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From: Barton Chittenden <tiger@iglou.com>
Subject: Re: DocuTech/Postscript: Bad Combination???? (Help Wanted)
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Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 04:38:55 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.postscript:45327 comp.sys.xerox:2385

On 1 Oct 1996, Henning Bertram wrote:

> I'm really out of ideas for this one, so I hope someone in either of these
> groups can help. See: I'm even crossposting, because I no longer have any
> where the problem really is....
> 
> The situation is:
> 
> We use FrameMaker 4.02 under Windows 95, with the Adobe PS Driver 4 and the
> PPD files for a DocuTech 135. The Docutech at th print shop we use can't
> print the resulting Postscript files....
> 
> The prehistory is this:
> 
> - we had no problems at all whilst using Windows 3.1
> - smaller testfiles can in fact be printed - a whole book cannot
> - Acrobat Distiler has no problem at all with the PS file that is generated
> 
> I suspect the problem is with the DocuTech, then. Only the people at the
> print shop are not very helpful (or competent, I suspect) - except they do
No, they probably aren't very competent, in terms of postscript
printing... XEROX offers surprisingly little support to the people who run
these things...

> admit that several of their customers seem to have this problem. 
> 
> 
I run a Docutech/Media Server in Louisville, and I'm just getting my feet
wet with postscript programming right now. I'm not an expert by any means,
but here are a few suggestions:

Our support people told us to use the Apple2NTX (erf, I don't
think this is right, but it's close) postscript driver in windows 3.1.
I've seen the output from other drivers, and it tends to screw up some of
the half tones and fonts. Don't know why.

I've also seen postscript drivers on the net which are directly written
for the Docutech (I don't know if there are any for Windows 95 though).

The Docutech itsself does not support postscript. The interpreter is on a
networked PC (the media server). The interpreter generates a modified TIFF
format which is sent to the Docutech.

If the interpreter encounters a postscript error half way through the
file, it will send all of the file up to the error and then debugging
information. This means that you will get half of your document, and then
a page or two of postscript debugging statements (it may also choke during
the interpreting on the PC, in which case the interpreter will stop
without any debugging and you won't know *anything* more). Anyway, ask
your print shop people for all the stuff that comes out of the docutech,
and print the results here and on comp.lang.postscript.

tip to make your print shop people happier (once you finally get things
up and running):
If you have a manual which is composed of multiple postscript files (say,
1 per chapter), you can append them in the order that they are supposed to
be printed to make 1 large postscript file. It is possible to join them
once they have been sent to the docutech, but it is a slow and tedious
process.

Hope this helps,

--Barton

ps. To anybody who knows a whole lot about the interaction between
computer/docutech especially using postscript, I'm *really* interested in
learning more. The service guys and tech support tend to be *rather*
reticent about these things... (I'm beginning to think that they don't
really know that much about it).

