Preview and pstopdf suddenly failing with PS files

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Level 1

6 points

Preview and pstopdf suddenly failing with PS files

I have a bunch of PostScript files from various sources, and they used to work fine when I fed them to Preview or to pstopdf (for the apps that don't grok PS). But for the last few days, I've been seeing sporadic failures with the message "%%[ Warning: Empty job. No PDF file produced. ] %%" appearing when I try some of the files with pstopdf. Preview flashes some message in a popup that I can't read because it disappears instantly and is replaced with a little window that says The PostScript file "FileName.ps" could not be converted to a PDF file (Where FileName varies, of course).

I looked around the apple discussion forums, and didn't find anything. I googled the message, and it got lots of hits, most within the past few months, but it's mostly questions with no answers.

Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas what it's trying to tell me? What's a "job" in this message, and how can it be empty? The input *.ps files definitely aren't empty. I copied them to my linux box and to an older Powerbook, where they seem to work fine. The old PG's pstopdf converts them to PDF without complaint, while this new Macbook Pro complains that maybe 1/2 of them have "empty jobs".

This is a Macbook Pro with OS X 10.5.7 and Software Update says everything's up to date. (I don't know how to tell when the last update actually happened, and it does seem likely that that's when the problem started, though I don't have any good evidence and it just might be a coincidence.)

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on May 19, 2009 9:02 AM

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Answer 1

May 19, 2009 11:20 AM in response to jc1742

Have you tried repairing permissions after the update? Also, is there any output in Console, the main log or the CUPS logs, when this fails?

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Answer 2

jc1742 Author

Level 1

6 points

May 19, 2009 1:16 PM in response to John Blanchard1

I hadn't tried the "repair permissions" thing, because the hundred or so times I've followed that advice in the past, it has never once fixed anything. But I tried it again just now, and it's consistent: It reported three permission changes, which didn't seem to be anywhere relevant to the problem, so I tested it. The "%[ Warning: Empty job. No PDF file produced. ] %%" problem was unchanged.

I do usually have a Console window on the screen. It shows no new messages when the warning appears. I just tried again (after repairing permissions); I cleared the Console log window, ran a make command that attempts to convert a set of .ps files to .pdf, and no messages appeared in the Console window.

Any other ideas?

One thing that might be significant is that the message consistently shows up for the same .ps files, but not all of them. But when I copy those .ps files to the other handy systems (my old PB and a fairly new Ubuntu linux system), the library pstopdf commands on both systems handle all the .ps files without problems, and the resulting .pdf files display and print fine. So whatever it might be is local to the Macbook Pro with everything up to date.

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Answer 3

May 19, 2009 5:43 PM in response to jc1742

jc1742 wrote:
This is a Macbook Pro with OS X 10.5.7 and Software Update says everything's up to date. (I don't know how to tell when the last update actually happened, and it does seem likely that that's when the problem started, though I don't have any good evidence and it just might be a coincidence.)

The 10.5.7 update does contain a new version of Preview and a new version of /usr/bin/pstopdf. I am not sure if Preview uses this pstopdf to convert PostScript files to show on the screen or whether it uses filters in /usr/libexec/cups/filter.

You could manually extract the /usr/bin/pstopdf file from the OS X 10.5.6 combo updater using Pacifist. You would probably want to extract it to your Desktop to keep things straight. If you try converting your PostScript files manually from that version of pstopdf, you could see if it is the culprit or whether something else changed during the OS X 10.5.7 update.

Matt

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Answer 4

May 20, 2009 9:25 AM in response to jc1742

Any other ideas?

Matt's idea above of reverting to the 10.5.6 pstopdf sounds promising.

One thing that might be significant is that the message consistently shows up for the same .ps files, but not all of them. But when I copy those .ps files to the other handy systems (my old PB and a fairly new Ubuntu linux system), the library pstopdf commands on both systems handle all the .ps files without problems, and the resulting .pdf files display and print fine. So whatever it might be is local to the Macbook Pro with everything up to date.

Were these problematic files created differently than the ones that don't fail? Is it possible to get a copy of one of the "bad" PS files? Thanks.

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