CONTENTS
========
1. A TIMELY WARNING
2. SPOT COLORS IN PDF
3. PRINTER SUPPORT IN OS X
4. USING ILLUSTRATOR TO EDIT PDF
5. VAGARIES OF EMAIL
6. PLUGINS THAT WON'T
7. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
8. UTILITIES/UPDATES
9. HINTS
10. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
11. LAST WORD
1. A TIMELY WARNING
===================
There are many Daylight Saving time changes around the world next weekend or a weekend later: Standard Time returns in the USA, and Summer Time applies in several States of Australia, as just two examples.
Why should that worry you? Well if, for example, you are using QuarkXPress, on a Mac or PC, and the images are stored on a Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 server, you may experience some problems if those servers are allowed to adjust time automatically when clocks change.
The time stamp on files looks the same as before the time change, but some software detects that the time stamp was modified. As a result, the program will display a message telling you the image was modified and tell you to update the links. It will go on doing this as you open any file for the first time.
It isn't a new problem; in most cases you will know that you had a problem half a year or so ago. This is a reminder that, if you experienced the problem, now is the time to ensure it doesn't happen again.
The answer is to open the Control Panel on your NT4 or 2000 server, double-click the Date/Time icon, click on the Time Zone tab, make sure "Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes" is NOT checked and click OK. Change the time on the server manually, after the time change, and the time stamps on files stored on the server will not be changed.
2. SPOT COLORS IN PDF
=====================
The situation posed by Allan Bock, Editor of the Northern Pen, in Format67, produced many replies. It seems a common situation: you do your layout in one program, you receive a PDF from an ad agency or advertiser who uses another, place it in your program and it fails to separate -- you either get all colours on all plates or a grayscale rendition on one.
Adam Wheewall of Prontaprint, Lincoln, England, suggested: "If you get the ad agency to create PDFs for you, you can then load these up in Acrobat 5 and choose Save as... Then change the type to EPS, and you can then save this PDF back to an EPS, with all the fonts that were embedded into the PDF, in the EPS. Most programs that will export to EPS don't include the fonts, but Acrobat does. I'be only tested the resulting file in PageMaker 7 (PC) to see if it picked up the EPS referenced colour, but this worked fine, making me thing that it should work in any app that imports EPSs. There is actually a plugin for Quark called Font Includer or something like that which includes fonts in EPS files created by Quark. But my method means that your agency won't have to purchase any new software for you to be able to colour separate their spot colour files."
Bob McCuen suggested: "We have both MAC and PC and all the latest programs on both. Went absolutely crazy with various PDF formats UNTIL using InDesign. Version 1.5 does a very good job with spot or process colors. Version 2.0 does a fantastic job. On very rare occasions we still have a problem, so we either export the graphics from Acrobat 5.0 and fix them in Photoshop, then place them on top of the PDF in InDesign... or import the entire PDF into Photoshop at a high resolution and save as a TIF, then anything will output what is needed."
Dave Thielen of Allerston Press replied: "Old trick to fix this one. Instead of using the spot color in the original artwork, use Magenta (you could use Cyan or Yellow also) and then the resulting file will work in a composite workflow. We do this all the time.
These are all useful workarounds, and, having created a PDF using a spot colour, we were able, as we have done before, to save it from Acrobat as an EPS. With that placed back in the layout program, we could print it to separations on a laser printer. However, we needed a PDF to send to the printing plant. When we tried to produce a PDF containing the EPS created from the original PDF, we got this message from Acrobat 5: "This PostScript file was created from an encrypted PDF file. Redistilling encrypted PDF is not permitted."
What encrypted PDF? Then it dawned on us: the default setting for Acrobat 5 is "Acrobat Standard Security". Change that to "No Security" and resave; then it worked well and the new PDF was produced from our layout program. However, the new PDF also had the "standard security" setting. We could find nowhere in Distiller to change that to No Security as a standard -- and a search of the various Help documents was no help.
Yes, you can use spot colours -- but the route is scattered with obstacles.
3. PRINTER SUPPORT IN OS X
==========================
There seem to have been even more problems with getting programs to print with OS X than there have been with Win XP, so we were interested to read in the CreativePro newsletter that "One of the most unspectacular demos at the recent Seybold Seminars was also one of the most talked about... CUPS is not a glitzy, whizzy addition to the OS, but for Mac-based creative professionals, especially if you have printers and scanners with outdated drivers, it's a life saver."
