slow pdf creation

[Glenn_DiPaola@adobeforums.com]

I have two macs that are having great difficulty creating a pdf file using the Print method. This is mostly in Quark 6.1, but that is because it is used the most, I have seen the problem in Illustrator. One mac is an older G3 B\W with 700+/- mb ram and one is a dual g4\533 with 1 GB ram.

The process is the usual: select Adobe PDF as the printer, select it in the setup tab in Quark, etc. - all the same as other macs here that do not have the problem. I know there are other methods, but this is the one the designers prefer.

After the print button is pushed I watch it in the Print Center and it goes very slowly, as in 10 minutes for a 32 mb file. Have tried other files and files with no fonts. Same result. Reinstalled Acrobat 6 and deleted every reference I could find to Acrobat and Distiller prior to that. It used to work on this mac just fine. Other similar macs can do this file in less than a minute.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

Just make a postscript file and then drop onto Distiller ....

Jon

[sws@adobeforums.com]

Jon is right. Its probably best to give this a try. Make sure you use the Acrobat Distiller PPD. (Probably a good idea to check which PPD you are using in your Print to PDF path). If you don't mind, please let us know two things after you've tried this: How long it took to create the PS file, and how long it took to Distill the PS file. Make sure you actually time the Distilling process; don't just get the information from the Distiller. Post processing (things that happen after Distilling) can add significantly to the time. May even be the reason things are taking so long.

[Glenn_DiPaola@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for your quick responses. As I said, I know there are other (and better) ways to create a PDF. The designers only want to do it this one way - I'm stuck with that. The other methods (such as you suggest) work normally, time and quality is fine, and that is what they are doing for now, (or using someone else's mac). It is only the Print method that went bad.

I am using the Adobe PDF ppd in Quark\setup. The time I refer to is from me watching the PDF print dialog (in Print Center) count up the bits and bytes, so I am talking 10 painful minutes of Distiller time. On a functioning mac, I can see those bytes climb in big chunks, not the little amounts the problem macs have.

Thanks

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

Glenn,

If you need some documentation - try this:
[url]http://www.certitec.com/quark6woes.htm[/url]

Jon

[Glenn_DiPaola@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Jon. I have tried all 6 methods certitec refers to and all but one works - the one the designers want to use - Print. I didn't know about the Print Styles setup on the postscript output, so I may try that for my own knowledge.

The best result of any method I tried was one I pulled off this forum, setting the "export layout" pref to create a PS file rather than a PDF, and then Distilling that. It was very clean. But that's not going to help me here. I need to get these two macs working like all the rest because that's the way it is here. One method for all.

I'm missing some link in the chain of events that takes place with that particular method. I reinstalled Acrobat and the problem is still there, so it seems to be something outside of Acrobat, but I have no idea what that could be....?

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

OK - have you tried to repair permissions on that Mac - or manually
remove the Adobe PDF printer and then add back in?

We all know there is a serious issue with the PDF port into Distiller
from the print menu - but yours does seem excessive.

Also - update all the way up to 6.03 - the 6.01 update is paramount, but
there were some fundemental changes in general with 6.02.

Cheers!

Jon

[Glenn_DiPaola@adobeforums.com]

I did go through some permissions and make changes where I thought it could matter. I did not update to 6.03, but I will. This one used to work ok on 6.01, and the others are ok with 6.01 or .02. I did remove the PDF printer and everything else that a FIND turned up for Distiller and Acrobat. Then I reinstalled it all. Yes, excessive is the right word. I am near to calling tech support...

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

OK - now we all know your hardware for the G3 is not the best - but you
state this is on both Macs also.

I would maybe take a look at your Distiller preference on the slowest
Mac - ensure that the optimise function in Distiller/job option/General
is turned OFF and try again ...

Jon

[Glenn_DiPaola@adobeforums.com]

It is on the dual 533 as well. I had given up on the G3 working right after it had a near death experience, but then this second mac started up with the same problem.

If you are talking about the "optimize for fast web view" then that's another sad story. I am forced to leave this on to keep yet another group happy. When we e-mail our company clients a pdf, they like to double click the file inside the e-mail to open it. If that optimize setting is not checked they can't do that. They can open the file through Acrobat or Reader manually, but they only want to click it. Funny, huh? That's why the Quark "export layout" as pdf is not an option most times, no clicking on that pdf file either. It's a binary vs. text variation in our e-mailed file. Binary bad, text clicks.
I probably tried it using a job option with that turned off already, but I'll try it again. I'm running out of experiments. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

[sws@adobeforums.com]

If I was having these problems I would try to create a new user account and see if it works better from there. I've seen problems like this crop up with the Distiller that were 'fixed' by creating a new user. My belief is that permissions get out of whack in some accounts that can't be fixed by running the Disk Utility. I have no idea why, and furthermore, I could be wrong.

FWIW - Jon is about as good a help as you'll find and I would exhaust any advice he gives before calling tech support. Certainly a good idea to see if the 'optimize' feature is the problem. Even if you have to turn it back on after you find that it is, indeed, the problem. It could be that the PDFLib is hosed. In that case, you may have to manually go in and uninstall every thing related to Acrobat and then re-install it to get it working better.

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the heads-up Steve .... ;-)

But what is the exact version of Acrobat? Not stated to-date .. also,
are there any external drives attached which might be slowing things
down further?

Maybe time for a full inventory?

Jon

[sws@adobeforums.com]

"Maybe time for a full inventory?"

Exactly what I was driving at. The situation with the other machines leads one to believe there is something system related here. As Jon is well aware, I keep a squeaky-clean image of my OS on another partition. (This is true of any system I am responsible for, and I am responsible for many). When something creepy starts happening, I re-image. I truly believe this is why Acrobat, and all of my other apps, always tend to behave themselves in my case. Of course its true that my other apps are built into my image. Acrobat is not. Acrobat tends to spread itself across the OS quite a bit more than other applications, so, I believe, anything that might go wrong with the OS can have a more immediate impact on Acrobat's behavior than it would with other applications.

[Glenn_DiPaola@adobeforums.com]

I did try the different user account and still had the problem. I have not been able to get back to the mac (in use) to try the optimize off trial, but I will soon. I believe the original troubled version was 6.03 that I deleted (along with all visible program files) and I put 6.0 back on. I will be bringing it back up to 6.03 when I can get access to it.
Thanks again for your efforts. I hope they are not wasted.

[Glenn_DiPaola@adobeforums.com]

OK, the problem seems to be solved. As you suggested, I patched my way up to 6.03 and the dual g4 is back to normal, which is a good thing. The downside is not knowing why it went bad in the first place.

Just to conclude the testing, the optimize being off did not help that problem.

One good thing did come out of it. That method of pointing the Quark "export layout" to a PS file (vs. pdf) really is superior. I'm shocked at how much cleaner the tiff logos are, they look like eps files were used. I may actually be able to sell this procedure on the designers here.

I really appreciate all your help on this - most of all, saving me from a call to tech support.

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

Glenn - thanks for coming back.

Jon