Blank output when printing

[Jay]

Hi,

I have some very old interleaf documents I'm trying to print (to pdf) but
the output is always completely blank. The docs were created with interleaf
4 (I think) and I can read and edit them in DOS interleaf v.5. I've also got
Quicksilver v1.5 and can see them there ok as well but the same thing
happens when I print. The docs are mostly line drawings but with some text.

Thanks for any help.

Jay.

[Randyl]

Greetings:

I strongly suspect that the problem may be some old fonts that may not
be converting. If you just opened these old I4 documents under
QuickSilver and then closed them and then tried to print then the files
were never really re-saved which may account for the problem. Try
re-saving the document(s) in question before printing.

One thing you can do is save the documents as ASCII format and open
them with a text editor and check the section <!Fonts at the top of the
document. If you see something screwy in that section you may need to
change it before printing.

Another thing is you can do because you still have I5 is to open them
under Interleaf 5, print the file to PostScript and then run it through
Acrobat Distiller. If you then open the resulting PDF file and still
have problems then the problem is likely the legacy Interleaf font
somewhere. The usual culprits were Swiss and Thames that need to be
changed to Helvetica and Times. If your documents have these legacy
fonts (and there are others) then their names will appear in the
<!Fonts section of the ASCII document. If you change the name directly
in the <!Fonts section this technique may not actually get all
occurrences if your document has the old text strings; it would work
for all components and all microdocuments, but not text strings. If
these two legacy fonts are the only problem you detect then be aware
that I have a Lisp script that will process an entire book to change
these fonts to the others I mentioned above. If you need or want this
program I can send it to you for the asking. Just drop me a note at
ran...@ix.netcom.com.

If you still have problems then re-save all documents, including any
catalogs, in ASCII format, IDU the beast, stick the resulting IDU file
into a ZIP file in order to compress it and send it to me. If the size
of the ZIP file is very large contact me before sending it so I can
show you how to send extremely large files directly from one desktop to
another using a technique which bypasses your ISP's mailbox limitations
completely.

Best regards,
Randyl Kent Plampin