Help Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files

Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?

Greetings!

I'm new to this group, hope some expert here might help me. Using 
Acrobat 7 from CS2 for small scholarly publishing operations on various 
computers, ranging from several iBook G4 1.2 GHz models running OS 
10.4.x to one Intel iMac 2.8 GHz running Leopard. For the last year or 
two we've noticed horribly slow performance when inserting or replacing 
pages in a pdf file. Things seem to go expeditiously, then we get a 
message at the bottom saying "Consolidating duplicate fonts", and this 
can go on for an hour or more. This despite the fact that our pdf files 
don't seem unusually large or complex. They are almost entirely text, 
with few font changes, usually two or three fonts used within an entire 
book.

A printer has complained that they experience the same problem in 
working with our files. The printer says our files are created at too 
high a dpi resolution, and that explains the problem. My intuition tells 
me this shouldn't be true, since we are using vector fonts: why would 
this matter unless everything was getting rasterized? We haven't noticed 
that this is connected with any particular font or fonts. We use a 
mixture of Adobe Type 1 fonts and a couple of Windows .ttf fonts (most 
frequently Palatino Linotype). If it matters, my Distiller 7 job 
settings used by default on all these computers are Acrobat 3 (PDF 1.2) 
compatibility, 2400 dpi resolution, embel all fonts, and subset for less 
than 100%. Perhaps these need to be tweaked? BTW our main printer has 
old software controlling their presses, and they want us to save into 
the earliest possible version of Acrobat, which is why we use Acrobat 
3.0 compatibility.

We are at a loss, but this impacts on our productivity when assembling 
pdfs. Any informed advice would be welcome. I'm going to try to post 
this at some Adobe forum, assuming I can figure out where is 
appropriate. I have a second question (assumed to be unrelated, but who 
knows) which I will ask in a separate posting.

TIA

George

Re: Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?

George Nospam wrote:
> Greetings!
> 
> I'm new to this group, hope some expert here might help me. Using 
> Acrobat 7 from CS2 for small scholarly publishing operations on various 
> computers, ranging from several iBook G4 1.2 GHz models running OS 
> 10.4.x to one Intel iMac 2.8 GHz running Leopard. For the last year or 
> two we've noticed horribly slow performance when inserting or replacing 
> pages in a pdf file. Things seem to go expeditiously, then we get a 
> message at the bottom saying "Consolidating duplicate fonts", and this 
> can go on for an hour or more. This despite the fact that our pdf files 
> don't seem unusually large or complex. They are almost entirely text, 
> with few font changes, usually two or three fonts used within an entire 
> book.
> 
> A printer has complained that they experience the same problem in 
> working with our files. The printer says our files are created at too 
> high a dpi resolution, and that explains the problem. My intuition tells 
> me this shouldn't be true, since we are using vector fonts: why would 
> this matter unless everything was getting rasterized? We haven't noticed 
> that this is connected with any particular font or fonts. We use a 
> mixture of Adobe Type 1 fonts and a couple of Windows .ttf fonts (most 
> frequently Palatino Linotype). If it matters, my Distiller 7 job 
> settings used by default on all these computers are Acrobat 3 (PDF 1.2) 
> compatibility, 2400 dpi resolution, embel all fonts, and subset for less 
> than 100%. Perhaps these need to be tweaked? BTW our main printer has 
> old software controlling their presses, and they want us to save into 
> the earliest possible version of Acrobat, which is why we use Acrobat 
> 3.0 compatibility.
> 
> We are at a loss, but this impacts on our productivity when assembling 
> pdfs. Any informed advice would be welcome. I'm going to try to post 
> this at some Adobe forum, assuming I can figure out where is 
> appropriate. I have a second question (assumed to be unrelated, but who 
> knows) which I will ask in a separate posting.

A recent thread on the FOP mailing list may have your answer.

http://www.mail-archive.com/fop-users@xmlgraphics.apache.org/msg11818.html

    BugBear

Re: Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?

Hello,
without seeing the files it seems quite impossible to give any useful
hint. Maybe you put some of these problematic files on some ftp server
and give us the URL, so someone can maybe tell you, what might be the
reason. 
You should also tell us, which programs and environments you use to
create and modify the files.

