[pdftex] PDF/X1a

[Ulrich Dirr]

On  David Rendon wrote:
> On Feb 29, 2008, at 6:44 PM, John Culleton wrote:
> 
>> On Thursday 28 February 2008 05:31:22 pm John Culleton wrote:
>>> The new LSI printing specs require that a book block be set at PDF/
>>> X-1a or PDF/X-1a:2001, an old standard dating back to 2001. 
>>> Ironically this is necessary for one to use their newest OCE
>>> printer. pdftex files use a different notation, on my copy PDF-1.4.
>>> It may be that LSI is looking for the exact string PDF/X-1a in the
>>> pdf file. 
>>> 
>>> Two problems. First we are dealing with two different notations.
>>> Second, PDF-1.4 may not be correct and PDF-1.5 may be the
>>> equivalent. 
>>> 
>>> Does anyone have any clarification on this?
>> 
>> Further on the above. My source for such things states that the
>> string PDF/X must appear somewhere in the file to indicate
>> compliance with the PDF/X-1a:2001 standard. This does not appear in
>> any of my pdftex produced files. I can of course patch that into the
>> file with an editor but I doubt that would be sufficient.
> 
> John, I don't have real experience with PDF/X, but my understanding is
> that it defines a *subset* of the PDF standard aimed at providing more
> reliable and consistent results when processing and printing the file
> in different systems. I don't think the PDF files generated by pdftex
> are PDF/X compliant, and I doubt just changing a string in the header
> will make them compliant.

I think the pdf files produced by pdftex are quiet PDF/X-1a:2001 or
PDF/X-3 compatible. Indeed it's a problem to tell pdftex to write the
necessary formal information into the file. The proposed way (by Siep
Kroonenberg if I remember correctly; http://tex.aanhet.net/overprint/
maybe also of interest) -- and which I tried myself -- was:

\pdfinfo{
   /Title    (222 Opening traps after 1. d4)
   /Author   (Müller/Knaak)
   /Subject  (Progress in Chess)
   /Keywords (Edition Olms, Müller, Knaak, Opening, Traps, Chess, Volume
2)
   /ModDate  (D:\pdfdate)
   /Trapped  (False)
   /GTS_PDFXVersion (PDF/X-3)
}
\pdfpageattr{/MediaBox [0 0 595.276 841.89]
             /TrimBox [56.69 80.75 538.58 761.065]}
%/CropBox [] /BleedBox [] %%% not necessary to set
\pdfoptionpdfminorversion=3 % depends on pdftex version
\pdfcatalog{
  /OutputIntents [ <<
  /Info (none)
  /Type /OutputIntent
  /S /GTS_PDFX
  /OutputConditionIdentifier (OFCOM_PO_P1_F60_95)
  /RegistryName (http://www.color.org/)
  >> ]
}

((put in the preamble))

Nevertheless when preflighting the document I always got two errors:
-- PDF/X label missung or incorrect
-- Trapped key not of type name

Unfortunately I never solved this ...

Best regards,
Ulrich