[pdftex] Harlequin RIP 5.3 and PDFTeX

[Jeffrey McArthur]

On Sat, 6 Oct 2001 14:41:11 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:

>Sounds like a RIP issue to me.  If Acrobat is able to make a "clean" PS
>file from the PDF file, and the newly distilled PDF file looks the same as
>the original, then I tend to think the original PDF file is good.

Actually I know the original PDF is not good.  We have the same RIP as at
least one of the printers we work with.  And we know they will would not
install a new version of the RIP software even if it was free since we are
supposedly the only group that produces PDFs that have any problems.

>So you are using a Harlequin RIP.  Which imagesetting device are you using?

It really does not matter.  If the PDF out of PDFTeX will not run through
any level 3 RIP, then we are stuck.

The problem is very political.  A lot of people we deal with want files from
PDFTeX to fail.  They will find any excuse they can to say that PDFTeX does
not produce "press-quality" PDF files.

So far, they have a point.  You cannot send a PDF generated by PDFTeX to a
printer and expect them to be able to print your book with it.  You have to
flip the PDF from PDFTeX back to postscript and then re-distill it to
produce a "press-quality" PDF file.

This is sort of a shame, since now PDFWriter and MS-Word can produce a file
that will go through the RIP without any problems, so Word is now
"press-quality" but PDFTeX is not.