I'm not sure if this is the right board to post this question on. Could someone move it if it is not the right one please?
See if you can follow my logic below and let me know what you think.
Operating systems: OS X (10.4 I believe but I'm not sure since it's at work, and I'm at home)
Software: Creative Suite 3, specifically InDesign; Quark 4.11 running in Classic
Quick description of the original problem: I work at a newspaper where the production staff is all on OS X/CS3, but editorial is still on Quark 4.11. We create the ads in ID, make a PDF, import the PDFs into the Quark pages of the newspaper, then print to postscript and distill for a final page PDF. The first week we upgraded to CS3 (well, not really upgraded since we went from Quark 4 to CS3), using Export to PDF in ID causes issues since our press does not support Open Type fonts. (Don't ask me, I wasn't there. I thought the point of PDFs are that the fonts get 'embedded'). Anyway, the solution we were given was to print our ads to postscript instead of exporting, and running the files through Distiller. So Week #2, that's what we did. Except now you import the PDFs into Quark, and when you print to file in Quark, Quark crashes. No error, no log file in Distiller (doesn't even make the PS file). It just dies.
I started testing in depth today, and this is what I came up with:
I was working with a Quark page called "Here's My Card". It has 18 ads on it, business card style/size. I started at box 1, placed the ad, printed it to postscript. It worked. I added the ad for box 2, printed to postscript. It worked. Added the ad for box 3, printed to postscript. It crashed Quark.
I opened ad #3 in InDesign. Resaved the image used on it (only 1 image with a 1 pt blk border) - resaved to tif with color profile embedded and LWZ compression off (the options were opposite in the original file). Placed it back into ID, made the PDF, imported to Quark, printed to postscript. It still crashed. So I made a brand new file in ID, placed the image on there (no copy/paste), made the pdf, blah blah. It worked! So here I was thinking that opening the original quark file (from before our upgrade) in ID was doing something bad to the file. Ad #3 fixed!
Added ad for box #4, quark crashed. I resaved the images, it crashed. I created a new file and copied/pasted. It crashed. I created every single element of the ad new on a new file, it crashed. So obviously, it's not the new document.
I took every element off the new document, one by one, and kept trying the pdfs, and they kept crashing. I got down to absolutely nothing on the document. It worked. So I tried the reverse direction. I created a new document called 1.indd. made the pdf, it worked. I copied/pasted all of the elements from the original ad, made the pdf, and surprise surprise, it worked!
Now here's where it gets interesting:
file named 1.pdf, I renamed through the finder to "WR Scott_HMC.pdf". It crashed. I did not open the ad and do anything to it. Nothing changed except the filename itself, and through finder no less... not using a Save As. I thought it might be the length of the filename, but one of the first 2 ads that worked was called "Canada Brokerlink_HMC.pdf" and it worked fine. So I compared filenames on the 4 ads:
Zytech_HMC.pdf
Canada Brokerlink_HMC.pdf
Flames_HMC.pdf
WR Scott_HMC.pdf
The only distinct item in the WR Scott file was a "W". So I renamed the WR Scott file to "R Scott_HMC.pdf". It worked. I changed it again to "W.pdf", expecting that for some reason Quark didn't like the W and that it would crash. But it worked. Renamed back to "WR Scott_HMC.pdf" and it crashed. I took out the underscore, it still crashed. I put the underscore back in, but took out the space, and it worked.
My husband suggested maybe it has an issue with 2 digits then a space, so I tried taking out the space on another file (ET Home Improv_HMC.pdf) and renaming it to ETHome.pdf (for the sake of less letters to type in the filename), but that one crashed. I stopped testing at that point.
Do you think it's a filename issue? What do you think the issue is? Anyone run across something like this before?
Thanks so much for any help or input!
Nicole
See if you can follow my logic below and let me know what you think.
Operating systems: OS X (10.4 I believe but I'm not sure since it's at work, and I'm at home)
Software: Creative Suite 3, specifically InDesign; Quark 4.11 running in Classic
Quick description of the original problem: I work at a newspaper where the production staff is all on OS X/CS3, but editorial is still on Quark 4.11. We create the ads in ID, make a PDF, import the PDFs into the Quark pages of the newspaper, then print to postscript and distill for a final page PDF. The first week we upgraded to CS3 (well, not really upgraded since we went from Quark 4 to CS3), using Export to PDF in ID causes issues since our press does not support Open Type fonts. (Don't ask me, I wasn't there. I thought the point of PDFs are that the fonts get 'embedded'). Anyway, the solution we were given was to print our ads to postscript instead of exporting, and running the files through Distiller. So Week #2, that's what we did. Except now you import the PDFs into Quark, and when you print to file in Quark, Quark crashes. No error, no log file in Distiller (doesn't even make the PS file). It just dies.
I started testing in depth today, and this is what I came up with:
I was working with a Quark page called "Here's My Card". It has 18 ads on it, business card style/size. I started at box 1, placed the ad, printed it to postscript. It worked. I added the ad for box 2, printed to postscript. It worked. Added the ad for box 3, printed to postscript. It crashed Quark.
I opened ad #3 in InDesign. Resaved the image used on it (only 1 image with a 1 pt blk border) - resaved to tif with color profile embedded and LWZ compression off (the options were opposite in the original file). Placed it back into ID, made the PDF, imported to Quark, printed to postscript. It still crashed. So I made a brand new file in ID, placed the image on there (no copy/paste), made the pdf, blah blah. It worked! So here I was thinking that opening the original quark file (from before our upgrade) in ID was doing something bad to the file. Ad #3 fixed!
Added ad for box #4, quark crashed. I resaved the images, it crashed. I created a new file and copied/pasted. It crashed. I created every single element of the ad new on a new file, it crashed. So obviously, it's not the new document.
I took every element off the new document, one by one, and kept trying the pdfs, and they kept crashing. I got down to absolutely nothing on the document. It worked. So I tried the reverse direction. I created a new document called 1.indd. made the pdf, it worked. I copied/pasted all of the elements from the original ad, made the pdf, and surprise surprise, it worked!
Now here's where it gets interesting:
file named 1.pdf, I renamed through the finder to "WR Scott_HMC.pdf". It crashed. I did not open the ad and do anything to it. Nothing changed except the filename itself, and through finder no less... not using a Save As. I thought it might be the length of the filename, but one of the first 2 ads that worked was called "Canada Brokerlink_HMC.pdf" and it worked fine. So I compared filenames on the 4 ads:
Zytech_HMC.pdf
Canada Brokerlink_HMC.pdf
Flames_HMC.pdf
WR Scott_HMC.pdf
The only distinct item in the WR Scott file was a "W". So I renamed the WR Scott file to "R Scott_HMC.pdf". It worked. I changed it again to "W.pdf", expecting that for some reason Quark didn't like the W and that it would crash. But it worked. Renamed back to "WR Scott_HMC.pdf" and it crashed. I took out the underscore, it still crashed. I put the underscore back in, but took out the space, and it worked.
My husband suggested maybe it has an issue with 2 digits then a space, so I tried taking out the space on another file (ET Home Improv_HMC.pdf) and renaming it to ETHome.pdf (for the sake of less letters to type in the filename), but that one crashed. I stopped testing at that point.
Do you think it's a filename issue? What do you think the issue is? Anyone run across something like this before?
Thanks so much for any help or input!
Nicole