Don's FAQ about PDFs and Lulu
Copyright 2004 & 2005 by Don Campbell

Last updated 11/20/2005

New note: This FAQ was written before Lulu's Global Distribution print partner, LSI, tightened their requirements for PDFs. The new requirement is that all PDFs be made using Adobe software (apparently Lulu's PDF converter also qualifies). Adobe's full Acrobat product is quite expensive and thus may be prohibitive for many Lulu authors who would otherwise make their own PDF in order to have greater control over the document formatting. The method for making a PDF described in this FAQ uses Ghostscript as the final step of PDF creation and Ghostscript PDFs are not supported by LSI.

An alternative is to make a postscript file and submit that postscript file to Lulu for conversion to PDF. Such an approach preserves formatting and special fonts while maximizing compatibility. I have written a tutorial on postscript file creation that updates the postscript material presented here. I have given a little more detail on getting the files for making postscript and I have made getting the Distiller PPD file easier.

I still think it is a useful thing to make your own PDF from the postscript file in order to check it out before uploading the postscript file to Lulu.

INTRODUCTION:

I began this FAQ after answering dozens of questions about PDF creation on the Lulu.com forums and being confused myself about weird issues that came up. There were issues with various PDF creation software and issues specifically with Lulu's printer. Some issues related to confusing nuances in font embedding in the PDFs created by various applications. Other issues included difficulties in getting custom page sizes to transfer to PDFs.

The Lulu printing gurus tried to give me answers but often they also were in the dark. A fundamental problem in defining answers is the many variations in operating system, PDF creationware, the application of the original document and a huge variety of fonts. The following is information to give Lulu users some things to try when PDFs fail to upload or to print correctly.

I recommend reading through the FAQ for the basics about how to deal with creating PDFs that are acceptable to Lulu's finicky printer. Pay particular attention to the issues of font licensing and font embedding. Then you can look at the installation and use instructions for the method that I describe in detail. The instructions are full of pictures which may make it look more complicated than it is. It's not at all complicated and it goes quite quickly. Be aware that the illustrations are from Win98SE, Win2K and most of the application images are from WordPerfect. Menus differ in appearance and sometimes in layout in different Windows versions, driver versions, applications and application versions. It may help to use your imagination when applying some images to your situation.

A method for creating PDFs with free software:

In addition to this FAQ, I have written two web pages describing installation and use of a robust 2-step method of making PDFs using free software for Windows computers. Before the "2-step" part scares anyone off as being way more complicated than one step consider this: all 1-step processes just hide the 2 steps by combining them. Essentially, all PDF creation starts with the creation of a postscript file that is then converted into a PDF.

Splitting out the 2-steps has advantages over many free PDF creation packages. Most importantly, the initial step of creating a postscript file is made by Adobe's postscript driver. Adobe invented postscript and PDFs and having Adobe software involved is very useful to creating a compatible PDF. A second advantage is that the process of creating a PDF from a postscript file has many options that can be selected. The 2-step method I describe makes setting these options particularly easy and explicit.

Installing the 2-step PDF conversion system.
Using the 2-step PDF conversion system.

Testing your PDF before uploading it to Lulu. (Don't let your PDF leave home without it.)


FAQ SUMMARY:

Some conclusions can be stated up front before going into details. Most failure of PDFs to print with Lulu's printer is due to one of these causes: 1) PDFs created with some versions of Ghostscript are rejected by a screening process because Lulu has had so much trouble with this version. 2) PDFs created with fonts that have restricted licenses will be rejected. 3) PDFs that do not have the fonts  embedded will be rejected. 4) Some PDFs with fonts that are embedded but only have subsets of those fonts embedded will be rejected or may fail to print properly.

The purpose of this FAQ is to explain these issues in more detail and to provide suggestions on avoiding them in producing PDFs for Lulu's printer. I think that the finickiness of Lulu's printer is unusual among printers and PDF viewers and should be fixed at some point by the printer's vendor. Until then, we will have to adjust to it.

A caution before installing any PDF creation software: In making the tests I made for this FAQ, one thing became very clear: various postscript devices and printer drivers, including the drivers that work with PDF creation software, share some software files. This means that installing a PDF maker may have unintended interactions with an already installed postscript printer or a previously installed PDF maker. If you do not have a postcript printer installed and do not have PDF creation software installed, it should not be a problem.

In particular, I found that Adobe Acrobat Distiller's postscript driver was frequently modified by installing other postscript devices/drivers. Reinstalling Acrobat restored Distiller's driver but sometimes also prevented the PDF creationware from working. I did not determine a method for always having both Distiller and other PDF creationware coexist.


