[OS X TeX] pdf files

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 24 mai 07 à 10:05, Peter Dyballa a écrit :

> Am 24.05.2007 um 07:02 schrieb George Gratzer:
>
>> 2. Are the necessary fonts included?
>
> pdffonts

Which is one of the tools shipped with the xpdf application <http:// 
www.foolabs.com/xpdf/>.

There is a Mac port of the tools alone (i.e. without the xpdf  
application) available at <http://users.phg-online.de/tk/MOSXS/>. See  
the xpdf-tools-3.dmg download on that page. From the scarce  
explanations there:

> xpdf-tools-3.dmg
>
>    The non X-windows stuff from XPDF, including pdftotext
>    (see pstotext above). Includes also pdffonts, pdfimages,
>    pdfinfo, pdftops and a sample COCOA wrapper showing how
>    to easily integrate these tools with Finder

Beware though; this port is based on a relatively old version of xpdf.

An alternative is of course Adobe Acrobat Professional. With Cmd-D  
you get a list of all the included fonts, and there should be  
somewhere a menu item or info window returning indications on the  
compression level. There's also a command to (supposedly) optimize  
PDF files, and another command to extract all included images from a  
PDF file (assuming the author didn't prohibit such actions).

That said, just yesterday and this morning I've been fighting with a  
PDF file (abstract submitted to a colloquium a colleague of mine is  
organizing). The two-page PDF file takes minutes to display (even on  
a 4-core MacPro at 2.66 GHz with 2 GB RAM), in both Preview and Adobe  
Reader, and fails to print to PostScript printers (from either  
Preview or Adobe Reader, to either HP LaserWriters 4050 or P3500 with  
80 MB RAM), always ending up in printer errors at some point. It  
finally prints to my DeskJet 5550 at home with Adobe Reader only, but  
the output is not of sufficient quality for reproduction (too dark  
included images).

I imagine the problems arise from either strong compression of two  
included images, or from the software used to produce the PDF file  
(apparently the combination tex + dvipdfm). I finally had to contact  
the author and ask him to send a PDF file prepared with other  
combinations (pdftex, or tex + dvipdfmx, or tex + dvips + ps2pdf), or  
to send the original tex source file and included image files for us  
to process them locally. I'll see what arises from this.

Before that, I had tried any massaging of the author-supplied PDF  
file I could think of:

- Optimize the PDF in Acrobat.

- Use the xpdf tool pdftops.

- Use the GhostScript tools pdf2ps, ps2ps and ps2pdf.

- Use the OS X tool pstopdf.

- Any combination of the above tools.

No luck with any of the above!

Bruno Voisin
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