PDF/Illustrator Oddity

[AES]

I'd appreciate any educational words on the following PDF/Illustrator
oddity:

I create a more or less full screen table of text and numbers using
Mathematica running under Mac OS 10.3.9; set Page Setup to Portrait;
select the table; and print it to PDF using Print Selection and Save as
PDF. If I open the resulting PDF file in Adobe Acrobat, it looks fine.

However I want to touch it up a bit, so I open the same PDF file in
Adobe Illustrator CS 11.0. First thing that happens is a dialog box
pops up:

Illustrator PDF: Warnings

This document contains PDF objects that have been reinterpreted.

To preserve appearance, some text has been outlined.

OK Cancel

I click OK, the document opens, it looks OK -- but if I Select All
(cmd-A) the Info palette says the document is 125 X 125 inches in size.
On the other hand if I select an invisible box that contains only the
stuff visible on screen, inside the artboard, the Info palette says it's
9.6 X 7.5 inches, which is about right.

Also, it appears that every single text character or digit in every word
or number on screen is now a separately selectable object (which is not
a problem, for me anyway, but interesting).

So, I do a little editing -- change colors of some of the text, etc --
then Save or Save As the document as a new Adobe PDF file, and open the
new file in Acrobat. Document Size is now 125 inches square; entire
table is now a tiny object on screen; I have to go to 1000%
magnification to even see it (after I find it).

The workaround -- discovered after considerable hassle -- is: Upon
opening the PDF for the first time in Illustrator and seeing its size as
125 X 125 inches, use the Select >> Object >> Clipping Masks menu
command and delete whatever it is that is thereby selected (much of it
apparently off screen) using cmd-X. If you then do a Select All
(cmd-A), the Info box now says 9.6 X 7.5 inches, and all is well from
then on.

And for any Mathematica gurus who may have gotten this far down: I can
Export[] graphics objects (Plots, etc) directly to PDF files just fine.
Any way to Export[] a Table to a PDF file under notebook control?

[ragfield]

AES wrote:
> And for any Mathematica gurus who may have gotten this far down: I can
> Export[] graphics objects (Plots, etc) directly to PDF files just fine.
> Any way to Export[] a Table to a PDF file under notebook control?

By "Table" are you talking about a GridBox? You can do this by
wrapping the box structure in Graphics[Text[DisplayForm[...boxes...],
{0,0}]], like this:

Export["/tmp/GridBox.pdf",
Graphics[Text[DisplayForm[GridBox[{
{"1", "0", "0"},
{"0", "1", "0"},
{"0", "0", "1"}
}, RowLines -> True, ColumnLines -> True]], {0, 0}]], "PDF"]

-Rob