[reportlab-users] PDFs generated by ReportLab not printing

[Andy Robinson]

2009/5/22 King Simon-NFHD78 <simon.king at motorola.com>:

> It turns out that we have an old version of Acrobat Professional (v6) in

> the office, so I ran the preflighting tool on the PDF generated using

> the unpatched version of Reportlab. It reported 3 problems:

>

> 1. Device process color used but no OutputIntent (253 matches on 2

> pages)

> 2. Font not embedded (and text rendering mode not 3) (4 matches on 2

> pages)

> 3. Metadata entry missing


As far as we are concerned, we are 100% compliant with the spec and
all these things are "optional", but the the print shop might want
them.

1. OutputIntent came in with PDF 1.4, and we're 'officially'
delivering PDF 1.3.  So we're not in error, but there are whole
chapters of newer PDF spec which I guess the print world would like us
to implement.

2. Embedding fonts is a good idea but it's within your control.  If
you're using Helvetica, Courier or Times-Roman you are counting on the
display device having those fonts; I can fully understand print shops
wanting to always have the client's font embedded.  So you need to
change your app to include specific font files.

3. This is a PDF 1.4 optional feature which we don't yet support.

However, none of them sound likely to cause the error with 'restore'
or to cause printing to fail.   The preflight tools is correctly
warning of some differences between our files and what
Quark/Illustrator/InDesign normally produce.

We are discussing a possible job with a customer for delivery in
June/July which might involve us producing much more print-ready PDFs,
with a better colour model.  If this goes ahead, some of these might
get supported.


> I don't know how serious any of these errors are. I can post both the

> problematic PDF and the preflight report if you like, or if a 269Kb

> attachment is not suitable for the list I can send it to you directly.


Please send it directly to me; I'd be curious to see one.

-- 
Andy