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Re: trouble printing to PDF

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg118271] Re: trouble printing to PDF
  • From: Alexei Boulbitch <alexei.boulbitch at iee.lu>
  • Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:57:45 -0400 (EDT)

I would like to confirm that having to regularly produce PDF documents out of papers written in Mathematica,
I have the same type of problems.

I produce PDFs always within Save As...>PDF approach. The problems started after the version 6, while with 6 it has been fine.

With the version 7 I personally estimate the PDF creation problem as a catastrophe.

With the version 8 it became somewhat better, though it is far from being satisfactory. It means that typically after half an hour
fighting against Mathematica you may succeed to get the PDF file but also may not. I have the impression that the Mathematica PDF
creator succeeds randomly. So you need to try to make the PDF document many times and once you will get it. Probably.
Let alone that after you have succeeded, you typically notice that something should be improved and you need to start
from the beginning.

One difference that I may have with respect to some other people is that I typically make the PDF out of the JournalArticle Style
notebooks and even a slightly modified JournalArticle.

Nevertheless, here are few practical advices, if you absolutely believe that you need to transform some Mathematica notebook into PDF:

1. Disable "Dynamic Updating" (Menu/Evaluation/Dynamic Updating Enabled) before printing to PDF, and try. In the version 8 this alone
often helps, especially if you need to transform a small paper.

2. If PDF nevertheless, cannot be produced,
  think about making the graphics (at least the most heavy one) outside of your document and copy-paste
into the notbook that you will transdoem only the graphics, but not the code producing this graphics (This was
my way to make PDF during the version 7, but it helps sometimes also with 8.01).

3. In general, avoid the code, especially the active one in the document that is to be transformed into PDF.

This last advice
contradicts to the common sense, since it is the possibility to have the document together with the active code and its results
which is the main advantage of Mathematica with respect to all other document creating tools.


For this reason I impatiently wait for the improvement in this area.

Do not get me wrong: Mathematica is still the best:)

Alexei








Is there any particular reason why you're not using Save As...>  PDF?
That works quite well for me. It also gives the option to write graphs either
as vector or as bitmap representations which reduces the file size consider ably
for notebooks containing lots of graphs (especially 3D).

Heike


On 15 Apr 2011, at 08:56, sibir wrote:

>  Already with version 7 I was not able to reliably print to the Adobe
>  PDF "printer" under Windows XP.
>  Now I run version 8 under Windows 7 with Acrobat 9 Standard and the
>  problems continue.
>  Just tried freeware PDFCreator and it also renders Mathematica
>  unresponsive.
>
>  What is going on? Am I the only one? Is there a work-around?
>

-- 
Alexei Boulbitch, Dr. habil.
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