Conflicts with Lulu

I just wanted to point out in this thread that at least one user has succeeded using Lulu without problem, according to http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=527315&tstart=0 . The problems may depend on the content of the original documents.

Yes but there are no details as of yet that would explain how. This isn't something that we want to be a guess, we want to be able to reliably produce a print ready document.

That's my issue entirely. I'm working on a number of booklets for our organization that range from 30 to 100 pages. I can't take all the time to write them and then lay them out in Pages and then not have it work. I'd rather use Pages since my workflow is so much faster there, but it seems right now that I can't. After I posted my original post further up this thread and quite a while ago, I did all the research I could and never found any answers. I even posted on Lulu's site with an open question, asking ANYONE who had a successful workflow using OS X, Pages and printing through Lulu, and there NEVER was any response. Never. It's been something like three months since that post.

I had access to Adobe CS2, so I stripped out my text and re-created the layout in InDesign. It printed perfectly--although it took me a long time to do. I'm faster now--practice making perfect and all, but I wish I didn't have to do it this way.

Until further notice I'm using InDesign for the docs we want to print through Lulu. It's too bad from my opinion, but we don't see another alternative.



15" Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4) There's Nothing Better.

Has anyone tried converting Pages to PDF for this either using Acrobat or Adobe's online PDF creation service?

Yes, and it doesn't work. There are two reasons.

1) Converting in that way doesn't remove the metatag that indicates that the document was created in Pages, and since this problem developed, Lulu has "blacklisted" pdfs with this metatag. I guess this is to prevent people from ordering bad print jobs. (I did this first time around. The uploaded .pdf looked perfect online, but what I got from them was gibberish.) Until this problem is resolved they probably won't change this.

2) Converting this way will not consolidate the font sets--which is the problem to begin with. OS X and Adobe handle something callecd subsetted fonts differently. Lulu can't take documents with multiple subsetted versions of the same font. OS X makes a ton of these. In my first document I used only one type face with a few italic characters. My Pages/OS X generated .pdf (even using pdf-x mode) had over a hundred subsetted fonts.

Until these two problems are fixed (and nothing on this forum or Lulu's indicates that it has been or is even being looking into) I don't see things working smoothly.

Thanks very much, Schelske.

In a post script file, you can edit the creator. I'm using that technique now. I'm trying a ghostscript variant that only produces 13 font embeddings. I only use one font in a file but Pages PDF inserts 30-40 embeddings. I'll see if it works. Still this is a really kludgy way of fixing a problem.

Is this problem only with Pages? I intend to do my layout in InDesign CS and do the PDF conversion using the "Press" settings in InDesign. I've never had a problem with other commercial printing jobs... but this will be my first time using Lulu.

Can anyone comment?

John

You should be fine. That's what I've ended up doing.

It seems that Adobe products handle the subsetting issue just fine. The problem, near as I can tell, is that in OS X, Apple has their own .pdf creation process that in most ways is compatible to the Adobe standards, but in this particular situation (the subsetting of fonts), isn't. So the problem come--for me--when I've attempted to use any software that farms out the .pdf creation to the built-in OS X .pdf maker. That includes Pages, as well as other things. Adobe products don't use the OS X .pdf maker, they use their own.

Now, I don't know if anything new has developed on this in the past three months, but when I was researching it, that was the situation. I've only used InDesign since then, and have printed with no problems.

Thank you. I have to say, I did find this string of information both troubling and confusing. I do quite a bit of my commercial printing online these days and have been passing on PDF files to suppliers without a hitch. It's been a refreshing experience and a positive process. I'm working on a project that is a perfect fit for Lulu and was having visions of it falling flat.

Relieved.

Thanks,
John

Well on the upside Lulu is a very nice company to work with and they are trying to figure out how to accomidate Pages users, but so far are having trouble with how to do it.

There is a recent post on the Lulu forum topic "Apple Pages problems and workarounds" by Emmett O'Brian reporting success - a correctly printed version of his document sent back from Lulu - with a workaround using MacGhostView and a utlility macps2pdf that comes with it.

Anyone here know anything about this? I am wondering if it is a special case or a general solution.

Well thats a good question. It worked once, but it's not known if it will work every time. In addition its a pretty kludgy work around that might be difficult for some to do correctly. There font used is a pretty standard one and there might be issues with other fonts. Again that's not known because there is no feedback if it worked for other people. Time will tell. Mr Nixon's work around worked for some but not all. I think the same will be true of this work around.

Basically what's needed is not a "work around" but software that just works. The work around is good for a short time but Emmett would like something more straightforward also.

I have a couple of books with Lulu that I wrote with Pages. When I was finished, I used File > Export > Word to export my Pages document to a Word document. I then opened my Word document, checked the formatting, printed it to a PDF file, and uploaded to Lulu. It all went pretty smoothly.

Schelske,

Fonts do not have to be subsetted in PDF's. You need acrobat distiller to make any adjustments in the pdf file. In distiller you can make a new setting and turn off subsetting. Make sure to turn on EMBED all fonts aas well as add them to the list of fonts to be embedded.

When you create your pdf chose the setting you created in Distiller and these attributes carry over. You can also create a .PS file and manually distill it yourself. Thereby adjusting any and all the settings you want. If you own Acrobat 7.x professional, you also own Acrobat Distiller 7.!