atw: Re: Print-ready in Word

Well Peter B.

I see where you are coming from but...

A: Dominic L is not at the print house and is very unlikely to have a direct
connection to their actual printing device.
B: Unless he hurls the file into Acrobat first, he has no way to preview the
pre-press output and print quick in-house proofs (to any available printing
device) as representative tests and samples.
C: The PDF file (unless he archives / compresses the PS file and sends it to
the print house that way) will almost inevitably be a very much more
compact, yet lossless way (when embedding all fonts and using ZIP not
JPEG compression) to have a file that is readily transportable to the
print house, such as an E-mail file attachment. Those printer output
PostScript files can be enormous.

Just think of the Acrobat Portable Document Format (there's something to
be said for that name) as a sort of displayable interpretation of a PostScript
file that doesn't change when you point it at different printer drivers (unlike
Word or many other software applications that sense the driver at hand and
try to modify the file output - fonts, resolution, screening, separations and
pagination - to suit).

A PDF will provide usable and relatively representative proofs to just about
any printing device, without kowtowing to how an application thinks that
device might prefer to behave.

BTW, if one doesn't have an in-house driver for a particular high end
printing device (an unusual state of affairs on the Macintosh platform with
which Dominic L works) I have found that an Apple Laserwriter printer
driver (monochrome or colour, depending on the desired output type)
produces magnificent PostScript output, ideal for sending to many higher
quality commercial printing devices.

Hope that the above addresses your concerns.

Regards,

Michael Granat
Write Ideas
www.writeideas.com.au

At 17:45 18/11/2005, you wrote: 
If you're able to make a .ps file for the postscript printer used at the
print house, wouldn't you just give that to the printer? Why make a PDF
from the .ps? Well, perhaps to check the settings by printing a rough
version locally. But I suspect Dominic is going the PDF route because he
*doesn't* have the PS driver for the print-house printer.


Michael Granat -- Write Ideas*

Plain English Technical Communication.
Advertising Copywriting.
Business Writing.

E-mail:         mailto:writeideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site:               <http://www.writeideas.com.au/>

*Trading As business #0828673K
 Registered (1987) Corporate Affairs Victoria, Australia.

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

E & OE

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