PDF/X Problems in Leopard

With Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) some people got problems printing PDF/X files. It seems the people who did not get problems did not print complicated documents.


Problem one - some documents. Certain documents, like the Pages '09 template Word Processing > Reports > Visual Report simply refuses to create any document. You can choose the menu item in the Print dialogue, you can enter a file name, but then you get a message: "Alert Couldn't create PDF/X-3 document."


Problem two - resolution. This limitation was likely here even before Leopard, but it is worth mentioning. PDF/X-3 does not support layers, and that means that the PDF/X-creator has to rasterise vector graphics over pictures, like text over shadows. The problem is that Mac OS X rasterizes to 72 dpi, and that is no way good enough for printing on most modern high resolution printers.

The resolution is defined in a Filter in ColorSync (Applications > Utilities > ColorSync Utility). Go to Filters and check the properties for "Create Generic PDFX-3 Document". The resolution is defined next to the "Flatten Transparency" checkbox. The annoying thing is that the Filter is read only, so we cannot change the resolution.


What we can do, is to create a copy of the original Filter and change the value there. (Do not try to change the values for Trimbox or Bleedbox. I do not know anyone who has made them work.)

Next, is something you should NOT do. The entry in the Print dialogue to print to PDF-X is defined in /Library/PDF Services. Do not be tempted to change any of those entries. You will get a warning message saying: The behavior of this workflow may have changed because of the reasons listed below. The workflow was saved with an older version of the action "Apply Qua... If you try to resave it, you may break it and stand with one less working entry in the Print dialogue.

Instead, to solve the resolution problem, follow the following steps.

Setup

1. Open ColorSync.
2. Go to Filters.
3. Click on the circled triangle next to the filter Create Generic PDFX-3 Document and select the option "Duplicate".
4. Double click on the name of the new filter and change the name, if you want to.
5. Expand the filter elements and change the resolution to 300 and 300. You do not need to save the changes, but you may want to quit ColorSync and reopen it, to make sure that the change has been taken into account.

Usage

1. Open the document you want to make into PDF/X.
2. Print to PDF (standard PDF).
3. Right click or control click on the created PDF file and select Open With > ColorSync Utility from the pop up menu.
4. In the document window in ColorSync select the filter you created above from the list in the bottom left corner of the window.
5. Click on Apply. (The Filter list will be reset to "None" through some quirk, but do not let that scare you.)
6. Select Save or Save As... from the File menu. You will now have a high resolution PDF/X file. Probably.

Warning: The error handling in ColorSync is abysmal. If you have too complicated a file - for example one that would not even allow you create a low resolution PDF/X file from the Print dialogue, then the resulting file may not be compliant with PDF/X even after the ColorSync treatment. The only way I know of verifying this for sure, is to open the file in Adobe Acrobat and do a "preflight".

iWork '09 and Security

The new version of iWork has a few issues with security that previous versions did not have. Note that I have no personal experience of any of the issues below, but I rely entirely on other sources. Please, use your own judgement when you use the information.

A Trojan called iServices.a has spread with an unofficial version of iWork that can be downloaded from other places than Apple.com. According to Intego, 20000 people have already downloaded the Trojan, but that sounds exaggerated. Once the Trojan is installed, it listens for instructions from a remote server. The remote server could for example ask for your personal address book or other private data, which would be sent without your knowledge.

To see if you have the Trojan, go to /System/Library/StartupItems. If there is a folder there called iWorkServices, the Mac is infected.

To remove the Trojan automatically, download this script at MacUpdate.

To remove the Trojan manually:

1. Open the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
2. Type sudo su and enter.
3. Type your account password and enter. (This assumes you are administrator.)
4. Type rm -r /System/Library/StartupItems/iWorkServices and enter.
5. Type rm /private/tmp/.iWorkServices and enter.
6. Type rm /usr/bin/iWorkServices and enter.
7. Type rm -r /Library/Receipts/iWorkServices.pkg and enter.
8. Type killall -9 iWorkServices and enter.

More information about the Trojan can be found here.

