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HELIOS PDF HandShake UB User manual |
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PDF HandShake has a feature to automate the PDF creation of any PostScript job. This is done by creating a new printer queue in HELIOS Admin, with the connection type Create PDF. This queue prints the PostScript job over TCP/IP to a dedicated Macintosh or Windows based server. This server platform is used to create the PDF file. After a PDF file is successfully created, the Macintosh or Windows server will return the PDF to the HELIOS printer queue (Fig. 40).
Note: Create PDF Server utilizes Adobe Acrobat Distiller, which must be purchased separately. It is important to comply with the licensing terms of Adobe Acrobat. Specific terms related to using Acrobat on a server can be found in the Acrobat license file. The purpose of Create PDF Server is to use Acrobat Distiller more efficiently, reduce administrative and training costs, and to ensure consistent, reliable PDF job production.
Alternatively, you may use Ghostscript to convert the PostScript print job into a PDF file. Ghostscript is license-independent and is available for major platforms. However, it can only generate low-end PDF documents.Ghostscript ("gs" binary) is available in various distributions, free of charge. HELIOS supports all Ghostscript 8.x versions. The Ghostscript binary "gs" must be installed in the following search paths:
- Server-based automatic PDF creation from any UNIX, Macintosh, or Windows client by printing to a HELIOS "Create PDF" print queue.
- Create PDF Server works without any local configuration of the Macintosh/Windows server, the Distiller settings are attached to the HELIOS printer queue.
- PDF creation requires a lot of computing which will be off-loaded from the UNIX server to a dedicated server, e.g. a Macintosh with a FastEthernet connection.
- Office PDFs: Ghostscript PDF generation support.
Note: Currently, there is no speed up for the Adobe Distiller or Ghostscript from Dual-CPU Power Macintoshs.
- There is no temporary PostScript file stored on the dedicated server.
- There is only the spooled job stored on the HELIOS server. Font or OPI resolving is done on-the-fly and does not use additional disk space on the HELIOS server.
- Error Messages will be saved to the HELIOS printer accounting log file and sent back to the user by e-mail.
- The created PDF document will be attached to the hold queue, similar to the HELIOS PrintPreview application.
- The created PDF document can be saved to any HELIOS volume, or into a subfolder which can be created for each user name.
- Job distribution to the next available Create PDF Server - HELIOS supports balance queues which allow a cluster of "dedicated" servers which are used to distill many print jobs in parallel.
- Distiller security settings can be specified individually for each queue with HELIOS Admin.
In 11.2 "Setting up a "Create PDF" printer queue with HELIOS Admin", new features within HELIOS Admin which are part of Create PDF Server are presented and explained. However, other features which are already described in the corresponding chapter in the Base manual are merely referenced.
- A dedicated Power Macintosh running Mac OS 9, with a working TCP/IP connection and at least 64 MB RAM
- Acrobat 4.0.5 (Acrobat 4.0 will not work!) or Acrobat 5
- A PC running Windows NT4 (SP 6) Workstation, Windows 2000, XP, or Windows 2003 Server, with a working TCP/IP connection
- Acrobat 4.0.5, 5.0, 6 and 7
In order to ensure troublefree server operation it is most important that the "dedicated" server is not employed with tasks other than running the Create PDF Server process.
During the installation of the HELIOS software modules, "createpdf" is copied into the "HELIOSDIR/sbin" directory. It is started everytime a print job is send to port 2018 (see "TCP ports used by HELIOS" in the Base manual).
The dedicated server that hosts Create PDF Server needs at least 64 MB of RAM. The performance of PDF creation with Create PDF Server depends on the size of the PostScript print job in relation to the memory assigned to the application. Hence, for excellent performance, the memory assigned to Create PDF Processor should slightly exceed the size of the largest print job which will be converted.
The applications Create PDF Server and Create PDF Processor need to be copied from the HELIOS Applications volume into the "Distiller" subfolder of the "Acrobat" application folder. If Create PDF Server and Create PDF Processor are not located in the Distiller directory the Create PDF Server queue will not work. However, it is possible to create an Alias of the Create PDF Server application which can be stored in the Macintosh "Startup Items" folder, to allow an automatic startup of the Create PDF Server application.
The applications Create PDF Server and Create PDF Processor need to be copied from the HELIOS Applications volume into the Acrobat folder. For automatic startup of the Create PDF Server application you can drag Create PDF Server into the "Startup Items" in the "Accounts" panel of the "System Preferences".
Using the "Create PDF" function requires Create PDF Server to be up and running on the dedicated host. After Create PDF Server has been started, the HELIOS Create PDF Server window appears on the screen indicating that it is idle and ready to receive print jobs.
