PDF woes

[Klaus-Peter Schrage]

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

> 
> The ghostscript is: ESP Ghostscript 7.07.1 (On both SUSE 9 and Gentoo.)
> 
> I have tried Acrobat doing Level 1, 2 and 3 PostScript files.
> 
> My printing system on both is CUPS.
> 
> Can I send someone a .ps file from Acrobat so they can see if it is my file
> or my ghostscript?

I sought and thought a bit, and now I see somewhat clearer, although 
there is one mistery left.
What is clear: Those gov forms are deliberately encrypted so that you 
should only fill in the fields and print the pages on paper:
	http://149.101.23.2/graphics/formsfee/forms/forminfo.htm
The encryption has the effect that you can't change the original pdf in 
any way, neither with Adobe distiller nor with ghostscript unless you 
know the magic master password.

What can be done is to create a PS out of the PDF - that's evident, as 
otherwise you couldn't print out the forms on any ps printer.

But you can't reconvert the ps file with ghostscript resp. its pdfwrite. 
Trying to do so I received this very error saying 'Redistilling 
encrypted PDF is not permitted.' Viewing the pf file you'll find a line 
saying:

'% Removing the following eight lines is illegal, subject to the Digital 
Copyright Act of 1998.'

What really marvels me is the occurrance of the error message 
('Redistilling encrypted ...') when trying to do plain printing (which I 
was able to do, as I have said earlier). According to my weak knowledge 
of the linux printing process no 'distilling', ie ps->pdf conversion 
should be involved. Usually it's the application itself (eg Acrobat 
Reader) that creates ps data. These are sent unaltered to the printer if 
it is a ps type, or otherwise ghostscript takes the ps data and converts 
them to a format readable by a specific printer type (eg HP's PCL code).

Perhaps there's someone with a little more insight ...
Klaus