What is the optimum way to generate PDF?

[Fred Ridder]

Garnier Garnier wrote:

> I would like to know as to what is the optimum way to generate PDF (300+ FM books with 700 pages (average) each? Many have pointed out that Save As PDF is not the ideal way of converting to pdf. I have automated the process using Framescript. Now I do not have the time to update the script because of my tight schedule. Besides the script includes other process as well.
>  
> Watch folder is not the optimum way either to me because I have to distill to ps manually.


You are missing the whole point of watched folders. If you have Acrobat Pro (Acrobat Standard Edition does not support watched folders), whenever Distiller is running it periodically (by default, every 30 seconds) checks each watched folders to see if there is a PostScript file there. If it finds one, it *automatically* distills the PostScript to PDF, using either the default Job Options or the set of Job Options specifically associated with the folder. If you (or your script) start Distiller before the script produces any PostScript output files and you simply leave Distiller running in the background while the script puts PostScript files in the watched folder as it produces them, the end result will be a folder-full of PDFs with no further action on your part. In other words, *automatically*. 

Or you can let the script generate all the PostScript files into the watched folder first, and then just launch Distiller and let it do it's thing on the files it finds waiting for it. One double-click on an icon (or one line in a batch file) to launch Distiller is not a heavy burden on the operator and certainly doesn't qualify as having to distill manually. 

-Fred Ridder