Q: What does Don know about making PDFs, anyway?
Q: What is a PDF?
Q: How are PDFs made?
Q: What is this thing called "Ghostscript?"
Q: What is font substitution?
Q: What is font embedding?
Q: What is font subset embedding?
Q: Why won't my PDF creationware embed my favorite font?
Q: Will Lulu make the PDF for me?
Q: What are the pros and cons of submitting books to Lulu as a PDF?
Q: Why are some PDFs refused by the Lulu printer?
Q: Why do some PDFs fail to print correctly with the Lulu printer?
Q: How do you setup a custom page size?
Q: What are the easiest/best ways to make PDFs compliant with Lulu's printer?
Q: Are there any other Acrobat ways to make a PDF?
Q: What if my application refuses to embed fonts?
Q: What are some free ($) ways to make PDFs compliant with Lulu's printer?
Q: What is Don's idea of a great free way to make compliant PDFs?
Q: How can I make compliant PDFs from Linux?
Q: What are things to avoid in making PDFs for Lulu's printer?
Q: What can I do if Lulu tells me that my PDF fails to print?

Q: What does Don know about making PDFs, anyway?

A: I have a background of making my own PDFs under many different applications and from various versions of Windows, UNIX and Linux operating systems. I got curious about all of the problems Lulu was have printing PDFs submitted by authors and I found myself giving advice that did not always seem to result in solving authors' problems with PDF creation. I set out to test various ways of making PDFs.

Most of my tests were performed with Windows 98 (SE) in a slightly unusual configuration: Windows was running under Win4Lin which in turn was running under Linux. There are many advantages of this setup and I do not think it affected any of the results, but one never knows for sure. The main advantage is I could quickly and repeatedly install, remove and reinstall software because the required rebooting of Windows goes far faster under Win4Lin than would occur in a native Windows installation. I also tested a couple of things with Windows 2000 running natively. Finally, I made some tests with applications running directly under Linux.

Under Windows I tested the following word processors: WordPerfect 8, WordPerfect 11, MSWord97, OpenOffice 1.3. Under Linux I only tested OpenOffice 1.2. I made PDFs using the following PDF creationware: Adobe Acrobat Distiller 5.0, PDFCreator, CutePDF, WordPerfect 11's "publish to PDF," OpenOffice's export to PDF, Adobe's Generic postscript driver (combined with Distiller PPD), AFPL/GPL Ghostscript 8.14 for Windows, GNU Ghostscipt 7.07 for Linux, GSView 4.6 for Windows (viewer and Ghostscript interface).

One of the requests from Lulu staff was that I try a mix of Type 1 and True Type fonts. Under Windows 98 Adobe Type Manager is required to display and print Type 1 fonts. Adobe Type Manager Light can be downloaded from Adobe. It permitted WordPerfect 8 and MS Word 97 to display and print Type 1 fonts. It caused WordPerfect 11 to lock up upon printing and it was therefore impossible to complete the tests with Type 1 fonts with that application.

One test document consisted of text formatted for a 6x9 inch Lulu book including several standard True Type fonts, several standard Adobe Type 1 fonts and a "custom" Type 1 font downloaded from a freebie font website. The other test document was four pages with various True Type fonts but no Type 1 fonts. The tests in OpenOffice for Linux used different Type 1 fonts plus True Type fonts.

Another issue was the requirement that the PDF creation software be able to produce a 6x9 inch document, consistent with the standard size of a Lulu book. This latter requirement turned out to be more of a problem than I expected.


Q: What is a PDF? (Plus defining terms used in this document.)

A: PDF stands for "Portable Document Format." It is Adobe's name for a file format that is designed to allow the document to be displayed and printed as identically as possible by various computer systems. A PDF consists mostly of postscript printer commands for printing a document "wrapped" in various additional information to help PDF viewers display the document.


Q: How are PDFs made?

A: An application generally makes a PDF file in a fashion directly analogous to printing that document on a postscript printer. The output from the application goes first to a postscript printer driver which takes the output and turns it into printable postscript. That postscript instructions for printing the document are then passed to the PDF creation software where it is packaged in the rest of the stuff that makes it a PDF. Many packages make this look like a single process since you only see the application send out the data and then see the PDF appear somewhere on your computer's file system. However, this appearance is deceptive. PDF creation is virtually never a single process. Indeed, most PDF creationware packages utilize a conventional postscript printer driver as the first stage of the two-part process.


Q: What is this thing called "Ghostscript?"

A: All of the free PDF creation packages I have seen use a version of free software called "Ghostscript" as the second stage in PDF creation. Ghostscript is the software which turns postscript into a PDF. All Ghostscript versions have a common ancestor, however there are now two separate branches of Ghostscript development, named by flavor of their license terms, and carrying with them different version numbers. One of these is AFPL/GPL Ghostscript which has version numbers 8.x. The other is GNU Ghostscript that has version numbers 7.x. Both are available as open source and are free to download and use.

