Previous | Next | (P-PDF) Prepress and Print

Topic: Printing PDFs from Multiple Paper Trays
Conf: (P-PDF) Prepress and Print, Msg: 23190
From: Printer1
Date: 7/2/2001 12:24 AM

Can anyone help with insertion of Paper Tray Select commands via Acrobat, into an existing PDF, in a way that is usable by Print On Demand people?
One of the main limitations we constantly hear about from the Print on Demand market is the inability to run from Acrobat, PDF print jobs that require selection of paper from different trays as the job prints.
The requirements to do this are many and varied. Picking thicker stocks for front and back covers; picking section dividers in either different
coloured stocks or tabbed stock; inserting pre-printed sheets at certain points in the job and so on.
It would seem that this is not a PDF limitation, since there are PDF-based programs, such as PrintShop Mail, that will allow a received PDF to be modified such that tray select commands can be added to an existing PDF to allow those pages to be printed from a particular tray.
But the main program of choice (Acrobat)apparently can't do it, even in version 5. The entire job must be run from the one paper tray.
We assume here that:
* The target laser printer has more than one paper tray
* The associated printer driver allows selection of those trays
* The application provides some method of user interface (pull down menu selection; embedded command string at top of page; print time parameter string etc) to enable those selections to be embedded in the
document and subsequently passed to the print file.

So far as Acrobat is concerned, either it must pick up these tray selection commands from the native application, during the conversion to PDF, or it
must provide the ability for the user to add and/or override tray selection commands to an existing PDF.
For volume Print on Demand users, the first option is a "nice to have" feature but the second option is the MAIN REQUIREMENT. This is so because the document author rarely would be aware which machine the print operator will be using to run the job or in which trays the appropriate paper is located. The print operator is given advice (via e-mail,
over-the-counter job ticket, etc) as to which stocks are to be used for the various parts of the document and then needs to insert the tray commands prior to running the job.
The job then prints in one run, exiting correctly collated, in finished sets, ready for binding.
Can anyone advise how a PDF can be post-processed in this way, to add Tray Selects per page and/or section? Note that we are not talking about different sized pages in the one PDF, but rather use of different paper types (see above) in the one job.
One option would seem to be the "Set Page Action" command under the "Document" pull down menu in Acrobat. This would seem to allow insertion of command strings at the beginning and/or end of a page. Assuming one knows the native codes that are required in the PostScript (or PDF) print file for the target printer, does anyone know how to use the "Set Page Action" or some other Acrobat feature to implement the requirement?