PDF woes

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 12:32:49 +0100
Klaus-Peter Schrage <kpschrage at gmx.de> wrote:

> 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 ...

That all makes sense to me. It would explain the problem running ps2pdf on
the ps file from acrobat.

However, I still do not know why I cannot print the file or view it in
ghostscript, while others can. The postscript I get from acrobat 5.0.8 for
Linux must be the same as others get. So the difference here must be in
ghostscript. Can you see what version of Ghostscript your CUPS is using?


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