Press-Ready PDFs from Word
March 23, 2005 – 12:00 pmSo I typeset the book in Microsoft Word, created a PDF using Ghostscript, and sent the PDF off to press. But the press didn’t like it. “You didn’t embed your fonts,” they said. Well, I sure *thought* I’d embedded the fonts. To check, I followed this procedure:
1. Opened the PDF in the free Adobe Reader:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
2. Clicked File Document Properties.
3. Clicked the Fonts tab.
Sure enough, no fonts were listed. What did I do wrong?
I neglected to install the Acrobat Distiller PPD file. Basically, I didn’t follow (or know about) Adobe’s instructions here:
Windows:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328620.html
Macintosh:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328844.html
Those instructions are completely adequate to do what’s needed. Just remember that you need to install both the universal PostScript printer driver *and* the Acrobat Distiller PPD file.
The instructions are intended to help you create a PostScript file suitable for use with Adobe’s “Create Adobe PDF Online service”:
http://createpdf.adobe.com/index.pl/2737602610.5272?BP=NS6
But you don’t have to use their service. Instead, you can use convert the PostScript file to PDF using the free Ghostscript and GSView programs:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
After you’ve installed all this good stuff, creating a press-ready PDF is easy:
1. Open your typeset document in Word.
2. Click File Print.
3. Under Printer Name, select “Acrobat Distiller.”
4. Click the Properties button.
5. Click the Advanced button.
6. Under Graphic:Print Quality, select the dpi (dots per inch) you were told to use by the service representative at the printing company you’re using. This should probably be at least 2400 dpi. You should also ask about the other settings you should use, although I’m giving you the ones that worked for me under steps 7-9 and 18-20, below.
7. Under “TrueType Font,” select “Download as Softfont.”
8. Under PostScript Options:PostScript Output Option, select “Optimize for Portability.”
9. Under PostScript Options:TrueType Font Download Option, select “Native TrueType.”
10. Click the OK button.
11. Click the next OK button.
12. Click the next OK button to print your document as a PostScript file.
13. In the “Print to file dialog,” under “Save as type,” select “All Files(*.*).
14. In the “File name” box, give your PostScript file a name ending with a “.ps” extension.
15. Click the OK button.
16. Open your newly created PostScript file in GSview.
17. In GSview, click File Convert.
18. Under “Device,” select “pdfwrite.”
19. Set “Resolution” to 720.
20. Click the Properties button and set EmbedAllFonts and SubsetFonts to true, set PDFSETTINGS to /prepress, and set MaxSubsetPct to 100. *Don’t miss this step!*
21. Click “All pages” (assuming that’s what you want in your PDF).
22. Click the OK button.
23. In the Output Filename dialog, provide a name for the PDF file you’re about to create, being sure to give it a .pdf extension.
24. Click the Save button.
25. Watch the GSview button in your taskbar as it tells you the percentage complete. Be patient. Don’t try to open the PDF until GSview has finished creating it.
26. Double-click the PDF to open it in Adobe Reader.
27. Check to see if your fonts are embedded, as explained at the beginning of this article.
Could I be missing something? Sure. I’m no expert when it comes to making PDFs. But these instructions work for me. If they don’t work for you, don’t be afraid to talk to the representative at your printing company, who should be glad to give you the help you need.
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READERS WRITE
Gaston Brisbois wrote:
Virginia Systems (http://www.virginiasystems.com/systems) markets a plugin for managing footnotes in InDesign. This plugin is said to import Word footnotes into InDesign. I could not try it out because the tryout version deactivates the function. Anyway, for people doing this kind of work, it might be very interesting (200 USD). It seems, by the way, that version 4 of InDesign will include some Quark-like feature for importing styles from Word (one of the great features of Quark), and that Quark 7 will be based on Unicode (if that will be necessary after Microsoft markets Longhorn, which should make accessible Unicode to all Windows applications).
Plugins by the following company should be helpful for other kinds of high-end formatting where necessary (styles, tables):
(http://www.woodwing.com/) These could be useful tools, especially for people working in Word.
Have you checked out Scientific Word by MacKichan Software (http://www.mackichan.com/) for LaTeX? It is very helpful, and it’s a shame I could not really get it going for Unicode fonts, but I wish to believe that is my mistake.
Thanks a lot for having run this feature.
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Mats Broberg wrote:
The last few days I have also looked very carefully into the typesetting language groff, which is a GNU re-implementation of Bell Laboratories’ typesetting languages, dating back to the mid-sixties (runoff, roff, nroff, troff, ditroff, etc.).
Groff outputs PostScript, and the syntax of groff seems easier to grasp than LaTeX and ConTeXt (for me at least). There are also quite a few macro packages, of which one especially caught my interest–Peter Schaffter’s mom package: http://home.golden.net/~ptpi/mom. The documentation is excellent, and the package seems easy to use. It includes many constructs and parameters that I have been looking for.
On the negative side, groff does not use a paragraph-based line-breaking algorithm (like TeX and children)–but on the other hand, it’s easier to install new typefaces (but not as easy as with Lout). Also, at this time the mom package does not seem to support cross-references.
There is a VERY active mailing list for groff:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/
The principal homepage is:
http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/groff.html
More information:
http://www.sunsite.ualberta.ca/Documentation/Gnu/groff-1.16/html_node/ groff_toc.html
You will find my own questions to the list (and the list members’ answers) here:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2005-03/index.html
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Many thanks to Gaston and Mats for these excellent and helpful comments!
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RESOURCES
Need more information about creating PDFs? You’ll find lots of useful tips here:
http://www.emczurich.ch/emc/emc_authors/howto-pdf.html
http://www.planetpdf.com/tips_archive.asp?keywords=pre-press%20print
http://www.planetpdf.com/creative/article.asp?ContentID=6097
http://partners.adobe.com/public/asn/en/print_resource_center/Acrobat6 PrintPress.pdf
http://www.pdfzone.com/article2/0,1759,1766451,00.asp
In addition, printing companies often provide specific instructions and free software for creating press-ready PDFs. Here are some examples:
http://www.jsmccarthy.com/downloads.asp
http://www.worldwide.au/resources/createPDF.jsp”>http://www.worldwide. au/resources/createPDF.jsp
http://www.laneprint.au/prepress_pub.asp”>http://www.laneprint.au/prep ress_pub.asp
http://www.whirlwind.net.au/pdf/ww_technical%20information.pdf
https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/documents/pdf_create/pdfcreate_05f.jsp
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