Problems with "Save as function"

[Ridder, Fred]

First a general rant:

In order of reliability (according to my own experience), 
there are at least five good methods for producing PDFs
from FrameMaker:

Best: If you have Acrobat Professional, set up one or more 
watched folders. Attach an appropriate set of Distiller job options
to each watched folder. Then use the Adobe PDF printer driver
(important point!) to print your document or book to a 
PostScript file in the "In" folder within one of the watched folders. 
If Distiller is running, it scans the watched folders periodically 
and distills whatever PS files it finds and puts the resulting PDF 
in the "Out" folder.

2nd best: Print the document/book to a PostScript file using 
the Adobe PDF printer driver (again, this is an important point).
Then distill the file manually by opening the PS file from Distiller.
This method lets you see for sure what Distiller job options are
currently selected.

3rd best: Print the document/book to the Adobe PDF virtual 
printer. This creates a PDF directly using whatever Distiller
job options you have set as the default for the Adobe PDF 
printer instance.

4th best: Use Save as PDF. Adobe *mostly* fixed this function
as of FrameMaker 7.x, but you're still relying on a lot of separate
factors to all be in agreement. This method does so much of 
its work "behind the curtain" that you simply cannot see in
advance whether everything is set up properly.

But even though Save As PDF is the least reliable of the 
methods I'd ever recommend, it is probably not the cause 
of your current problem.

The first thing you should look at is whether you have the 
option for "Tagged PDF" turned on in the PDF Setup dialog.
Unless you *know* that you *need* to generate tagged
PDF, turn the feature off. In my experience it is the most
common cause of the type of problem you describe. 

Other than that, was there any page number reported in
the error message? Does the Distiller log file show that 
any pages were processed before the error occurred? 
If so, there is likely something on that page (or the 
next page from what's reported in the log file) that 
Distiller doesn't like. If you can't find any page numbers 
in the log file, you may need to use a "reduction by halves"
method of printing ever-smaller page ranges to zero in 
on the offending page(s). 

My opinions only; I don't speak for Intel.
Fred Ridder (fred dot ridder at intel dot com)
Intel
Parsippany, NJ



-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+fred.ridder=intel.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+fred.ridder=intel.com at lists.frameusers.com] On
Behalf Of Ariel Kahana
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 7:00 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Problems with "Save as function"

Hi there,
 
I have been working on an FM document for over year. I am using FM 7.2
and
Acrobat 7.0 distiller to create PDFs. 
 
As of this morning I am unable to produce PDFs using the "Save as PDF"
option. 

I get the following error message:

%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: pdfmark; ErrorInfo: StRetrieve
P279585 ]%%
 
Stack:
/StRetrieve
/P279585
/StoreName
-dict-
 

%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
 
At the same time I cannot use Distiller to produce a .ps file from a PDF
 
Fortunately I can still produce PDFs (lower quality though) when
printing to
PrimoPDF. 
 
Any suggestion or tips?
 
 
Ariel 
(Feeling like a complete schmuck)