Re: Anyone have experience with PDF/A-1b?

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 2014-10-15 um 19:10 schrieb James <address@hidden>:

>> The reasons they give against „regular“ PDFs are not valid, at least for 
>> LilyPond’s PDFs - I guess they experienced some really bad data (maybe 
>> scanned scores in PDFs, but even that wouldn’t require printing and 
>> re-scanning). Probably they just don’t know what they’re talking about - I 
>> had similar nonsensical requirements from several printshops.
> Some printshop's pre-press setting equipment/software can be very specific 
> when having to deal with PostScript files (including PDFs) and outputting 
> them to plate or film. That's not the fault of the print shops (they are not 
> 'computer' literate as such usually, but know what a PDF file is).
> 
> That's not to say it will be an issue, but it won't hurt to ask why they ask 
> for such specific requirements and glean if it is because they are told to or 
> that is what they always require (which usually indicates the pre-process 
> software they use will check (for whatever it checks for) when processing the 
> files) or if there is a technical issue they can tell you.
> 
> I cannot speak for all print shops but have had experience with malformed PS 
> files in the past when I used to work at a 'printshop'. It can cost a lot of 
> money if a file is processed and the material that comes out at the other end 
> is garbage - aluminium plates or film costs a lot of money for them and their 
> margins are small enough as it is, assuming they are litho printing than just 
> 'laser printing' (even so the ink still costs them money).

Hi James,
of course not every printshop is incompetent. But I’m a printing engineer who 
knows the PDF specs as well as their application in prepress. I used to work in 
printshops and prepress agencies most of my professional life (now 
self-employed), and often had to prepare data for the printshops that my 
customers chose. A big one e.g. requested PDFs as single pages with all text 
transformed to curves, others didn’t want bleed or didn’t manage to keep 100% 
size (because they "printed" to film using Acrobat’s page size adaption), color 
management is over the head of most (I know it’s difficult, but you can’t avoid 
professional knowledge forever) etc. And "of course" they don’t understand the 
error messages of their workflow software … :-(

I stop here since it’s off topic on this list, besides ranting doesn’t help 
anyone ;-)



Greetlings, Hraban
---
fiëé visuëlle
Henning Hraban Ramm
http://www.fiee.net
http://angerweit.tikon.ch/lieder/
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)