The next security issue is ad.doubleclick.net. Several posters in Apples forum confirm that the iWork applications send information to the advertising company doubleclick.net when the application is launched. It seems like lists of software installed at the computer and the computer model is sent to doubleclick.net without the user's knowledge. Apple has so far not made any comments on this, so we do not know if the information is limited to that, or if other information may be sent under some circumstances.

A serial number is only needed if you buy the downloadable version. If you buy the DVD, you just install it and that is that. This makes it easier to copy the application between machines, and it is likely to increase both the piracy and the usage of the product. There is also a way to hack the trial version to work as a full version, but this is not the right forum to give instructions how to do that.

Finally, iWork '09 includes the possibility to save documents so they cannot be opened without a password. However, Apple has not said anything about what level of encryption is used. The encryption may be very good, but it may also be ridiculously easy to break for anyone with the right tools. We users do not know. For now, I would not recommend anyone to use iWork's password functionality except for harmless documents. Do not use it for bank details, credit card information or commercial confidential information, for example.

All this should remind us that iWork is not just a harmless tool on our harddisks. If one is not careful, one can get into some really delicate situations.

Why did the layout of my old Pages document change?

If you open documents created with Pages '08 in Pages '09, it is possible that the layout does not look the same any more.

One possible error source is a bug in Pages '08, which made some fonts look bigger than they should. There is no known easy way to get the old layout back, but to manually readjust the fonts, playing with size, and line Spacing (set in the Inspector's T pane).

A description of the previous problem can be found here.

How do I change a single file Pages document to a package?

If you for some reason want to change a Pages '09 single file document to a package type document, you can follow these steps.

1. Unzip the single file.
2. Put the unzipped content in a new folder.
3. Rename the new folder to any name with the extension ".pages".

The folder turns into a file which should open fine in Pages.

How do I see what my file contains?

If you want to see the elements included in your Pages '09 file, you can simply unzip it, using the command unzip in a terminal window.

To avoid any accidents with large numbers of files spread in the current directory you can follow these steps.

1. Create a new folder "test".
2. Drag your Pages file to the folder "test".
3. Open the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
4. Type cd in the Terminal and press the spacebar.
5. Drag the folder "test" to the terminal.
6. Hit enter. (This will change the "current directory" of the Terminal to your folder.)
7. Type unzip in the Terminal and press the spacebar.
8. Drag the Pages file to the Terminal.
9. Hit enter.
10. Open the folder "test" in the Finder

The folder "test" now contains all the images and media of your Pages file. The actual text is in a file called index.xml.gz. You can now easily see which images you have, how big they are and so on.

If you want more information about the unzip command, type man unzip in a Terminal window, and press enter. Move up or down in the man page using the arrow keys. Type q to leave the man page.

Before Pages '09, all Pages files were packages. To see the content you would simply right click on the file and choose the option "Show package content" from the pop-up menu.

Even in Pages '09, you can use packages instead of single files, if you go to the menu Pages > Preferences > Save new documents as packages.

iWork '09 released - what's new and what isn't

There is a new version of iWork out there today. This is an incomplete list of new functionality in Pages '09/Pages 4.0:

• Full screen view
• Dynamic outlines
• Mail Merge integration with Numbers
• Support for MathType and EndNote
• A "Share" menu to quickly mail documents to other users or to share them using "iwork.com" or iweb.
• Documents are no longer packages, but "real" files, which more easily can be attached to emails.
• Tables (but not images) in RTF files are now recognised.
• Documents can be password protected.
• Reduce File Size to remove non used data from cropped or shrunk pictures.
• Insert Filename
• Sub-pixel font smoothing seems solved
• A more advanced gradient fill for graphics
• A fix of the problem with exact line spacing.
• Reflections can now be added to shapes.
• You can now add paste tables from Safari.
• The flag "Keep with following paragraph" now works for several paragraphs after each other.
  

The following new languages are added:

• Traditional Chinese
• Danish
• Finnish
• Korean
• Norwegian (Bokmål)
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Swedish

Some issues that are not fixed are:

• Auto-save
• Japanese furigana, vertical script
• Right-to-left writing in for example Arabic and Hebrew
• Support for Open Document format
• There is still no easy way to change default font.
• There is still no easy way to change default dictionary language inside Pages.