To use Create PDF Server with a port number other than 2005 (default), you must change the distillservice preference as described in the Base manual. Under Mac OS 9 you must in addition set the port number in the "PREF" (ID=128; entry TCPPort) resource of the Create PDF Processor module to the same value. For example, using Ghostscript instead of Distiller requires you to set the server port number to 2018.
Open the "HELIOS_APPS" volume on the Windows PC and copy the Create PDF Server folder from
Windows\PDF Tools to the local disk.
+ Runs as background application
+ No user login is needed
+ Error reporting in "Windows Event Log" file
Double-click "InstallPDFService", which installs "HELIOS Create PDF Server" as a Windows Service. This means that it is started each time the Windows PC is booted. Calling this install script will also start the server immediately.
Start the Windows "cmd" program and change to the Create PDF Server directory. Type "Create PDF Server.exe" -s and press RETURN (-s = "status").
Your Create PDF Server service installation was successful if the line Service is installed. appears in the Windows "cmd" program command line.
Open Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. Then double-click the Create PDF Server entry.
Important: Never run Create PDF Server simultaneously as a service and in a console window!
In the event of an error, respective messages are written to the "Windows Event Log" and can be displayed with the Windows Event Viewer.
Note: The following information applies only to Create PDF Server for Windows installations, using Acrobat 5 or newer.
If Create PDF Server is used as a service, you need to run the "AdoptSettings.exe" program each time you change the Font Locations- settings within Acrobat Distiller. This is because Acrobat 5 (or newer) stores its settings in user-dependent trees of the registry. In order to make these settings available to the service, "AdoptSettings.exe" copies the settings to a global node.
Note: Creating or editing printer queues with HELIOS Admin, which is essential for the following, is described in detail in the Base manual. In this chapter, the focus is on the "Create PDF" printer queue only.
In the HELIOS Admin Printers tab select File > New and specify a new printer according to the instructions given in the Base manual. Select Create PDF from the Connection pop-up menu, so the Interface tab comes into the foreground (Fig. 41).
Enter the IP address of the host where Create PDF Server and Acrobat Distiller are installed in the Host Name field, and specify the port number in the Port field.
Note: The port number allows you to specify whether the PDF is generated via Create PDF Server (2005) or Ghostscript (2018).
Instead of the IP address you may also specify the server host name on the network. However, this requires a configured and working DNS server on the network.
The directory path to the location where the processed PDF print jobs are saved must be specified in the Directory field. You may also use the Browse button to select the spool directory. If the option Create folder for each user is active, a subfolder for each print job "owner" is created in the directory path where the print jobs are stored. The user name is the Owner Name as stated in the %% For: (name) string inside the PostScript job.
Note: If the user name is not known to the HELIOS server, the PDF will be stored inside a folder "nobody".
If desired, you can enter a Name Prefix and a Notify Program. The prefix serves to identify the files that are coming from this specific printer queue (in case you have several "Create PDF" printer queues which print to the same destination). The Notify Program option lets you enter a path that leads to a specific UNIX program. Again, you may also use the Browse button to select a notify program. This program will be started automatically after printing has been finished successfully.
If the Select PDF Preflight Profile option is checked, an additional section becomes available in the window, allowing you to specify a profile for the PDF preflight functionality (see 6.8 "PDF preflighting with pdfInspektor").
If a queue has a PDF profile assigned, you can display the contents of that file in a text window, and root and members of the SysAdm or QueAdm group can edit the file:
A description of how to assign Distiller settings to a "Create PDF" printer queue, and how to edit them, is given in the following sections.
Start Acrobat Distiller and select a pre-defined PDF job option from the Default Settings pop-up menu in the Adobe PDF Settings section of the Acrobat Distiller window.
Open Settings > Edit Adobe PDF Settings-. Modify the settings according to your needs (see A 1 "Create PDF files using Acrobat Distiller") and save your changes - with a new name (in the example below we opened the "Standard.joboptions" file and, after applying changes, saved it as "HELIOS.joboptions") - to the Distiller "Settings" folder by clicking Save as-. Then highlight your "Create PDF" printer queue in the HELIOS Admin Printers tab and select Settings from the Printer menu. In the Interface tab activate the Select Distiller Settings checkbox and enter the path to the job options file in the text field or click Browse- to search for it. Confirm the selection with the OK button.
Now your job option settings have been saved to the "Create PDF" printer queue on the UNIX host and are stored in the "SETTINGS" file of the spool directory (in our example: "HELIOSDIR/var/spool/qmeta/cpdf/").
In the Interface window of the "Create PDF" printer queue you can display the contents of the Distiller settings file in a text window, and "root" and members of the SysAdm or QueueAdm group can edit it:
Note: It is not recommended to edit the "SETTINGS" file manually because this can introduce syntax errors.
You may want to protect your created PDF documents against unauthorized use, e.g. from being opened, printed, or changed (i.e. edited).
