[pdftex] preflight check?

[Michael Chapman]

On Monday 18 August 2003 8:48 pm, Ben Crowell wrote:
> I've got some self-published books  ...
> and I'm now ready to give it to the
> guy who does my printing and binding for me. 
...
> They're working direct to digital on this, so although they're
> careful workers, it's not like handing off camera-ready copy to them that
> I can go over myself first.

If this is 'printing on demand', then do try and get one copy first. (If it 
is not POD, then how are they doing it? Making a film first -in which case 
you could still get a copy before they start production.)
Rationale: Some things get screwed. Our latest one was the loss of the 
surrounding circles on 'copyright' and 'registered' despite using one of the 
standard ('built in') Acrobat fonts.

The Red Cross have an interesting set of advice (on the web) for their 
workers on printing. For anything in colour (I know you're not) they advise 
physical presence in the printers for the start of the run .... perhaps not 
practical (whether colour or not) but interesting.

Our _main_ problem has been alignments. Using straight PDF to paper (print 
runs upto a 1000 or so (after that we use PDF to film to paper)) we find the 
output is 'all over the place' --as in +/- 4mm. For justified material, 
double sided on normal weight paper this is important.
As our printer does not create PDF we have to do a test run and then come 
back and re-set offsets (and then do another test run).
(And -even if they should be adjusted- those offsets vary from one machine to 
another. So sitting in the computer room at the printing works, one has to 
politely remind them to force the job to a specific destination machine on 
the shopfloor via their intranet!)

Probably more trivial/basic than you wanted, but bitter experience!

Michael Chapman.