[pdftex] pdftex compliance.. (fwd)

Tom Kacvinsky tjk at ams.org
Mon Aug 6 08:46:03 CEST 2001


Hi all,

A response from Gary.  I met him a little over a year ago when I
was working part time for the NSF (he does refer to me being at the
NSF, and that is what I was doing there -- working on FastLane PDF
file problems).

If you are wondering what Append PDF is, take a look at:

    http://www.appligent.com

Anyway, the good news is that pdftex is OK with FastLane as long
as you check out the printability of the entire proposal before
final submission.

Regards,

Tom
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 20:54:33 -0400
From: "Walker, Gary" <gwalker at nsf.gov>
To: 'Tom Kacvinsky' <tjk at ams.org>
Subject: RE: [pdftex] pdftex compliance..

Thanks Tom.  We're currently using Append PDF to handle most concatenation,
and the system is a great deal more versatile than it was a year ago when
you were here working with it.  PDF version is no longer an issue.
Additionally, most common document formats can be converted to PDF on the
fly by our system so a lot of the PDF creation burden has been relieved from
the end users.  That being said, people still make their own PDFs for many
reasons.  As I pointed out, generally, pdflatex is _not_ a problem, but as
with any piece of software other than Acrobat Distiller, I recommend
checking the print function to make sure everything works properly.  In the
most recent CAREER submission we had a lot (on the close order of 250)
proposals come in with problems, and a very large percentage of those seem
to be improperly prepared PDF files which started life as TeX documents.
The biggest piece of advice I can give anyone working on an NSF proposal who
has questions regarding how to handle proposal preparation is this: CALL ME.
The United States government is spending your tax dollars to to pay my
employer to pay my salary and that of my co-workers to answer your
questions.  It's our job.  We're here for you, so please, make use of us.
It'll be easier than getting a call from your program officer because they
can't print your proposal, and probably less stressful, too.

Feel free to copy this to the pdflatex list, and thanks again for fielding
Dr. Subramanian's question in such detail.

Sincerely,

Gary E. Walker
FastLane Help Desk
fastlane at nsf.gov
(800) 673-6188

The NSF FastLane Help Desk operates between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM Eastern
time, Monday through Friday (excepting most Federal holidays).


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Tom Kacvinsky [SMTP:tjk at ams.org]
> Sent:	Sunday, August 05, 2001 11:56 AM
> To:	pdftex at tug.org
> Cc:	gwalker at nsf.gov
> Subject:	Re: [pdftex] pdftex compliance..
>
> Hi,
>
> First of all, I am not speaking on behalf of the AMS or NSF.
>
> I have had some experience with FastLane.  For others on this list, I
> first give a general rundown of the FastLane submission process:
>
> the PI (principal investigator) or someone working on behalf of the PI
> uploads the myriad sections of the proposal.  This includes the
> biographies of the PI and co-PIs (co-principal investigators), the
> budget, the budget justification, letters of support (some institutes
> will give matching funds if the PI receives an NSF grant, these letters
> state that intent), the actual proposal (what will be studied, etc...),
> and so on.
>
> The PI can upload as many times as he/she needs to get the proposal
> uploaded properly.  What this usually entails is getting the files
> uploaded and then checking to see if the *entire* proposal prints
> properly.  More on this below.  Also, this is the part Gary mentioned
> specifially in his message:
>
>     In most instances, pdflatex is useable with FastLane but if you are
>     using it you should be very careful to test the printing of your
>     entire proposal as it can cause concatenation errors when we attempt
>     to put the entire proposal together
>
> The PI has the institute he/she works for actually submit the grant.
> This is just a finalization process.  After this, the PI cannot correct
> their proposal.  Someone at the NSF has to take care of the problems.
>
> The review process starts by the entire proposal being batch printed for
> dissemination to proposal reviewers.  The batch printing starts by
> concatenaton of the various proposal sections.  This concatenation also
> occurs when the PI sees if he/she can print the entire proposal.
>
> This is where the problems start.  Depending on who you talk to, the
> problem is with NSF's concatenation process, or the problem is with the
> section PDF files themselves, or the program that made the section PDF
> files.  In any case, the concatenation process fails for some PDF files.
> The last time I checked, the reason why pdftex generated PDF files fail
> to concatenate is because of different font subsets (in terms of glyphs
> complements, encodings, etc...)  in different files have the same subset
> name (for instance, AABBCC+CMR10).  I currently do not know what the NSF
> is using to concatenate PDF files (I did at one time), so I cannot speak
> as to what the problems are.  In the past, the problems had to do with
> using Acrobat 3.0 based technology to concatenate the PDF files (and to
> be fair, some of the problems also exist in Acrobat 4.0 and later
> technology, and some PDF files are really wacked out).
>
> Anyway, the problems with font subset names was fixed by Thanh over a
> year ago, so I suspect you have an out of date version of pdftex.
>
> If you get the latest/greatest version of pdftex, you shouldn't have
> these problems.
>
> Tom
>
> On Sat, 4 Aug 2001, K. R. Subramanian wrote:
>
> > This is with regard to doing NSF proposals using pdflatex. Is the
> > following from NSF Fastlane Help Desk true? I would have thought that
> > using conversion tools to go from dvi-ps-pdf would be a little less
> > reliable than doing pdflatex..
> >
> > pdftex Gurus, please respond..
> >
> >     -- krs
> >
> > "Walker, Gary" wrote:
> >
> > > Dr. Subramanian,
> > >
> > > We are quite well aware of pdflatex.  It is still very much in
> > > development, however, and in order to insure that the pdfs uploaded
> > > to FastLane are fully compliant with the Adobe PDF specification, we
> > > cannot, at this time, recommend its use.  In most instances, pdflatex
> > > is useable with FastLane but if you are using it you should be very
> > > careful to test the printing of your entire proposal as it can cause
> > > concatenation errors when we attempt to put the entire proposal
> > > together.  Thank you.
> > >
> > > Sincerely,
> > >
> > > Gary E. Walker
> > > FastLane Help Desk
> > > (800) 673-6188
> > > fastlane at nsf.gov
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: K. R. Subramanian [SMTP:krs at cs.uncc.edu]
> > > > Sent: Friday, August 03, 2001 3:14 PM
> > > > To:   fastlane at nsf.gov
> > > > Subject:      update -- using Tex/Latex to produce pdf..
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > These days you can use pdflatex to produce pdf directly from
> > > > tex/latex documents - this is the easiest and most reliable ways to
> > > > produce good pdf.
> > > >
> > > > I think website needs to be updated to include this. tex-dvi-ps-pdf
> > > > is perhaps more errorprone. Plus, pdflatex also will now support
> > > > including image files just as Jpeg..
> > > >
> > > >     -- krs
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Dr. K.R.Subramanian                           Phone: (301) 402-0042
> > > > National Institutes of Health                 FAX:   (301) 402-4080
> > > > National Library of Medicine                  Email: krs at cs.uncc.edu
> > > > Bldg 38A, Rm. B1N30D                          WWW: www.cs.uncc.edu/~krs
> > > > 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894
> > > >
> > > >
> >
> > --
> > Dr. K.R.Subramanian                           Phone: (301) 402-0042
> > National Institutes of Health                 FAX:   (301) 402-4080
> > National Library of Medicine                  Email: krs at cs.uncc.edu
> > Bldg 38A, Rm. B1N30D                          WWW: www.cs.uncc.edu/~krs
> > 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > pdftex mailing list
> > pdftex at tug.org
> > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/pdftex
> >










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