[texworks] Typesetting to a postscript file (not to PDF)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 26 Dec 2009, at 13:35, David Perry wrote:

> When using TeXworks, how would I typeset to a postscript file (which I would then process with Acrobat Distiller)?  I think I need another option in the Typesetting menu, in addition to XeLaTeX or pdfLaTeX, but am not sure how to get that.  Normally I typeset to XeLaTeX, but I am having a problem with PDF security settings.  I might be able to control this better if I created the PDF directly with Acrobat.
> 
> This PDF security issue is not strictly a TeXworks problem, but if anybody knows a better answer I'd appreciate it -- I have not found the solution elsewhere.
> 
> Here are details:
> 
> I have MikTeX 2.7, with all files updated using the MikTeX package manager. Adobe Reader 9.2 tells me that my PDFs were produced by MikTeX sdvipdfmx(0.7.3 svn 811).
> 
> I want to send out a PDF for review, but Adobe Reader tells me that commenting is not allowed (Document / Security / Show security properties). And, in fact, if I request that the commenting toolbar be shown while viewing the PDF, Reader won't.
> 
> Finally I got access to a machine with the full version of Acrobat, which tells me that there are no security settings in my PDF and that commenting is allowed (along with everything else).
> 
> So what's going on? What controls the security settings when I generate my PDF? I am using hyperref to set PDF keywords and so forth, but none of these properties overlap with the ones shown by the security properties in Adobe Reader; I also looked at the hyperref docs and found nothing about setting security. Is this caused by the MikTeX PDF driver? In my PDF, most things are allowed, but commenting, document assembly, and signing are not.
> 
> Thanks- David
> 

AFAIK, the commenting feature in Reader can only be enabled when creating the PDF using Acrobat, not other PDF generators.

But xe(la)tex does not have a way to generate postscript directly (there is no xdv-to-ps driver), so your only option is to generate PDF from there.

What might work is to "print" the xelatex-generated PDF to a PS file using, for example, a ghostscript-based tool (I don't know exactly what's available within miktex, or other Windows-based packages), and then re-distill this with Acrobat. (Though I suspect things like hyperlinks may not survive this procedure.)

(If you don't need xelatex features such as unicode and font support, then you can use (pdf)latex in dvi mode and the dvips driver; there have been previous discussions on the list about setting this up within texworks, as there's no predefined setting for it at present.)

JK