Weird, sudden problem distilling postscript files

[Tammy.VanBoening at jeppesen.com]

Fred, Karen, et al.

Thanks for all of the responses. sorry I didn't respond earlier, but just 
after I posted this message, my IT guy came down to see if he could 
troubleshoot  - and at least I was able to reproduce the problem.

Long story short -

I will be humming along making PDFs no problem and then boom, all of a 
sudden, the PDF is either gi-normous (like over 2000%) or I get a series 
of really small pages all stacked vertically. Sometimes, it will "reset" 
itself without any rebooting, etc. and other times, I have to either:

1.) Just shut down Framemaker, Distiller and PDF and then re-open all the 
apps.
2) Reboot the whole PC.

I can't find a rhyme or reason to why it happens, when it is going to 
happen, etc. There's no magic number of generating PDFs or one PDF in 
particular that causes it. When my IT guys were here, the saw exactly the 
same thing - he generated the PDF six times in a row with problems, then 
boom, on the 7th time, it generated just fine without any shut down of 
apps, rebooting,etc., but then the next go-round, we had to reboot to get 
a PDF to generate.

Very annoying problem, and very time consuming and hunting all over the 
place (googling, Adobe, etc.), I have found the exact same 
comments/problems but no apparent resolution either than to grit your 
teeth, take a deep breath and reboot. 

I wonder if Adobe will have any comments about this eventually.

Thanks for all the responses - at least what I was seeing was validated by 
others!

TVB

Tammy Van Boening
Senior Technical Writer
Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc.
303-328-4420
tammy.vanboening at jeppesen.com



"Karen Mardahl" <k.mardahl at gmail.com> 
03/22/2006 08:02 AM

To
"Tammy.VanBoening at jeppesen.com" <Tammy.VanBoening at jeppesen.com>, 
framers at frameusers.com
cc

Subject
Re: Weird, sudden problem distilling postscript files






Hi Tammy

Possible solution: Try the simple trick of just shutting down Frame
and Acrobat and Distiller, and then start over.

This happened to me about 1 year ago, but I could not find my internal
correspondance with colleagues about it. Freakily enough, the same
thing happened to me just yesterday. Exact same environment as yours.
(Previous disaster was with FM 6.0, Acrobat 5.0.5, and Win2K.)

My PDF was set to 1496%!!!

I duplicated the problem 4 times. 2 days previous, my PDF was fine.
Only difference was producing a PDF from a Word file earlier that day.
Couldn't understand how that affected it. Went home in disgust. Shut
down apps but did not shut down machine. Came in today, looked in vain
for possible solution in PDF Hacks. Tried once more - and it was
perfect! "Normal" size.

Conclusion: This is why I say just shut down all apps, take a deep
breath, and start over. WHY this happened, I don't know. Unless
somehow, while on the Print dialog in Frame, focus went to the
percentage field and I hit a few keys without noticing before I hit
Print??? Don't think so..

Hope this helps.

regards, Karen Mardahl

On 3/21/06, Tammy.VanBoening at jeppesen.com <Tammy.VanBoening at jeppesen.com> 
wrote:
> Framemaker 7.1p116, Windows XP (with all patches), Adobe distiller 
7.0.7,
> Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0.7
>
> I have been using this setup to successfully create post-script files 
from
> Framemaker source files and then distilling the postscript files into 
pdfs
> for quite a while now. When I create postscript files, I use watched
> folders, the Adobe PDF printer, and my job options are standard with the
> first page to open at the Default Zoom level, page size 8.5 x 11. All of 
a
> sudden, any and every PDF I create this way is beyond hosed.  Each PDF
> opens at some gi-normous magnification (like 2000%) and the graphics are
> completely non-readable. If I set the magnification in Adobe Acrobat to
> 125%, then I get a string of really tiny pages.  So . . .. I had two
> colleagues take the same source files and create a PS file and then
> distill it into a PDF using Acrobat distiller/Acrobat Professional 6.0 
and
> their PDFs are fine -
>
> and if I use their postscript files on my system, I have no problems
> creating a PDF - so obviously something has gone violently and suddenly
> wrong with my Framemaker installation/Adobe PDF printer, right but what,
> and how?
>
> I am stumped.
>
> Thanks,
>
> TVB
>
> Tammy Van Boening
> Senior Technical Writer
> Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc.
> 303-328-4420
> tammy.vanboening at jeppesen.com