Postscript vs. PDF

[Angela Howard <angela -at- SB -dot- AOL -dot- COM>]

Steven Jong <SteveJong -at- AOL -dot- COM> writes (in part):

>2) POSTSCRIPT FILES -- sent to printer; analogous to executable code

>PRO:
>this is our delivery medium to our print vendor
>easily created, tool-independent, cross-platform, widely portable
>readable on-screen, more or less, with various readers
>unrevisable
>creation is free (tools on hand)

We have not found Postscript files to be very portable.  What printer driver
do you use to create them?  For our print vendor, we have to use a certain
printer driver with certain print settings so that their Docutech can read it,
but that same Postscript file will generate printing errors for most of our
customers.  We use a different printer driver (the most generic one we could
find) and used the most generic print settings we could, and I still get
complaints from a few customers that they get errors when they try to print
it, especially European customers who use A4 paper.  But the biggest problem
our customers have is the size of the Postscript file.  Most of the printers
they are using to try to print out the document do not have enough memory to
print a file that big.  In fact, we can't print files that big on our in-house
printer.

We've found PDF files to be a better solution.  Even though the customer has
to go through the extra step of downloading a (free) reader for them, they
are far more portable.  And, the customers can select a range of pages to print
if their printer can't handle all the pages at once.

Has anyone else had similar results with Postscript vs. PDF files?

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 Angela M. Howard
 Technical Writing and Indexing
 angela -at- sb -dot- aol -dot- com
 (805)882-2350 x126
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