[OS X TeX] Acrobat Distiller

[Ross Moore]

Hi David,

On 20/01/2010, at 11:18 AM, David Arnold wrote:

> All,
>
> Does anyone know how to call Acrobat Distiller from a terminal  
> window (i.e. from the command line or a script) on the Mac?

Well certainly you can "launch" Distiller from the command-line;
e.g.

   /Applications/Adobe\ Acrobat\ 9\ Pro/Acrobat\ Distiller.app/ 
Contents/MacOS/Distiller &

launches the application in the background.
You then use it like any other GUI/Mac program.


But you need only do this once.
It has a "Watched Folder" feature which allows you to setup a folder.
When .ps  files are copied or saved into this folder, then
Distiller detects this, and automatically starts processing.

When completed, the .pdf  is placed into a neighbouring folder,
or wherever else you specify.

Thus, assuming Distiller is running, your command-line utility
just needs to copy a .ps file into the watched folder, and wait until
the result appears in a well-defined place, with a well-defined name.

>
> And if so, has anyone set up an engine with Texshop to call acrobat  
> distiller?

It shouldn't be too hard to adapt the above.
(I've not actually done it myself.)

>
> David.



Hope this helps,

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                       ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
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