Doug Morgenstern writes on their website: "One bad rap about OS X has been printer support (or rather, its lack), especially for older professional-level printers and large-format devices. For consumers picking among the many dirt-cheap USB printers, there's no problem, but suppose you bought an Epson Stylus Pro 9000 for $7000 just a couple of years ago? Now discontinued, the 9000 is still a serious wide-format printer, and of course, owners would want to operate it under the new OS. But there's no OS X-specific driver for the printer; it only works under Mac OS 9. ... Instead of asking vendors to provide new OS X-savvy printer drivers for all their orphaned hardcopy devices, Apple now offers a rather roundabout solution, one that takes advantage of OS X's Unix technology: support for the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), Gimp-Print drivers, and the Ghostscript PostScript interpreter."
David runs through his own steps in installing a printer that was not supported under OS X. Along the way, there were steps without a hint of the Aqua interface, but it worked. See <http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/17834.html>
4. USING ILLUSTRATOR TO EDIT PDF
================================
On the pdfzone list <http://www.pdfzone.com> Dov Isaacs from Adobe offered advice on editing PDFs in Illustrator, "Illustrator is NOT, repeat NOT, repeat for the umpteenth time NOT a general purpose PDF editor. Content may be lost, color spaces changes, text and font data misinterpreted. Illustrator is great for editing content created by Illustrator including PDF files created by Illustrator with the 'preserve editability' option specified and often (but not always) for editing vector artwork from within Acrobat."
As someone else commented: "Sounds like editing PDFs in Illustrator may not be recommended."
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There's yet another stumbling block, this time with older versions of Acrobat. It seems that some versions of the Acrobat Distiller PPD default all pics to RGB. Though using PPDs other than the official one are not recommended, this is a problem which may be overcome by using just such a non-recommended PPD. Yes, we still believe that PDF is the answer to achieving a trouble free workflow -- but no one said it was going to be easy.
5. VAGARIES OF EMAIL
====================
We had an unusually large batch of Format 67 which failed to get to subscribers. There are always a few due to changed addresses, or overfull mailboxes, but this time we had more than the usual number from over cautious postmasters. One refused the mail because it "had an attachment" in a format which appeared to be a script, despite the mail being straight text, with no attachments. What led them astray was an item about scripting InDesign which suggested the file extension that should be given before putting a file in InDesign's script palette. That was enough. It was the file extension for a Visual Basic script.
We also got a response that we are using the wrong domain and advising what it should be changed to. Unfortunately it didn't tell us where we are currently sending the mail, so we don't know which address to correct.
Similarly we had someone reply quoting most of the email with the word UNSUBSCRIBE, several exclamation marks and the word "Please". It wasn't from an address which is getting Format. If you try to change an address or unsubscribe, please check the address we are sending Format to.
If you miss an issue, you can get the latest by sending an email to getformat at worsleypress.com which is an autoresponder that does nothing but immediately reply with the latest issue. But a new author organisation sent an email to that address, from an address which was also an autoresponder. Mail bounced between the machines, which obviously wasn't unusual at their end for their autoreply told us that if we did not stop sending spam we would be reported!
We are considering a second Format list which will just announce that a new issue is available by autoresponder or on a private website. If that would help some of you, let me know. The previous issue is usually made available on our public web site at around the time the new issue goes out.
6. PLUGINS THAT WON'T
=====================
We criticised Extensis last month for sending emails which, if you are not reading your mail on line, comes in as just a group of gray boxes, with no text. This month, it is for assuming that Photoshop extensions are used only in Photoshop.
Geoff Heard, a committed Canvas user, admitted that the Photoshop 7.0 auto color correction tool in the most recent Photoshop was unmatched in Canvas: "In Canvas, you actually have to mess with colour curves and know something about them".
The Extensis plug-in, Intellihance v.3 worked fine with v.7 Canvas. However, Geoff added: "No one I know has installed the current v.4 Intellihance with the current v.8 of Canvas, though. I'm trying to set up a trial installation, but I'm having problems -- the installer demands a Photoshop installation so it can plug straight into it, rather than just putting everything in a folder on the desktop so you can put the plug-in into the whatever plug-ins folder you like yourself."
7. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
========================
Caitlin Crest wrote from Long Beach, California: Regarding Stephan's question about duplex printing with Publisher... If you're using any version of Publisher after '98, Publisher is not the problem. I edit and design a 24 page monthly magazine and duplex print all of my dummy/proofreading copies, if I'm at home. My HP DeskJet 930C has the duplex (double sided) printing option... My HP DeskJet 840C, at work, does not offer it. The duplex printing is definitely a printer situation. To check if your printer has the option: Open your Publisher Document Click - File, Print, Click - Properties or Advanced Printing Options (I'm not at home and cannot see the screen for it:-( Look for "Duplex" Printing - When you check the box, all of the left (or right) sides will come out first. You, then, just lift the stack of printed pages out of the printer, rotate the stack 180 and set them back in the feeder shelf. Click continue on the message box that's on your screen and watch your book print. Good luck...
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Marta replied to a question from Chris Harris in Format 67: There was a fellow in the last issue who was wondering about jaggy-looking fonts in PDFs. The only solution is to go into Acrobat prefs and under the Display tab make sure all three boxes are checked for: Smooth Line Art, Smooth Fonts, and Smooth Images. This makes such difference to on-screen viewing!
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Lili Maas asked if there was a simple maths plugin for InDesign as she currently 'combined' them from different math fonts and Symbol fonts. We replied that we were not aware of one but that we'd ask Format readers what they do. We also referred Lili to the Blueworld InDesign List, for which there are details at: <http://www.listsearch.com/indesigntalk.lasso?manage>
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Daniel Gold replied to our comments on a utility for cleaning up emails, suggesting "two life-saver programs":
TextSoap (Mac/Windows) by Unmarked Software <http://www.unmarked.com/> - a 1MB demo download for Win, 2.6MB for Mac.
EditPad Pro (Windows only) <http://www.editpadpro.com/> - 1.25MB evaluation version (inc. PDF manual) has a nag screen and lacks a spell checker. Full version price is US$39.95.
Daniel adds: These not only rewrap text, but can convert tabs to spaces, delete HTML or MIME gibberish, and much more. If I'm planning to do any work with text (especially taking text from email into word processor or DTP), these programs are fast, efficient, and I think they even let you define your own "cleaners" for your own repetitive text problem.
With TextSoap, I would honestly just-as-soon have a contributor email me an article, with the article text in the email body, rather than an attached document. I copy the email into TextSoap, hit SCRUB, then paste into my DTP.
Daniel comments: "Why don't Word Processors have these features built in? With the huge bulk-ware and unwanted bells and whistles on the latest versions of Microsoft Word, I would think they would concentrate on adding simple and useful features. Likewise, email programs should have these features integrated.
"I sometimes use TextPad to correct a Word file before taking it into DTP. Word documents with email addresses annoyingly include some kind of HTML/hyperlink on the email addresses (causing them to turn blue and underlined). I guess Microsoft likes this because it hooks Word into Outlook Express. I dislike it because importing the hyperlink either crashes PageMaker 6.5, or includes both the HTML and the text so the address appears twice in the text body. TextSoap deletes the duplicate.
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Bob McCuen wrote: "This time I have a question; I had purchased Photoshop 6.0. Installed same and found that the SWOP standards were removed by Adobe. Quite a bit later, we received 'special offer' to purchase 7.0. I called the number on the offer, and asked if SWOP standards were included in the new version. After several minutes, the reply was NO! I stated that printers are still out there in the world. The standards are important! If anyone can point out that I am misguided, or that you can achieve the same results in a different manner, PLEASE let me know."
We replied: Your comment had me worried. 'They can't have done that' was my immediate reaction too, but I now suspect it is a case of changing the name for the Help file in Photoshop 6.0 states: "For example, the U.S. Prepress Defaults setting uses a CMYK working space that is designed to preserve color co0nsistency under the standard Specifications for Web Offset Publications (SWOP) press conditions.
In my copy of version 6.0 the Color Settings dialog still has an option under CMYK for U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v.2 and for the equivalent uncoated. If they aren't there, could it be a problem with option selections in the install routine?
8. UTILITIES/UPDATES
====================
Badia Software has released two new XTensions for Mac QuarkXPress 4.1 and 5.0: ContactPage XT and Exportools XT.
ContactPage XT creates contact sheets of pictures with captions. It lets you choose page size and margins, grid layout, picture and text box dimensions, as well as extensive caption information. You can even resume cataloguing where you left off if you're interrupted.
Exportools XT automates the process of saving document pages as individual files in several popular formats, including EPS, PostScript, plain or rich text, page screenshots and html. You can choose which pages to export (single pages as well as spreads), the rules governing the file names, and, if you wish, any program to open the new files in.
