[cups.general] OT: PDF versions (was: Problem printing pdf document)

[Ambrose Li]

On 07/09/06, Johannes Meixner <jsmeix at suse.de> wrote:
> Seriously:
> Ask the software vendor of the pdf generator which PDF level
> the generator generates and if the PDF level can be choosen.
> If it can be choosen, perfer a lover PDF level.
> If a too high full-featured-topmost-high-level-make-user-happy
> PDF level is used, existing software may not yet be able to
> process its topmost-high-level-make-user-happy-features.

Seriously, this will not solve anything.

I did some testing on PDF versions when someone complained about not
being able to view the PDF's I made; that was maybe a year or two ago.
And the results are not pretty: No version of PDF can be guaranteed to
be correctly viewed in all versions of Acrobat PDF Reader.

Adobe's own generators seem to do better, for whatever reason. I don't
know why this is the case, but I don't think this is good news either.

And btw, whether the file can be correctly interpreted by Ghostscript
has nothing to do say about whether the file can be read elsewhere.
There are PDF files that can be read by Ghostscript but not Acrobat
Reader, and vice versa. My latest accidental discovery is that if we
use Ghostscript to generate PDF, the result may be viewable on both
Ghostscript and Acrobat Reader, but not Apple's Preview. PDF being
"portable" is just a joke.

-- 
cheers,
-ambrose