[OS X TeX] Why is pdflatex not good enough?

[Maarten Sneep]

On 8 jul 2004, at 1:27, Sameer Agarwal wrote:

> This is a question that has been bothering me, and Maarten Sneep 
> brought it up as part of the converting pdf to eps thread, why is it 
> that publishers do not want pdflatex output?

My guess: they are not familiar with it. Maybe they had a bad 
experience with an old beta release in the past, and concluded that the 
program was not good. I'm in a position to choose from several 
printers, and I'll continue my search until I find one that can handle 
my output.

> Is it a font thing? My understanding was that PDF embeds whatever 
> shapes it uses in the file unlike postscript, so I would think that 
> PDF is a superior format for communicating documents which will be 
> rendered on different media (screen/printer).

This pre-flighting and checking before actually printing is what makes 
pdf superior to plain postscript, IIUTC. Publishers should be *wanting* 
to receive pdf (instead of PS).

> Is there a way in which pdflatex can be forced to produce output that 
> is better suited to a publisher's needs?

I don't know what these settings-files for Acrobat do, but if those 
settings can be used somehow, then we could just pretend that the file 
was generated in the way they specified... Anyone around with better 
insight into this subject matter? (William Adams?)

Maarten

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