.pdf compression

[Gigmeister]

I've finished a music book using Apple Works and Sibelius G7 for the notation examples. When a test copy returned from the printer, my music examples were distorted and moved right in the text. Does Apple Works compress files when creating a .pdf from the Print command and is there a way to defeat this? I'm looking at having to purchase an expensive desktop publishing program if not. Thanks!

[JE]

Gigmeister: I can only make some guesses. I create lots of AW documents with inserted graphics. My suspicion is that the problem is not one of conversion to PDF by AW (or OS X), rather it's one of AW's handling and/or printing of those graphics.

AW 6 has lots of graphics bugs that earlier versions didn't have. I have discovered some workarounds by trial and error. Don't bring any sort of graphic element (tif, EPS, etc.) directly into AW 6. First open the graphic in a different application, such as Text Edit, Graphic Converter, Preview, etc. Then use the copy and paste procedure to paste the graphic in to your AW document. AW 6 will screw up almost anything that's directly "inserted," including (but not limited to) changing graphics (vector or otherwise) into some sort of 200 dpi or less default.

Here's a much easier way, and one that always works with anything-But-you must have Claris 3 or 4 (I haven't tested this on Claris 5). Create your entire document in Claris 3 or 4. This is much faster, as those versions can open any graphic file directly rather than making you go through the whole "insert" routine. After your document is to your liking, simply save the file as usual. Then, use AW 6 to open that Claris 3 or 4 document. Everything will print perfectly, and the PDFs are spot on. And then, you can save the document as an AW 6 document.

What sort of graphic file format did Sibelius export for your project?

Also, was your document created in the "drawing" or "word processing" mode of AW?

My projects are full of graphics of every type, and text. I use the drawing mode-it can be a surprisingly sophisticated page layout tool.

[JE]

And make sure you've got adequate memory assigned to Claris 3 or 4 (in Classic) if you use that approach.

[haumann]

I've finished a music book using Apple Works and Sibelius G7 for the notation examples. When a test copy returned from the printer, my music examples were distorted and moved right in the text. Does Apple Works compress files when creating a .pdf from the Print command and is there a way to defeat this? I'm looking at having to purchase an expensive desktop publishing program if not. Thanks!

I realize this is a little late, but when something like text alignment is involved, make sure that Fractional Character Width is selected in the AW file's preferences.

John@was

[Dan_Coogan]

I did a test in Jan. 2002 to determine how to make the best looking pdf with an Appleworks document.

I have a graphic logo for my business and I wanted to email invoices to clients (to make the process of getting paid that much faster and easier) but when I made a pdf the logo didn't look so great -- It's all in the compression.

Here is the proceedure and the settings I use to create a pdf:
1. Open the document that you want to create a PDF for.
2. Go to Chooser
3. Choose Acrobat PDF Writer
4 Close Chooser window
5. Return to the document
6. go to FILE menu, select PAGE SET UP
7. Choose your PAGE SIZE and ORIENTATION (Portrait or Landscape)
8. THE MOST IMPORTANT ITEM: Click the COMPRESSION button and it brings up a box titled Acrobat PDF Writer Compression
9. Under General - leave all the boxes unchecked.
10. Under COLOR/GREYSCALE BITMAP IMAGES -- choose ZIP
11. Under MONOCHROME BITMAP IMAGES -- leave the box unchecked.

With these settings I turned a 912K document with my logo into a 112K PDF document with very little noticeable loss of quality. Of course the document size will be higher with the addition of more text and graphics. Usualy I email an invoice with the logo and 2 pages of text (front and back) and it ends up being about 173K.

Hope that helps.
Dan Coogan