Best regards
Alois

Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?

Greetings!

I'm new to this group, hope some expert here might help me. Using 
Acrobat 7 from CS2 for small scholarly publishing operations on various 
computers, ranging from several iBook G4 1.2 GHz models running OS 
10.4.x to one Intel iMac 2.8 GHz running Leopard. For the last year or 
two we've noticed horribly slow performance when inserting or replacing 
pages in a pdf file. Things seem to go expeditiously, then we get a 
message at the bottom saying "Consolidating duplicate fonts", and this 
can go on for an hour or more. This despite the fact that our pdf files 
don't seem unusually large or complex. They are almost entirely text, 
with few font changes, usually two or three fonts used within an entire 
book.

A printer has complained that they experience the same problem in 
working with our files. The printer says our files are created at too 
high a dpi resolution, and that explains the problem. My intuition tells 
me this shouldn't be true, since we are using vector fonts: why would 
this matter unless everything was getting rasterized? We haven't noticed 
that this is connected with any particular font or fonts. We use a 
mixture of Adobe Type 1 fonts and a couple of Windows .ttf fonts (most 
frequently Palatino Linotype). If it matters, my Distiller 7 job 
settings used by default on all these computers are Acrobat 3 (PDF 1.2) 
compatibility, 2400 dpi resolution, embel all fonts, and subset for less 
than 100%. Perhaps these need to be tweaked? BTW our main printer has 
old software controlling their presses, and they want us to save into 
the earliest possible version of Acrobat, which is why we use Acrobat 
3.0 compatibility.

We are at a loss, but this impacts on our productivity when assembling 
pdfs. Any informed advice would be welcome. I'm going to try to post 
this at some Adobe forum, assuming I can figure out where is 
appropriate. I have a second question (assumed to be unrelated, but who 
knows) which I will ask in a separate posting.

TIA

George

Re: Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?

George Nospam wrote:
> Greetings!
> 
> I'm new to this group, hope some expert here might help me. Using 
> Acrobat 7 from CS2 for small scholarly publishing operations on various 
> computers, ranging from several iBook G4 1.2 GHz models running OS 
> 10.4.x to one Intel iMac 2.8 GHz running Leopard. For the last year or 
> two we've noticed horribly slow performance when inserting or replacing 
> pages in a pdf file. Things seem to go expeditiously, then we get a 
> message at the bottom saying "Consolidating duplicate fonts", and this 
> can go on for an hour or more. This despite the fact that our pdf files 
> don't seem unusually large or complex. They are almost entirely text, 
> with few font changes, usually two or three fonts used within an entire 
> book.
> 
> A printer has complained that they experience the same problem in 
> working with our files. The printer says our files are created at too 
> high a dpi resolution, and that explains the problem. My intuition tells 
> me this shouldn't be true, since we are using vector fonts: why would 
> this matter unless everything was getting rasterized? We haven't noticed 
> that this is connected with any particular font or fonts. We use a 
> mixture of Adobe Type 1 fonts and a couple of Windows .ttf fonts (most 
> frequently Palatino Linotype). If it matters, my Distiller 7 job 
> settings used by default on all these computers are Acrobat 3 (PDF 1.2) 
> compatibility, 2400 dpi resolution, embel all fonts, and subset for less 
> than 100%. Perhaps these need to be tweaked? BTW our main printer has 
> old software controlling their presses, and they want us to save into 
> the earliest possible version of Acrobat, which is why we use Acrobat 
> 3.0 compatibility.
> 
> We are at a loss, but this impacts on our productivity when assembling 
> pdfs. Any informed advice would be welcome. I'm going to try to post 
> this at some Adobe forum, assuming I can figure out where is 
> appropriate. I have a second question (assumed to be unrelated, but who 
> knows) which I will ask in a separate posting.

A recent thread on the FOP mailing list may have your answer.

http://www.mail-archive.com/fop-users@xmlgraphics.apache.org/msg11818.html

    BugBear

Re: Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?

Hello,
without seeing the files it seems quite impossible to give any useful
hint. Maybe you put some of these problematic files on some ftp server
and give us the URL, so someone can maybe tell you, what might be the
reason. 
You should also tell us, which programs and environments you use to
create and modify the files.

Best regards
Alois