Publishing a Hardcover Book from pages

Henrik

Dated 2005 08 10:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn/tn2035.html

The current version of ColorSync v4.5 (complete with all its bugs) dates back to 2007.

Nothing changed with Snow Leopard that I could see despite the supposed massive house cleaning we were promised.

Peter

I keep running into trouble finding a site which will easily accept the PDF created by Pages (Lulu, Viovio, Blurb).

What, precisely, do these print providers identify as the problem with Apple Pages? If possible, post the URI's for the problems identified by the print providers.

/hh

PS Here is a lulu reference that may be helpful.

It is difficult to determine whether the endless discussions of lulu have to do with host-side or RIP-side processing. Since the print provider says nothing about the RIP-side processing, other than that it is done by 'partners', those fine folks might be working with poor procedures.

That said, there are problems with Apple's PDF, but they are not necessarily the problems that posts point to. Below a link to Leonard Rosenthol on PDF services implemented in OS X 10.0 and up. Rosenthol is now Adobe's PDF standards evangelist.

/hh

http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/pdf2k/01W/rosenthol_macosxpdf.pdf

Nice read, but the key bits are missing such as the partial overlap in Quartz between the pdf 1.2 & 1.3.

What does that mean in real life?

As to fixing things in Apple's .pdf output. The default Quartz filters are damaged and have been supplied damaged for how many OSes now? That is easily fixable and the fact that it is not indicates disinterest on the part of Apple.

As is the absence of any apparent work on Colorsync since the early days of OSX.

You can knock on the door and ring the bell all you want but nobody's there to answer.

P.

the partial overlap in Quartz between the pdf 1.2 & 1.3.

For instance, Rosenthol writes that world scripts with RTL Right To Left directionality are unsupported. OK, that's his headline, but what of the body copy?

Rosenthol does not write what user model Adobe is offering the developer market, and what the pros and cons of that user model may be. Adobe has offered the developer market other user models at other points, re-encoding of Type 1 for PSL1 (rejected), GlyphShow for PSL2 (rejected), and CID-keyed (rejected, at its simplest a CID-keyed PostScript font has no support at all for kerning in the Latin script which makes this font model useless for us, but not for Hanzi and Kanji which does not need kerning). Reading technical 'disclosures' and 'straight talks' and 'white papers' is as much about reading the lines as reading between the lines.

As to fixing things in Apple's .pdf output.

IMHO, if the Generic CMYK Profile is now TR001 for US SWOP (after a lot of hard work to get Apple to abandon a default separation for the defunct Apple Color LaserWriter -:)), then a flattening for 72DPI is non-sense since no frequency algorithm, not even stochastic, will work with that DPI.

You have to ask: is it self-consistent? is it useable by Apple for Apple's own advertising? The answer to both questions is: no. Whether it supports spot colours or device links or whatever else is not on the table - what's on the table is whether what Apple in fact implements will work.

/hh

As is the absence of any apparent work on Colorsync since the early days of OSX.

This is incorrect. The ColorSync Utility is a makeover introduced mid-way between OS X 10.0 and OS X 10.6.

Because a CIE source has to be assigned for a CIE conversion (otherwise you get deviceColour), Apple attempted to have the system level service broadcast the 'working space' profiles for applications.

While this idea would have worked plausibly if Apple had chosen to support ISO 12647, or at least ANSI CGATS TR001 for poor US magasine paper, it did not work plausibly because Apple chose the Apple Color LaserWriter.

This way, when an application set up drawing in the four component model (CMYK, YMCK, KCMY), it set up drawing in Apple's default separation for the Color LaserWriter. This became the CMYK Working Space e.g. in Photoshop.

This separation was bad, even for a canned colour xerographic printer. Xerographic printers are unstable, and to make them stable you need a high black generation. This was so high that details disappeared.

Apple customers and Adobe customers who chose ColorSync Workflow had to pay for the cost of consumables, at worst if they got to press because they were unable to work out the complex configuration for proofing.

So, now ColorSync is no longer the clearing house for default ICC colour spaces to be shared by application software, a task that Adobe uses Adobe software for now, and the ColorSync Workflow concept has been dropped.

Why did this debacle happen? It happened because Apple did not use Apple software to show the advantages of Apple software.

/hh

those fine folks might be working with poor procedures.

I wonder if there would be a viable market for someone to convert books composed in Pages into whatever Lulu and similar services require in order to create the printed versions Pages-using customers want? Plus perhaps a sideline converting books composed in Pages into ePub for submitting to Apple's forthcoming iBooks system...

Henrik

According to the dating on all the software and Wikipedia:

ColorSync 4.0 is the latest version, introduced in Mac OS X 10.1.

As I have previously said the ColorSync forums and any general software info or support has a layer of dust on it that would be the envy of Tutankamen.

Peter

I wonder if there would be a viable market for someone to convert books composed in Pages

Who cares what lulu wants or does not want? In technical terms and in the information processing industry in general, it is irrelevant.

Apple's political problem is that in the business-to-business market, small developers such as iCalamus, an EU company, cannot get from Apple's system level service what Apple says its system level service supports. And in the retail market, Apple's customer's can't get from Apple's system level service what Apple says its system level service supports, either.

/hh

Who cares what lulu wants or does not want?

The person who started this thread, for example, and everyone else like him trying to publish a book.

The purpose of this forum is to help such people, and it would be more appropriate if your postings would somehow contribute to that, rather than just serve as another soapbox for publishing your views on "Apple's political problem" and other topics.

everyone else like him trying to publish a book.

That's what the ISO 15930 PDF/X-3 filter is for in the first place, and proposing to convert Apple Pages PDF jobs into something else for print publishing is about a mile off topic. If an ISO 15930 implementation does not work properly, then the implementer has a problem.

/hh

Tom Gewecke wrote:

those fine folks might be working with poor procedures.

I wonder if there would be a viable market for someone to convert books composed in Pages into whatever Lulu and similar services require in order to create the printed versions Pages-using customers want?

The question is how do you get the file to the conversion service given that we are dealing with people who do not know how to prepare files anyway? Before pdf became the standard, Quark & InDesign files were collected for output. This meant locating all fonts and images used in the document, plus full specification and printed proofs. Hardly anyone had the tools to run detailed checks for resolution and correct color specifications.

To have a 3rd party fill in the gaps when the supplier frequently doesn't know the answers themselves is unrealistic.

Pages has no tools nor checks that would help in this task. It doesn't even have some of the basics such as crop marks, bleeds, spreads and slugs so it is a tall ask for it to have the more technical tools.

Plus perhaps a sideline converting books composed in Pages into ePub for submitting to Apple's forthcoming iBooks system...

Maybe faced with actually producing something themselves with Pages, might focus Apple's attention on all the problems it has caused its users.

Peter

So, that being said, and based upon the discussion thus far, is it fair to say there is no way of publishing my document to hardcover?

Did you read this link you were provided earlier about how people have gone about this?

http://www.lulu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=98229&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start= 0

Page 6 is of course the most recent and the top of that page has a summary of 3 options.

Peter,

I found a work around for Lulu.com. Lulu accepts Postscript files, so under Print > Save As Postscript you can then upload the PS file and see what happens. I have had no problems once I tried this approach using Pages '09.