?
Are you building GS yourself from source, or using prebuild binaries? If the latter, which distribution(s)?
4. The file must open and be printable to PostScript without error on Mac OSX and PC/Windows.
Open in Acrobat, yes? This is #1.
How are you printing to Postscript? Using what PS driver? Using "export to PS"? This is ESPECIALLY important on Mac OS X which does prints PS in a quite interesting way, and that varies between 10.1 and 10.2...
The resultant PDF files must redistill without error to a PDF on the respective platforms.
Why is redistillation a criteria?
And what tool(s) are you using to perform this "redistillation"??
5. The file must RIP correctly on one or more commercial RIPs - this can include B/W rips and/or color RIPs and does not have to produce output.
How is a RIPping process that does not produce output considered valid?
Isn't this the biggest issue in your "tests", in that I can produce PDF's that are valid in all other tests, but will fail this one due to use of features of PDF not implemented by "clone" or older RIPS. (eg. the CID font issue).
Other applications, e.g., xpdf as it comes with Red Hat Linux, fails with larger, more complex PDF files.
I don't know what version of Xpdf you are using, but my experience with both Xpdf and Ghostscript has the former able to consume MANY MORE PDFs than the latter. I have worked with both in great detail including contributing source patches to both.
Leonard -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leonard Rosenthol <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Chief Technical Officer <http://www.pdfsages.com> PDF Sages, Inc. 215-629-3700 (voice) 215-629-0789 (fax)
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