How to prevent DISTILLER from propting output filename ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter tommaso.gastaldi
  • Start date Start date
T

tommaso.gastaldi

Hi

I am creating a pdf by just printing on Acrobat Distiller. This is
fine.

I need to create a pdf which has a given prespecified name and I do not
wish that
Distiller prompts me for a name.

Does anyone know how to pass the output file name (thus avoiding that
Distiller open the open file dialog) ?

-tom
 
Hi

I am creating a pdf by just printing on Acrobat Distiller. This is
fine.

I need to create a pdf which has a given prespecified name and I do not
wish that
Distiller prompts me for a name.

Does anyone know how to pass the output file name (thus avoiding that
Distiller open the open file dialog) ?

-tom
Click to expand...

You may not want to dig this deep for this project but here is what I
did (I was too cheap to buy adobe)........

I had this same problem when I was trying to automate pdf creation. I
used GhostScript and Redmon. I created a custom vb application that
reads a text file for the file name and path and then creates a PDF
with that path and name. Pretty much you set up a postscript printer,
with a redirected port, you then set up the port to be redirected to
Redmon, from there you use a custom app that accepts a single command
line argument (you put the path to this custom app in the arugment
section for Redmon followed by a %1). This custom app will get the
path to the postscript document(in the windows temp folder) via the
argument passed from redmon, so then your custom app would call
Ghostscript to convert the postscript file to PDF to whatever name you
wanted. It sounds complicated but if you read the website and wrap
your head around actually what to do and what its doing it is pretty
simple. I have some instructions written up that I need to post on my
site sometime. This is really not as complicated as I made it sound.


http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/en/redmon.htm

If you want more detailed instructions repost or email me and Ill give
them to you.....


(e-mail address removed)
 
Thank you very much tld.

A was afraid that the solution was something along the lines you
indicate. As you say it's not terribly difficult, but it's at least
inconvenient. That Distiller product has been around for such a long
time that it's a real shame they have not been able to provide a simple
mechanism to indicate an output filename. Worst, there was one (back to
versions 4-5) based on a registry variable, and they have removed it!

It's clear they want to force a solution based on using the distiller
API (or consequently similar open source solutions you are indicating).


If you are going to publish your experience, I think it will be useful
for many persons and I will be your first reader (please let me know
when you do).

Further, if you are willing to post here more details I will be very
grateful, and I think many others will benefit from your experience.

Thank you,

-tommaso

tld ha scritto:
 
I think its better to at least try to use "open source" solutions to
fit a need because its tends to foster understanding for what actually
is going on behind the scenes. The problem with depending on a
commercial product is that they are dependent on you getting "hooked"
on this product and therefore do not facilitate understanding. I won't
go on preaching but I have put together a few pdfs (flow chart and
instructions) and some source code that should describe in detail what
I did to fill this need. Its like 22 lines of code and 2 open source
programs to download. You could probably have this running in half a
day. Hope this helps...

http://cs1.mcm.edu/~chavanaa/AutoPDF.zip

P.S. I hosed my website when I updated it with this link so it looks
like crap! :(
 
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