Start Acrobat Distiller and go to Settings > Security-. In the Security window (Fig. 42) specify the required options, and finally confirm your entries with the OK button.
Likewise, Create PDF Server can tag PDF documents, during the generation, with security settings which restrict the opening, printing, changing (i.e. editing) of a PDF document.
Create PDF Server stores the security information in "HELIOSDIR/var/spool/qmeta/<printer>/SECURITY". To use security settings with Create PDF Server, proceed as follows:
Start HELIOS Admin and select the desired "Create PDF" printer queue (List > Printers). Open the security settings window (Fig. 43) of the respective "Create PDF" printer queue (Printer > Interface > Edit Distiller Security-).
Create PDF Server will produce PDF files which behave according to the specifications in the "SECURITY" file.
Note: If no security settings are specified in the "SECURITY" file, Create PDF Server does not put up any restrictions. However, if security settings are defined in the used Distiller they will be applied! So make it a habit to remove all PDF security related restrictions in the Distiller settings, and apply such restrictions via Create PDF Server only.
When printing composite PostScript to a "Create PDF" queue, if color matching is turned off (i.e. the Default Printer Profile in the HELIOS Admin OPI/ICC Settings is set to None), then no color matching will take place, and all objects will be sent in their original color space to be Distilled. However, color space conversion may still occur if the Distiller Job Options are set to do so.
Printing to a "Create PDF" printer queue is almost the same as printing to any other HELIOS printer queue. The only difference is that here a Macintosh or Windows host with Acrobat Distiller acts as a "Create PDF" printer. So any (authorized) user on the network can benefit from the functionality of Create PDF Server.
In the application from which you want to print, open the print menu and choose the "Create PDF" printer queue. There, specify the required settings (e.g. paper size and PostScript options) and start the job.
Create PDF Server then starts processing the jobs - one at a time - according to their order in the spool queue. You can monitor the process and the state of each print job in the Create PDF Server window.
If there should arise a problem during the print processing, a warning message appears in the Create PDF Server window specifying the cause of the problem (Fig. 44).
While idling, the window states with a "Welcome" message that the server is ready to receive print jobs. When a print job is being processed the window displays information about where the job comes from and via which port as well as the total print job size and the transfer rate. After Create PDF Server has completed the job and the PDF file has been created, the window shows the size of the PDF file and the transfer rate (Fig. 45).
There are two ways to obtain the printed PDF file: from the "hold" queue of HELIOS Admin, provided that the "Create PDF" printer queue is configured to pass printed jobs to the "hold" queue.
Double-click the "hold" queue in the Printers list to access the file in the job window (Fig. 46). The PDF icon in front of the file name indicates that PDF generation has been successful. Double-clicking a job's PDF icon in the "hold" queue automatically starts your Acrobat application. Also, you can select the job in the "hold" queue window and go to Save as- in the File menu of HELIOS Admin.
Another possibility to obtain the created PDF file is to mount the EtherShare or PCShare volume (which should be described by the path in the UNIX Directory entry) and get access to the file there or, if you checked Create folder for each user, in the directory's subfolder.
Note: Please note that the PDF file still remains in the HELIOS directory even if the print job is erased from the "hold" queue. This is because the printer queue only references the PDF file.
If you want to enhance the performance you may group two or more "Create PDF" queues in one balance queue. The user then prints to this "balance" queue where the print server distributes the job to the next "Create PDF" queue which is ready to accept jobs.
Because the PDF job options and security settings are sent along with the print job, the print job can be sent to any of the Create PDF Server hosts.
For comprehensive and more detailed information about how to set up a balance queue, see the respective chapters in the Base manual.
Activate the Printers list and choose New from the File menu. HELIOS Admin then opens a new printer data window, which - to some extent - is already filled out with default values from the Preferences window.
In the pop-up menu Connection select Balance Group and fill out the Printer Name and PAP, SMB or TCP Name fields. If desired, assign "hold" and "error" queues to the balance queue. From the Printers list drag the "Create PDF" queues you want to group for load balancing, and drop them into the Printers field (Fig. 47).
Important: It is most important that the "Create PDF" printer queues which form the Balance Group have been assigned the same Distiller and Security settings (see Select Distiller Settings and Edit Distiller Security). Also select the same PPD for the "Balance Queue" which is already assigned to the "Create PDF" printer queues in the Printers field. Otherwise the printing results may not be predictable.
Acrobat Distiller sometimes produces strange error messages if it is running out of memory. Sometimes there is an error message "no PDF file created" or a PostScript error message. Please verify the failed PostScript job by dropping it on the Distiller application icon, maintaining the same Distiller Settings and Memory allocation.
Important: The "DistillerLib" file is only created if Acrobat Distiller was installed in "Default" mode. If you chose the Acrobat Distiller 4.0.5 "Custom" installation, this file will be missing".
| © 2005 HELIOS Software GmbH |
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