[XeTeX] Printers & PDFs created by XeTeX

[Jonathan Kew]

On 23 Jul 2007, at 11:33 am, Michael Elphick wrote:

> I am in the process of editing & typesetting with XeTeX a short
> booklet, and am also considering (in the future) a larger book. Both
> will be printed by a small local press shop, and I am planning to
> deliver the copy as PDF files.
>
> My query is whether the PDFs created by XeTeX (using TeXShop on an
> iMac running Mac OS 10.4.10) are likely to be acceptable for this
> purpose?
>
> I realise that the simple solution is just to try it, but any advice
> would be welcome ...  Adobe Reader shows the 'PDF Producer' as 'Mac
> OS X 10.4.10 Quartz PDFContext', and 'PDF Version' as '1.3 (Acrobat
> 4.x)'

I have occasionally seen problems with XeTeX-produced (well, actually  
Quartz-produced) PDFs on some PostScript (or maybe it's PostScript- 
clone) printers, usually related to complex font handling. You should  
certainly check a proof generated by the final RIP, as PDF is not  
always as reliably portable in practice as in theory.

In the event you have any kind of problems, one trick that might help  
is to use xdvipdfmx rather than xdv2pdf as the PDF-producing back- 
end. (This has been discussed on the list previously.) I suspect that  
xdvipdfmx's output may sometimes be more robust than Quartz's, as it  
may not use some of the more obscure features of the PDF format.

For most types of document, though, you shouldn't have any problems  
(AFAIK).

JK