Printing to PDF

Tony,

I installed Adobe Acrobat 9 PRO on the same file server which is running the Print Distributor software and addedd the distiller action to it. The first command will write a file and the second action is the distiller.

The first action will write a file to the correct directory, but the Distiller action produces no errors and no PDF file.

Any ideas?

Kindly advise.

Thank you very much.

Narciso.

Narciso,

If Distiller fails you should see a .log file written where you expect the PDF to be, this might give you a clue.

Also look in the Print Distributor log, there may be an entry there.

The most likely reason it isn't working is if you are not using a PostScript driver, Distiller requires PostScript output to create a PDF.

Tony,

There are no error messages anywhere, inclusive of the log within print distributor. There is no .log file produced either in the intended destination as well.

Also, the driver being used is an hp 4000 Post Script Driver.

Any other ideas?

Kindly advise.

Thanks Tony.



Narciso.

Tony,

I went back to check the Print Distributor Log File and now it displays the following;

03/02/2009 16:03 Timeout creating PDF file
03/02/2009 16:08 Error creating PDF: \\mhmds01\CollShare01\MARS_MH5CT\MH5CT2009020315.pdf
03/02/2009 16:08 Failure invoking FileToPDF on Distiller, Distiller processes terminated in .\source\actions.cpp at 1214
03/02/2009 16:13 Timeout creating PDF file
03/02/2009 16:18 Error creating PDF: \\mhmds01\CollShare01\MARS_MH5CT\MH5CT2009020316.pdf
06/02/2009 09:30 Failure invoking FileToPDF on Distiller, Distiller processes terminated in .\source\actions.cpp at 1214


This means that it is taking extremely long to error out and provide the error information; note that several errors were from 2/3/09.

Any ideas?

Kindly advise.

Thank you.


Narciso.

Print Distributor launches another process to call Distiller, if that times out after five minutes you will get a different message so the times on these log entries are accurate.

What version of Print Distributor and Windows are you running?

Tony,

We are using Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition Service Pack 1 and Print Distributor Build 4.1.1583.

Let me know what you find.

Thank you.

Narciso.

You need to change the Print Distributor service so it can interact with the desktop.

You can change this in Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services, double click on the Print Distributor entry and go to the logon tab.

You will need to make sure there are no copies of distiller running in the background and the first time you print you will have to go to the physical machine and answer Acrobats registration dialog.

The latest version sets this flag by default but I'm not sure it will change with an upgrade.

Tony,

Thanks for the information; that worked fine.

Now I have another issue; is there a way to print to PDF where the file is continually added to, such as when you are writing to a file and each print out is added to the end?

Kindly advise as this would be a huge assistance to us.

Thanks Tony.

Narciso,

Not at the moment although there are quite a few command line tools for appending PDF's, I'm sure you could call one of these using the Run Program action in Print Distributor.