Quark ruined my Friday

[bluskool]

Ok, there were two Quark documents. The first and second half of a publication. I received both of them to make PDF's out of. I was printing these PDF's out of Quark 6.5 using Adobe PDF 8.0 print driver.

Here is the problem: I went to check out the page I had just made in Acrobat and discovered that Quark spit out the low resolution preview of one of the ads. I went back to the doc and tried just changing the preview of the placed ad(PDF 1.4) to High res (this was a bad idea as I will explain and I am not going to use that feature anymore.) An error popped up that said the PDF had security restrictions or password and could not be imported(even though it had already been imported.) I deleted it and tried to re-import it, same message. I quit Quark, restarted, the PDF imported. Tried to print to PDF, low res preview comes out. I tried exporting to .ps and distilling, same thing (I should also mention that there were no security settings or permission problems with this document.

What eventually worked was to copy the pages from the problem document to the other document and print the PDF's from there. So it appears that the document was corrupt.

When I got some time I pulled up the document again to have a look at it because I can't stand not knowing what causes problems. After trying a few things I am leaning to some sort of problem with the full res preview plug-in and PDF's in Quark. The one computer that created the problem document had the plug-in while the other did not. When I disabled the plug-in and re-imported the files, it was fine. Also, the only pages on the problem document that would not print to a PDF properly, were one's that had an imported PDF on them.

Has anyone else ever had this or anything like it happen to them? I make PDF's all the time from Quark and have never had this issue before. And yes, I know InDesign would not have had this problem and I use InDesign, but not everyone here has taken the time to learn it yet.

Dan R.

 

[WharfRat]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

Have you already trashed your Quark "OPI" extension?

MSD

 

[bluskool]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

Yeah, I did that a while ago. I noticed something else strange about the PDF's. They all have the dimensions 705.6004x (nothing). There is no vertical value. I think I might need to reinstall.

Also, one of the machines that made the pages was still on 6.1 and this computer is 6.52. I would think that if that had anything to do with it, I would have had this problem before.

Dan R.

 

[Hopkins Printing]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

Hi bluskool,

Regarding your PDFs coming out with no height. Please download the attached PDF. Is the attached PDF what you are getting on your machine?

Let me know as I may have an answer.

Jon

 

[prepressguru]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

Interesting post. I would like to know what the end solution was ? But as you have pointed out you have various computers with different software setups. It makes sense for you to start streamlining these issues before dealing with other indvidual problems. Especially if you are passing jobs around the shop. Well I am sure you have thought of this and I am just playing devils advocate.

Thanks!

 

[bluskool]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

You are definitely right. Sometimes you don't notice that there aremdifferences amongst the computers until something goes wrong. I almost have to check every night to make sure one of the users didn't trash a prefs file and not reload proper settings files or reinstall a program and not update. I have since normalized the machines, but I think the problem is with Quark on my machine. I have noticed some other anomalies with it. I just haven't alloted the time to reinstall yet since I don't use Quark that much. I did, however, find one minute to make the attached icon today.

The solution that day (that became night) was to copy the page elements to another document and print to PDF. However, now the new document has the same problems. I got the PDF's that I needed, but when I saved the doc and opened it again to test it, I could not get a decent PDF.

Dan R.

 

[bluskool]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

Hi Joe, didn't see your post the first time,

Sort of... Except that mine does not have a y coordinate at all (see attached).

Dan R.

 

[Hopkins Printing]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

If you disabled any PPD files via the PPD Manager in Quark, try re-enabling them all. This is what solved the problem of empty PDF files with no height for me.

Hope this helps!
Jon

 

[bluskool]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

All the PPD files are enabled. I appreciate the suggestion though.

I think I have discovered the problem (maybe.) One of the computers had not been able to print some of the pages. I checked the Quark settings in their print dialog box and the use high resolution tiff box was checked. So I am guessing that when they tried to print, that OPI comment screwed up the document.

I thought that since the OPI extension was trashed in all the Quark programs, we would be fine, but you still have OPI options when you print. I wish there was a way to get rid of OPI functionality completely from Quark. Why in the hell would Quark include OPI and make it the default. It should just be a plug-in or something since the majority of users are not in that kind of workflow.

 

[Hopkins Printing]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

You mean you removed the OPI XTension and you still had OPI options when printing/exporting from Quark?

Jon

 

[bluskool]

Re: Quark ruined my Friday

In the print dialog box, there is still OPI options under the "options" tab. You can choose "include images," Omit Tiff, "Omit Tiff and EPS" and there is a check box for "Full resolution Tiff output." Unlike in the export to PDF dialog box, there is no check box to uncheck for "use OPI."

Dan R.