Changes in Publisher printing, and OS X PDFs

[James Murray]

I'm happy to see native PDF export in AC. It's the grown-up thing to do. But of course, OS X users didn't need it. And if they had left the OS X PDF functionality alone, I wouldn't be complaining. But they seem to have made changes to the way Publisher handles printing, which has broken OS X PDFing.

1. Try using a 'print' publication set to save a PDF, as you can in AC9. It saves each sheet as a one-sheet PDF, writing over the file each time. The result is a PDF of only the last sheet.

That's what I call broken.

2. (Beta folks may find this familiar.) Our plotter relies on a PC print server. In AC9, when printing from publisher, print jobs get logged with the name of the Layout Book, with all the printed sheets showing up as one job. Since the job is named after the project (via the book's file name), it is easy to track the prints for billing.

In 10, each sheet shows up as a separate job, where the name is the name of the layout. Not even the Publisher item, the layout. The layouts are named with the goal of a graceful project index, so they don't have project ID data. (If the publisher item names were used, I could modify those manually, though I wouldn't enjoy it.) So the prints show up in the PC's log as a bunch of untraceable A1-1 First Floor Plan's.

My first question: Does anyone have an app, script, or other solution to help track these prints? Like PlotFlow if PlotFlow could handle files that people actually use.

Note that naming in PDF publication works as it should. Layouts are placed in a folder, and the generated file takes the folder's name. Independent layout PDFs take the name of the Publisher item, rather than the layout. Perfect.

1 & 2 are related: They've changed Publisher printing so there's no such thing as a multi-sheet print job. Why?

So you have to use the Save Files method for PDFs. OK, but uh-oh:

3. For whatever reason, our print server, or the printer itself, is deeply hostile to printing half-size sheets. The process, when printing directly, is prohibitively slow. My solution is to save (via Print dialog) a 50% reduced PDF, and then print that in Preview at 100%, which works great.

But I can't PDF via Print dialog anymore, and I don't see any scaling options for the Save Files method.

Second question: How do we reduce without creating an entire parallel subset?

And I assume if you use any Quartz filter PDF tricks, those are gone too. (I don't, so I can't be sure.)

Summary:

• You can't have a multi-sheet Publisher print job, therefore:

• My print billing is broken, so:

• I have to save everything as a PDF, and:

• OS X PDFing is broken, so you have to Save Files, but:

• The Save Files method is not as robust as OS X PDFing, in that it can't do reductions or apply filters.

Workarounds will be found, as always. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks for listening.

PS, Down the road, not too far I hope, the developers should consider that it's standard practice for all output files to have a project ID, and putting it manually in Publisher, when possible, isn't the best answer. You need some sort of autotext for Publisher output. This wish isn't exactly that, but it's close, so go vote for it.

[SeaGeoff]

Not sure why (or if) the print to PDF had to change. And sorry but I have no solution to the print logging. But half size PDFs should still work. I think you just need to flip your process. Publish a full size PDF then print it half size. BTW I always use Acrobat Reader (not Preview) for this. Version 7 has margin and scaling settings and a little preview in the print dialog that Preview lacks. Make sure page scaling is set to None.

[Rick Thompson]

"James Murray"
But I can't PDF via Print dialog anymore, and I don't see any scaling options for the Save Files method.
[/quote wrote:


humm.. I have no problem printing via print in ox10. Make sure a layout is open. If not, it will assume the open drawing view is what you are after and behave differently. If you open a layout sheet, then you can select the ones to print to pdf and have at it.. with scaling.

If you do it this way, rather than via publisher it will make a book out of the sheets.

[James Murray]

Rick wrote:
If you do it this way, rather than via publisher it will make a book out of the sheets.

That's the thing. Why should Publisher be different? I'm calling it a bug; it isn't the first one where the Pub is concerned.

Geoff wrote:
Publish a full size PDF then print it half size.

Unfortunately, that's what gags the plotter. I need to redouble my efforts to get to the bottom of that issue. I'll see if using Acrobat makes any difference.

[Anonymous]

James wrote:

Geoff wrote:
Publish a full size PDF then print it half size.

Unfortunately, that's what gags the plotter. I need to redouble my efforts to get to the bottom of that issue. I'll see if using Acrobat makes any difference.

James,

It's a bit odd, but should work. Print at 50% from Preview, but instead of going direct to the printer click the preview button, thus opening the new print job in Preview. This should treat the job as properly formated to the reduced size at 100%. I often do this just to make sure that a print job isn't getting "double margined" or the page setup isn't rotated (PDFs from consultants sometimes misbehave).

[Anonymous]

Regarding the gagging of printers on reduced PDF prints, I found a long time ago that selecting 50% size in the Print Setup dialog made for a much longer print job than asking Acrobat to shrink its pages to fit.

Having observed this, we developed a custom page size that produces a 50% print when shrinking our typical sheet size to fit. its close enough to satisfy the tolerance of a wooden scale.

(Forgive me if this post missed some subtlety of the original topic).

[James Murray]

RobertNichols wrote:
Having observed this, we developed a custom page size that produces a 50% print when shrinking our typical sheet size to fit. its close enough to satisfy the tolerance of a wooden scale.

(Forgive me if this post missed some subtlety of the original topic).

Not at all, that's definitely worth looking into.

[Anonymous]

I saw archioffice at the AIA convention and I believe they have an integrated system for keeping track of prints. Of course you would not buy it just for this, but thought I would throw it out there.

[Stress Co_]

James wrote:
I'm happy to see native PDF export in AC. It's the grown-up thing to do. But of course, OS X users didn't need it. And if they had left the OS X PDF functionality alone, I wouldn't be complaining. But they seem to have made changes to the way Publisher handles printing, which has broken OS X PDFing.

1. Try using a 'print' publication set to save a PDF, as you can in AC9. It saves each sheet as a one-sheet PDF, writing over the file each time. The result is a PDF of only the last sheet.

That's what I call broken.

I have the same issue......Printing multi page pdf's by "Printing" a set from publisher and saving as a pdf... net me one pdf of the last sheet.

It would be a little consolation (read: very little) if could create a set of all the pdf's in one folder.

I'm trying to do this by saving the set of layout sheets in publisher as a "File" with the file format set as pdf. The "set" of pdf's are created... but I can't open them. I get the attached Adobe error message.

Am I doing something wrong?

(I'm using Adobe Reader 7.0.8 )

EDIT: When the PDF's are created I get a window that shows they are being created with reasonable sizes. When I check, their actual size is Zero K ??