[OS X TeX] blank page output with pdflatex

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 22.08.2005 um 14:00 schrieb Johann Philipp:

> I got the AcuLaser, not the ActionLaser. It's fairly new, and an 
> otherwise well working GDI printer.
> But then, can it be, that there is a problem with the font encoding? 
> For me the most remarkable difference between the working postscript 
> version and the pdf version is, that the embedded font is encoded as a 
> 7bit stream and a 8bit stream respectively.
>

The first problem is that it is a `GDI printer´, as you call it. What's 
true is that it can't do PostScript. You need to install a PostScript 
driver in Mac OS X to be able to print TeX output. Since you can have 
more joy from printing in METAFONT you should adjust METAFONT to your 
printer! (The PK fonts are already pixels, while PS fonts need to be 
rendered into pixels.)

Have you succeeded to print PDF and PS files? If you install 
Ghostscript (from Fink, Darwinports, or an i-Installer) you'll have 
some PostScript examples (in .../ghostscript/<version>/examples/) and 
you'll have a suite of scripts, ps2pdf12...14 to convert PS to PDF and 
to print that.

I don't think that there can be a problem with font encoding, since the 
PS and PDF output files contain a  directive to re-encode the 
PostScript (8a) or otherwise encoded fonts (LM, CM-Super, ...) 
accordingly, which is recorded in the MAP files. Do have another 
printer to check your output? Or another 'software RIP' like 
TeXniscope, TeXShop, Ghostscript to check with?

To find out what is going on you'll need to do some testing, with OT1 
and T1 input and font encodings, with and without umlauts etc. Simple 
words or sentences will do. And if you position the (framed?) test 
texts with some distance between them they'll might fit on one page, 
although printed many times, and might give some clues.

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

   Pete

One doesn't expect governments to obey the law because of some
higher moral development.  One expects them to obey the law because
they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged.
                                                  --Michael Shirley

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