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Subject:RE: Can you figure out what tools produced a PDF? From:Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:<maker -at- verizon -dot- net>, <margaret -dot- cekis -at- comcast -dot- net> Date:Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:21:56 -0500
Nancy Allison:
> Thank you for the clarifying question, Margaret. I believe most of the respondents understood my intended meaning, but in case it was not clear, I do indeed mean "What tool produced the original document?"
>
> I do think the two tools would be closely related, don't you? If you produce a document in FrameMaker, how would you convert it into a PDF except from within FrameMaker? Can a tool other than FrameMaker convert a FrameMaker book file or .fm file and convert it to PDF?
>
> If so, I am all ears. Please explain.
Some applications (but cetainly not all) do have PDF generation capability internal to the application. This includes Adobe InDesign and Illustrator and the latest versions (since 2007) of Microsoft Office. But the list of applications that directly produce PDF does *not* include FrameMaker. FrameMaker relies on the Windows GDI and printer drivers to generate PostScript code that is then processed into PDF by the Distiller DLL--either the full Distiller application that is installed as part of the Acrobat package or the "headless" version of Distiller that is bundled with the FrameMaker software distribution. If you want to, you can use a non-Adobe PDF generation tool with FrameMaker (as you can do with *any* application), but there is *always* some secondary tool involved when generating a PDF from FrameMaker.
(BTW, FrameMaker's reliance on the Windows GDI is the root of the problems that Frame has with CMYK and color management on Windows platforms.)
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