Distiller 8 on Intel Mac - Font issues?

[Polly]

Hi, I'm trying to create a PDF in Distiller 8.1.2 and having terrible issues with Helvetica. I'm on an Intel G5, Tiger 10.4.11, Quark 7.31 and Fusion 12.1.7.

I only have the bare minimum fonts running on the system and that's the way our composition department as been for years, creating hundreds of PDFs daily. Now, I have an Intel based mac and suddenly I can't get Distiller to create a PDF from an eps created by Quark. Other machines have no problem with this (I know it's not the ideal way to do it, but some things are very difficult to explain to a few of our folks in composition). Never had a problem pdf with this method and we'd like to be able to continue.

We occasionally have the same hiccup when we print to postscript out of Quark and try to Distill it.

Any ideas? The fonts are fine and work with all other programs - It's just Distiller.....

Thanks,
Pol.

 

[leonardr]

What EXACT issues are you having? It's impossible to diagnose a problem without understanding what it is...and my crystal ball isn't working today .

You mention that you run with "bare minimum fonts" - does that mean that you have removed fonts installed by the OS platform itself? What about fonts installed by software such as Acrobat?

What settings/job options are you using in Distiller?

Leonard

 

[Polly]

I get this error:
Distilling: Walco23.ps
Start Time: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 2:56 PM
Source: /Users/admin/Desktop/PDF Watched Folder/In/Walco23.ps
Destination: /Users/admin/Desktop/PDF Watched Folder/Out/Walco23.pdf
Adobe PDF Settings: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PDF/Settings/PDFX1a 2001(3).joboptions
%%[ Warning: unable to embed font /Helvetica.Out of memory. ]%%
%%[ Warning: Helvetica cannot be embedded because of font file error. ]%%
%%[ Error: ioerror; OffendingCommand: charpath ]%%

Stack:
-dict-
-file-
-dict-
0
-13199.5
-10200.0
33.3333
0.0
0.0
33.3333
0.0
0.0
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
0
0
-null-
-null-
1
1
1
0
0.0
0
0
1.0
1
-1
false
0
-null-
-null-
-null-
-null-
1.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0
false
false
false
395.985
306.0
/stringtype
5
100
99
98
97
0
false
/arraytype
5
/DeviceGray
/arraytype
1
1
false
false
/arraytype
1
/DeviceCMYK
false
1.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
-dict-


%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
Distill Time: 0 seconds (00:00:00)
**** End of Job ***

Minimum fonts meaning there are no fonts in the users fonts folder and no fonts in the Library/Fonts folder. The only fonts the system has running (and this has been the same for 4 years unless it's different for Intel) are:

Apple LiGothic Mecium.dfont
AppleGothic.dfont
AquaKanaBold.otf
Aqua KanaRegular.otf
Geneva.dfont
keyboard.dfont
LastResort.dfont
LucidaGrande.dfont
Monaco.dfont

If Acrobat installed fonts into the system fonts folder, then they would have been removed as well.

 

[apepp]

...bare minimum is good practice, however the essential system fonts for tiger you need are as follows (deviating from this list can cause you issues, as you are experiencing), as you haven't it appears listed Helvetica.dfont, then this is likely the problem...

...of course, headaches can occur with the said Helvetica.dfont (and others), clashing with a client supplied versions, with a decent font manager this can be overcome on a job by job basis, one such is fontexplorer by linotype...

Apple LiGothic Medium.dfont Traditional Chinese
AppleGothic.dfont Korean
AquaKanaBold.otf Japanese
AquaKanaRegular.otf Japanese
Courier.dfont
Geeza Pro Bold.ttf Arabic
Geeza Pro.ttf Arabic
Geneva.dfont
Hei.dfont Simplified Chinese
HelveLTMM
Helvetica LT MM
Helvetica.dfont
Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro W3.otf Japanese
Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro W6.otf Japanese
Hiragino Kaku Gothic Std W8.otf Japanese
Hiragino Maru Gothic Pro W4.otf Japanese
Hiragino Mincho Pro W3.otf Japanese
Hiragino Mincho Pro W6.otf Japanese
Keyboard.dfont
LastResort.dfont
LiHei Pro.ttf Traditional Chinese
LucidaGrande.dfont
Monaco.dfont
Osaka.dfont Japanese
OsakaMono.dfont Japanese
STHeiti Light.ttf Simplified Chinese
STHeiti Regular.ttf Simplified Chinese
Symbol.dfont
Times LT MM
Times.dfont
TimesLTMM
ZapfDingbats.dfont

 

[Polly]

Ruh Roh. I don't have all those others anywhere. Please tell me I don't have to re-install Tiger to get them..... I have most of them, including the times.dfont and the helvetica.dfont though.

 

[leonardr]

You have damaged your OS installation. Reinstallation is the correct solution.

 

[Shawn]

Hi Polly

You don't have to reinstall, but you might need to copy some fonts from another machine to fix. You can also grab fonts directly from the Tiger installation disk. Just scroll down and look in System/Library/Fonts.

I've also seen cases where Distiller was finicky about the exact version of a font used. For a while Distiller 8 gave a postscript error whenever we tried to process a Quark document, but Distiller 7 processed it fine. We traced it back to the Postscript version of Courier we had installed as a standard on our production machines which was being used in the Quark slug. As soon as we went to a newer version Distiller 8 processed Quark files fine.

Good Luck
Shawn

 

[Polly]

Thanks Shawn - I figured I didn't need to reinstall. I was able to retrieve some fonts from our OSX server system. Since I reinstalled these fonts, I'm no longer getting the Helvetica issue in Distiller, but every pdf coming from Quark gets spit out with another error (postscript error). Ieven tried making sure we used the Adobe postscript driver, but nothing seems to help. Thanks for the insight and information.

pol.

 

[khasmir]

if you have no Helvetica installed then it seems only logical that Distiller cannot embed it...

 

[Polly]

Odd that it never had problems with Suitcase handling the fonts for the past several years - but then we weren't running Distiller 8 either. Helvetica hasn't been in any of our system folders since the beginning of OSX - because of too many issues and conflicts.

Seems to be handling it fantastically now though - I reinstalled the fonts to the System, but still had problems with Distiller. This morning I decided to uninstall Acrobat Pro 8, repaired permissions, rebooted and reinstalled Acro 8, repaired permissions and rebooted. Distiller is working awesome now.

Apparently it needed those sys fonts upon the actual installation of CS3. Thanks to everyone for the help and input!
pol.

 

[FontAphasia]

I have the exact same issue on Leopard, Quark 7, Distiller 8.
I typically remove many system fonts and PDFing which worked for months, had given me that same error- Helvetica cannot be embedded.
Once I returned Courier.dfont and Helvetica.dfont to System-Library-Fonts and cleared Distiller's font cache it was working again. I also leave MyriadPro as Adobe's default font in Library-Fonts (for CS3)

 

[semi-tech]

Does anyone ever get %%[Error: limitcheck; OffendingCommand: cvn]%% when writing Postscript from Quark and attempting to write PDFs to their RIP? We have a Xitron.

I'm having no success trying to research what "cvn" is, and wasn't sure I should start a thread for just the one question. Thanks.