Strange problems printing mac derived PDF from a PC
Dave Fritzinger
answer to this problem. This has now happened to me twice, so it wasn't
something strange that happened the first time. Here is what happened.
As some of you know, I am a scientist, and I sometimes have to go to
meetings to present my work. I will be leaving in a week for a meeting
in Heidelberg, Germany to attend a meeting, where I will be presenting
a poster. The poster was created in Canvas v.X, a cross-platform
graphics program. I then used the OSX print to PDF ability to create a
PDF file of the poster. Now, at another office of our Cancer Center, we
have an HP Designjet 8000 that was bought for printing posters. I took
the file and emailed it to someone over there, so they could print it
for me. The results they obtained were really strange. It started
printing the poster title just fine, at the expected size. Then, it
printed a small, mirror image of the entire poster on the left side of
the page. This is exactly what had happened when they tried to print
another poster for me a few months ago. Both times, I was able to get
the poster to print properly by loading it onto my iBook, and drive
over to the other office and print it from Preview. Does anyone know
what is going on, and how I can prevent this from happening in the
future? Seriously, I'm not putting down Windows here, I just would like
to find out why this mac PDF file has trouble printing from Windows.
Thanks in advance,
--
Dave Fritzinger
Honolulu, HI
George Graves
"Dave Fritzinger" <dfri...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Actually, it's not the Mac or even Windows that's causing the problem.
It's the damn Canvas program. I've had all sorts of problems with
Canvas-produced art being printed to PDF. Try this. Open the original
Canvas file in Canvas Mac. from the file menu, choose "Save As" and from
file formats choose "PDF." This is different from actually printing to a
PDF file and sometimes yields a file that will print properly from
original Canvas art. Canvas is one of those programs where the
developers like to throw everything in it, including the kitchen sink.
Often they include "features" that don't even work. I remember when
Canvas 7 came out, they included a 3-D extrude feature, but if you tried
to actually use it, it would crash the OS (OS9 days). Canvas is very
useful as a graphics Swiss Army knife, and it has saved my butt many
times. I wouldn't want to be without it, but I also don't use it to
CREATE anything either!
Here are a couple of other work-arounds to try as well:
1) Open the Canvas art in Canvas. Do a "Save As" just as before, but
this time choose Adobe Illustrator as the file format, then open the new
AI file in Illustrator and then produce a PDF from that.
2) Open the Canvas art in Canvas. Do a "Save As" just as before, but
this time choose EPSF as the file format, then open the EPSF file in
Illustrator and try to produce a PDF from that.
One of these should give you a usable PDF file. There are, after all,
more than one way to skin this particular cat.
Hope this helps you out, David.
Snit
gmgraves-256679...@newssvr14-ext.news.prodigy.com on 8/26/05
2:28 PM:
One more suggestion - do a Print, but instead of using the "Save to PDF",
use the "Save to PDF-X".
Let us know how it goes.
--
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Dave Fritzinger
I've had mixed results in Canvas over the years. I've been using it off
and on since before the Canvas 3.5 days, and it was a good program
then. I found Canvas 7 to be a disaster-buggy and constantly crashing.
Since I could get Canvas 9 for something like $50 as an upgrade, I
bought it, and have had pretty good luck with it and Canvas X.
>
> Here are a couple of other work-arounds to try as well:
>
> 1) Open the Canvas art in Canvas. Do a "Save As" just as before, but
> this time choose Adobe Illustrator as the file format, then open the new
> AI file in Illustrator and then produce a PDF from that.
One thing I've seen is that Canvas, in my hands at least, makes really
lousy PDF files if you do the save as PDF. Plus, I don't have
Illustrator, so this isn't that useful for me.
>
> 2) Open the Canvas art in Canvas. Do a "Save As" just as before, but
> this time choose EPSF as the file format, then open the EPSF file in
> Illustrator and try to produce a PDF from that.
Again, I don't have Illustrator, plus, the last time I tried to save as
EPSF in Canvas (9, I believe), I got really strange results.
>
> One of these should give you a usable PDF file. There are, after all,
> more than one way to skin this particular cat.
As I said, the PDF file printed fine when I used my Mac. It just
printed strangely when the file was "passed through" a Windows PC.
Thanks for your help.
George Graves
"Dave Fritzinger" <dfri...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Well, Windows DOES have toxic EPS and PDF support. According to the guy
who wrote Active X (something-or-another StJohn IIRC) once opined that
in order for M$ to fix Windows poor handling of Postscript, that they
would literally have to discard the entire code base and start over from
scratch. I don't know how true that is, but no version of Windows I've
ever used was reliable printing or rasterizing PostScript code, and that
includes XP. Maybe "Vista" will finally put that bugaboo to rest (why do
I doubt that?).
Mike Dee
news:1125094995.7...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
>> 2) Open the Canvas art in Canvas. Do a "Save As" just as before,
>> but this time choose EPSF as the file format, then open the EPSF
>> file in Illustrator and try to produce a PDF from that.
> Again, I don't have Illustrator, plus, the last time I tried to
> save as EPSF in Canvas (9, I believe), I got really strange
> results.
Try printing from Canvas to a postscript file (.ps) then using another
utility to convert that to PDF. Do you have Acrobat Distiller?
--
dee
George Graves
Mike Dee <mik...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Also a good idea.
Mike Dee
news:gmgraves-F8D723...@newsclstr01.news.prodigy.com:
> Mike Dee <mik...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> "Dave Fritzinger" <dfri...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> > Again, I don't have Illustrator, plus, the last time I tried to
>> > save as EPSF in Canvas (9, I believe), I got really strange
>> > results.
>>
>> Try printing from Canvas to a postscript file (.ps) then using
>> another utility to convert that to PDF. Do you have Acrobat
>> Distiller?
>
> Also a good idea.
Another is; Canvas IIRC, has it's own "export to PDF" mechanism (has a
wide range of features including embedding URLs and presentation
creation). David was saying he used OSX to print to PDF. Has he tried
exporting to PDF directly from Canvas with any success?
--
dee
George Graves
Mike Dee <mik...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I asked him that. I don't remember his answer.
Mike Dee
>> Another is; Canvas IIRC, has it's own "export to PDF" mechanism
>> (has a wide range of features including embedding URLs and
>> presentation creation). David was saying he used OSX to print to
>> PDF. Has he tried exporting to PDF directly from Canvas with any
>> success?
>
> I asked him that. I don't remember his answer.
I see (going back over the thread), he said:
"One thing I've seen is that Canvas, in my hands at least, makes really
lousy PDF files if you do the save as PDF. Plus, I don't have
Illustrator, so this isn't that useful for me".
Oh well...
--
dee
George Graves
Mike Dee <mik...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Yep. That was it. "Canvas makes really lousy PDF files." It's true