Each XTension costs US$59.99, with a 20% discount for the two. Demos at: <http://www.badiaxt.com/exportools.html> and <http://www.badiaxt.com/contactpage.html>
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DiamondSoft has issued 3.1.1 updates for Font Reserve on the Mac. Among bugs fixed are the one that caused random crashes when the InDesign 2 plugin was used under OS X v 10.2 (Jaguar) and the bug with the same plugin which resulted in a crash when choosing Collect Fonts for Output or Make Font Reserve Set commands with a new, unsaved document.
Also fixed is a ClassicActivator problem under Jaguar in which fonts activated in Mac OS X did not initially show up in the Classic environment, as well as permissions problem when logging on as a different user and a number of other bugs.
Font Reserve 3.1.1 will now operate on all Mac OS systems from OS 8.5 upwards.
Separate updates are available at <www.fontreserve.com>
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Another option in Word to PDF converters is available at <http://www.docauto.com/>. There's a 1.78MB demo and the program costs US$35.
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An XTension to refresh QuarkXPress in Classic Mode: <http://www.automatrix.co.uk/products/~ClassicDrawXT/>. It is 167k, free, and fixes the main bug encountered by QuarkXPress users in the Classic environment, which prevents the screen from being correctly redrawn when switching between QuarkXPress and other applications. Automatrix is a leading integrator for QPS and Quark Digital Media System in the UK. They also produce a number of other publishing integration software products.
You can force a screen redraw in QXP with command-option-period.
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Callas have introduced a pdfInspektor2 Auto/AutoPilot bundle which provides preflighting and conversion to PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 files and automated sorting of PDF files following production parameters such as image resolution, missing fonts etc. An introductory price is US$1999. More info: <http://www.callas.de/>
9. HINTS
========
Some useful hints from a discussion about handling huge Photoshop files: have a fast HD other than your boot drive for your primary scratch disk, and make sure it's optimized with a huge contiguous block of free space (or better still, use a fast HD as a dedicated scratch disk). And perhaps equally important: unless you're going to be printing from the PSD file in the end, turn off "maximize backwards compatibility" in the preferences. When selected this generates a composite image of the file, in addition to the layers, and really bloats a closed file as well as increasing Save time).
------
In InDesign: If you want to use a new language dictionary in a style, first apply that language to some text in the document. The Language pop-up menus in the styles dialog boxes and the Find/Change dialog boxes list only dictionaries that have been applied in the document, not all the installed language dictionaries.
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In QuarkXpress to avoid a part of a word falling on a line by itself, you could export text with XPressTags and search for all punctuation + paragraph returns and replace them with the command for no hyphen <\h> following by the punctuation and paragraph return. For example, .^p would become <\h>.^p (in Word)
This places a discretionary hyphen at the end of the last word of a paragraph, which disallows its split. You might have to search also for colons, or period plus closing quotes, and perhaps for spaces after punctuation and before the carriage return.
Similar solutions could be used, or scripted, in other layout programs.
10. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
=========================
If you prefer to use an older version of a browser, try <http://browsers.evolt.org/>. There are over 100 browsers there -- many in multiple versions.
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The monthly PC Graphics Report <http://www.pcgraphicsreport.com> contains concise reports of news, trends, events, products, services and ideas, as well technical tips. It costs US$50 a year for the PDF edition but you can get a free sample. It is almost a PC equivalent of the well known Mac design publication Design Tools Monthly <http://www.design-tools.com> which also has a sample issue for download.
11. LAST WORD
=============
Sometimes we arrive at just the right moment. Cathy Johnson wrote on receiving our previous issue: Just wanted you to know....I had finally decided to incur the repair fees on our LaserJet 3100 multipurpose printer due to multiple feeds - then I received your last newsletter with just the information I needed. I sent away for the free separator pad, and now the printer is running perfectly. Thank you so much!
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Jane Krate Duda wrote from Vermont, USA: "Gordon, keep it coming. Format is one of my informational mainstays, and I really enjoy seeing it in my inbox each month. I have followed links, read "cover to cover" (or perhaps end to end is a better way to put it), and saved numerous issues. I only wish I had a few extra hours in my week to learn more about scripting. One day...
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All Format subscribers can get a 10% discount on any of our books. Quote the voucher number of 11204101. If ordering on our web site, enter this number in the voucher box and hit the recalculate button; your discount of 10% will be shown when the page is revised. See <http://www.worsleypress.com/wpstore/>
Gordon Woolf
The Worsley Press
Hastings, Australia.