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Topic: Re: Acrobat 6.0/4.0 and Mac-Windows problems.
Conf: (P-PDF) Mac Issues, Msg: 107674
From: gvirsik
Date: 3/15/2004 07:10 PM

Dear Leonard,

At 01:45 PM 3/14/2004, p-pdf-mac-issues Listmanager wrote:
I use Acrobat 6.0 with MS WORD X on an iMac with Mac OS 10.3 and Acrobat 4.0 with MS WORD 98 on a PB400 with Mac OS 9.2. I created a WORD X document on the iMac with the CE (Central European) fonts, and used various ways to create a PDF file. With Palatino CE embedded I could never make the file smaller than 900 K.

Without knowing what the "various ways" you used were, it's hard to say if you've done anything incorrectly or not. I would esp. look at your Job Options in Distiller/Adobe PDF printer and make sure you have font embedding AND subsetting enabled...

Thank you for the prompt reply. Perhaps I should have made it clearer that I have two problems:

(1) When the MS WORD X file contains the character "?in Palatino (CE or not) the Windows version (with Reader 5.0) of the PDF file gets corrupted as described before (the accented "i" - opt e + i - causes the preceding characters in the word to show in a generic font, while the rest of the word is replaced by big blank spaces). You can verify it yourself. Also, when creating a PDF file from a simple TextEdit document, this character in Palatino does not show when opened in Windows although in this case it does not mess up the whole word, just replace the "?by a blank.

(2) PDF file created in Acrobat 6.0 is two huge. I obtained the 900K using a Setting that was built on Smallest File Size, the only changes being the embedding and subset embedding of the four Palatino CE fonts, and the change of the page size to A4. With Standard setting it is even 1.3 Mb! I have now mimicked the Distiller 4.0 setting, creating an Acrobat 4.0 Setting Acro Distiller 6.0. This included "Subset all embedded fonts below 100%". The PDF file is 508K but Palatino CE is replaced by a generic font. Amending that setting to "Always embed" the 4 Palatino fonts will show OK on my iMac, however the size is over 900K.

Question: Why does subset embedding take care of Palatino CE embedding in Acrobat 4.0 but not in Acrobat 6.0, where I had to force the embedding of Palatino CE.

I had to reformat the document to fit WORD 98, create a PDF file using Acrobat 4.0 under Mac OS 9.2. Then the corresponding file was not only smaller (about 630 K) but showed perfectly also when opened by a Windows Acrobat Reader.

What did you use to create the PDF? PDFWriter?

The Virtual Printer contained with AdobePS 8.7 and distilling the ps file using Distiller 4.0. The file is OK and so is the slightgly larger file when using the AdobePS printer in Chooser and creating the PDF file directly. I repeat, in both cases the Palatino CE is embedded and shows perfectly in both the Mac and Windows invironment. Also the size is acceptable.

Because one is a PDF 1.2 document, the other is a PDF 1.5 document - there is more information to be had in the latter.

I found that with PDF 1.5 the file is actually slightly SMALLER.

Question 1: Is there any way of embedding Palatino CE using solely Acrobat 6.0 so that it will show properly in both environments?

Of course.

How? The problem arises also with plain Palatino not only with Palatino CE. However, in the CE case it is more fatal since one does not have many Central European fonts in WORD X.

Question 2: Is there any way to get closer to the size 300K , with Palatino CE embedded, directly from Acrobat 6.0 without reformatting for the Mac OS 9.2, WORD 98 and Acrobat 4.0 running laptop?

Two suggestions::

1) Use the PDF Optimizer feature of Acrobat 6 and set the compatibility setting to 1.3.

I found that with PDF 1.2 the file is actually slightly LARGER.

2) Try a 3rd party PDF reduction tool such as PDF Enhancer (http://www.apago.com/enhancer.html)

I shall, but does this mean I need to purchase another software in order to get the same results as with the old, reliable Acrobat 4.0? I have been publishing a 12 page quarterly for a couple of years from the 9.2 environment as described above and I had never any problmes with the size nor complains from Windows users. Only when I switched to Acrobat 6.0 do I get these problems with my quarterly created in MS WORD.