> > 1. Yes, a majority do have a transparency.
> > 2. Checked the fonts...Times New Roman MT Std is OpenType instead of
> > PostScript. Could this be the culprit?
> > 3. The files we receive are manually typed with the variable
> > brackets...not inserted as a merge. The files are sent to us by the
> > customer this way to show the variable placement. The variable
fields
> > have exported with Quark ok, but maybe InDesign is different? Does
it
> > work ok without the brackets?
> >
> > Janet
> >
> 1. You will have to apply flattener settings that flatten the
background
> PDF - I use PDF 1.4 specs to avoid this.. Variable and transparency
> "ain't there yet"...
This is an understatement.
Postscript, as a page description language, does not do transparency. It
simply suppresses printing of an object. More difficult, and more
common, is translucency. It can 'fake' it, but, doing so puts
translucency object floating in a separate postscript layer on top of
the page layout before printing, and, as you probably know, variable
data MUST be on the uppermost layer of the layout to work properly.
As a general rule of thumb, transparency & variable data are mutually
exclusive.
To be more specific -
The PostScript language has limited support for full (not partial)
transparency, depending on the PostScript level.
Level 1 PostScript offers transparency via two methods:
* A one-bit (monochrome) image can be treated as a mask. In this
case the 1-bits can be painted any single color, while the 0-bits are
not painted at all. This technique cannot be generalized to more than
one color, or to vector shapes.
* Clipping paths can be defined. These restrict what part of all
subsequent graphics can be seen. This can be used for any kind of
graphic, however in level 1, the maximum number of nodes in a path was
often limited to 1500, so complex paths (e.g. cutting around the hair in
a photograph of a person's head) often failed.
Level 2 PostScript adds no specific transparency features. However, by
the use of patterns, arbitrary graphics can be painted through masks
defined by any vector or text operations. This is, however, complex to
implement. In addition, this too often reached implementation limits,
and few if any application programs ever offered this technique.
Level 3 PostScript adds further transparency option for any raster
image. A transparent color, or range of colors, can be applied; or a
separate 1-bit mask can be used to provide an alpha channel.
Encapsulated PostScript
EPS files contain PostScript, which may be level 1, 2 or 3 and make use
of the features above. A more subtle issue arises with the previews for
EPS files that are typically used to show the view of the EPS file on
screen. There are viable techniques for setting transparency in the
preview. For example, a TIFF preview might use a TIFF alpha channel.
However, many applications do not use this transparency information and
will therefore show the preview as a rectangle. A semi-proprietary
technique pioneered in Photoshop and adopted by a number of pre-press
applications is to store a clipping path in a standard location of the
EPS, and use that for display.
In addition, few of the programs that generate EPS previews will
generate transparency information in the preview.
Some programs have sought to get around this by treating all white in
the preview as transparent, but this too is problematic in the cases
where some whites are not transparent.
More recently, applications have been appearing that ignore the preview
altogether; they therefore get information on which parts of the preview
to paint by interpreting the PostScript.
Starting with version 1.4 of the PDF standard, transparency (including
translucency) is supported. This is a very complex model, requiring over
100 pages to document. A key source of complication is that PDF files
may contain objects with different color spaces, and blending these is
tricky. PDF supports many different blend modes, not just the most
common averaging method. In addition, the rules for compositing many
overlapping objects allow choices, such as whether a group of objects
are blended before being blended with the background, or whether each
object in turn is blended into the background.
Adobe Acrobat 5.0 was the first to support PDF 1.4 and, hence,
transparent PDF files. Transparency in PDF was carefully designed not to
cause errors in PDF viewers that did not understand it, they would
simply display all elements as fully opaque. This was a two-edged sword.
On the one hand, it reduced errors and complaints about errors; on the
other hand it meant people with older viewers, PDF printers, etc. might
print something completely different from the original design,
increasing complaints about incorrect output.
> 2. Check in your FusionPro fonts folder for an error.txt file and see
if
> the font is the culprit. Too many (and how many that is depends on a
lot
> of things) can cause issues..
Another issue may be the difference between the Mac version and the
Windows version of a given font. Kerning and 'special' characters, such
as smart quotes, are handled very differently in the two version of the
same font file.
The easiest way to handle quotation marks is to go to the preferences
menu of your word processing or design application and turn on the
"smart quotes" feature. This will automatically substitute the correct
smart quotes in newly typed-in text, but it's not foolproof. If you
import text or copy-and-paste from another application, you may have to
replace the dumb quotes manually. Another problem with using the "smart
quotes" setting is that when you do need inch and foot marks, your
application will turn them into curly quotes! These also must be fixed
manually.
Using the "search-and-replace" feature of your software is another
option, but a problematic one. It requires you to replace one character
(the dumb quote) with either one of two different characters (smart open
quote or smart close quote), depending on its context.
> 3. Definitely having the brackets will cause this.. Just type in
either
> the fieldname without brackets or sample data. You're going to remap
it
> anyway in the frame editor in Fusion...
I agree with Mark on this.
> --
>
> Mark Hardee
> Director of Digital Services
Christopher Reilley
Business Systems Analyst - Print Division
W.B. Mason Co.
59 Centre Street
Brockton, MA 02303
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