On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 12:37 AM, Achim Gratz <strom...@nexgo.de> wrote:

> Michael Hannon writes:
> > To proceed with this, I need to generate a series of PDF documents and
> have
> > the boss's admin assistant try to print them.  Unfortunately, I've been
> > swamped with some other stuff this week and haven't had a chance to work
> on
> > this.
>
> Would it be possible that you first check what that error really is?
> The one thing that comes to mind is that your PDF maybe references fonts
> that are not available and the easiest solution would be to either
> change to standard fonts or embed them in the PDF (if the license is
> permitting that).
>

As far as I know, PDF/A-1a is not meant for universal printing, instead it
is meant for accessibility. The current stock versions of pdfTeX
distributed are not capable of producing accessible PDF as per PDF/A-1a
specs. Main problem is that TeX does not use a space character and as such
finding word boundary becomes  difficult in pdf's created by pdfTeX; read
aloud applications will fail to voice render PDF's by pdfTeX.

However, if the OP is happy with a PDF as per PDF/A-1b, of course, pdfx.sty
distributed with TeXLive (and available at CTAN also) is capable of
creating.  This is for web reading and archival purposes.

If universal printing is what is wanted, then the spec to follow is
PDF/X-1a. Again, pdfx.sty does help to generate this too. I think, it is
not a big deal to extend pdfx package to generate pdf's compliant to later
specs like PDF/X-2, 3, ... (all for printing purpose). Later specs have
some advantages too like inclusion of icc color profile is not mandatory,
instead url will do.

I think, orgmode can even help to create a small XMP meta file (for Dublin
Core metadata compliance) needed by pdfx package while creating standards
compliant PDF's which at the moment is created by pdfTeX in an
unsatisfactory fashion.

Best regards
-- 
Radhakrishnan

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