On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:22 PM, John Culleton
On Wednesday 26 August 2009 17:29:20 Hans Hagen wrote:
John Culleton wrote:
PDF X/1a:2001 is an old pdf standard still required by some important American printers. Han The Thanh et al. has created a package for pdfLatex. I wonder if there is a route to this output using Context?
it depends ... what do validators report?
Hans
To satisfy some US printers (e.g., LSI) the file must actually meet the pdf/X1a:2001 standard and the file must be labeled as such internally. It is not difficult to modify the file to pdf 1.3 format which is essentially the same thing as pdf/X1a. But the internal labeling is the problem. The standard solution is to run the file through Acrobat Distiller. But that is not an Open Source product. http://www.ghostscript.com/ http://www.pstill.com/
If the file, typically a cover layout, does not meet the above requirements then it is pre-rasterized by the printer prior to prepress in some product or other which degrades the quality of both type and especially bar codes.
It shouldn't. You should use vector type and vector barcode, not bitmap (ie gnu barcode makes eps output) . Eventually you can convert a pdf to a TIFF by yourself with ghostscript -- luigi