Both flavors of Ghostscript are available for Windows. GNU Ghostscript is generally available as a binary for Linux but you may have to compile AFPL/GPL Ghostscript yourself if you want to use it under Linux. The two Ghostscripts work so similarly that one can be substituted for another in most packages. PDFs produced by Ghostscript versions 7.04 and 7.05 have given the Lulu printer so much trouble that Lulu checks to see if either of those has been used in producing the PDF and if so the PDF is rejected with a message to that effect. PDFs produced by Ghostscripts 8.x and 7.07 appear not to be affected by the Ghostscript compatibility problems.


Q: What is font substitution?

A: All postscript printers come with a standard set of built-in fonts. That is part of their ability to produce documents that look similar regardless of the printer technology and the printer's manufacturer. PDF viewers have the same postscript standard fonts built in so that they can accurately display postscript printer fonts. Some fonts on personal computers are similar to some built-in postscript fonts but have different names and may differ slightly in appearance. When a postscript printer driver sees a font that is non-standard in a document it can look at some of that font's characteristics and substitute the closest built-in font. Many times this substitution is quite accurate. An example is that the built-in Helvetica font often substitutes for the True Type Arial font.


Q: What is font embedding?

A: Writers often want to use fonts that differ significantly from built-in postscript fonts. The printer driver can get around the mismatch by downloading the font description to the printer-temporarily the printer gets an additional font to use. The same can be done with a PDF. The font that is added to the PDF is said to be "embedded" into it.


Q: Why won't my PDF creationware embed my favorite font?

A: Fonts that are present on a computer and available for use by applications are generally copyrighted and licensed. They are only useful if they can be downloaded for printing. However some font licenses do not allow you to embed the font in another file for sharing with someone else is something like a PDF. That restriction is marked within the font file itself and the PDF creationware will not allow such restricted fonts to be embedded. Microsoft has made a Windows Explorer extension application available that will tell you more details than you ever wanted to know about a font. It is downloadable from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/TrueTypeProperty21.mspx

By clicking with the right mouse button you can get the details about the various permissions granted by the font license. Unfortunately, it only works with True Type fonts.

Font properties extension illustrated


Q: What is font subset embedding?

A: It would be rare for a document to use all of the characters available in a particular font. To save space in a PDF document the creationware will often only embed the subset of specific characters used in that document. This subset embedding has been said by Lulu staff to be the source of some printing problems with Lulu's printer. Many PDF creationware packages will insist on subset embedding some fonts in spite of any options you have selected in advance. For instance, Adobe's Acrobat Distiller 5.0 documentation states specifically that True Type fonts (the fonts generally available on Windows and Mac computers) will always be embedded as subsets.


Q: Will Lulu make a PDF for me?

A: Lulu prints books from PDFs. If you adhere to Lulu's list of software applications, and use only fonts on Lulu's list of fonts for those applications, then you can submit your already formatted document and Lulu will produce the PDF for you. They will not change your formatting, so the document is produced "as-is."


Q: What are the pros and cons of submitting books to Lulu as a PDF?

A: The advantage of producing your own PDF for publication is that it gives you an extra measure of control over how your book will ultimately look. You can use fonts that are not on the Lulu list and you can be sure that your formatting is adhered to. The disadvantage is that the Lulu printer is especially finicky about printing certain PDFs which means that making a PDF that complies with the standards of the Lulu printer has been problematic for some authors.


Q: Why are some PDFs refused by the Lulu printer?

A: There are quick and easy answers and there are many additional unknowns. The first is that PDFs created using Ghostscripts 7.04 and 7.05 are rejected because these versions are likely to produce incompatible PDFs.

In addition, Lulu staff have pointed at font embedding as an issue and have strongly recommended embedding all fonts and avoiding subset embedding. In particular, the Lulu system will reject PDFs that are created using fonts that are not embedded. Interestingly, Adobe's Acrobat Distiller is the "gold standard" for PDF creationware and Lulu's staff regularly suggest that making PDFs with Distiller is the best way to make a printable PDF. This is curious since Distiller insists on subsetting embedded True Type fonts. Obviously there is something contradictory about the current Lulu recommendations. What is clear is that most problems come from books submitted as multiple PDFs that also have fonts which are subset embedded.

Adobe Acrobat and perhaps some other applications have the ability to do minor editing of the PDF itself. Unfortunately, this is almost certain to make a PDF that will be rejected. The characters inserted may be part of an embedded character set but Acrobat often tries to re-embed them with results that may be incompatible with the Lulu printer.

Some PDF creationware is capable of imposing a variety of restrictions on what can be done with a PDF. Some of these restrictions may be password protected and others may apply generally. These come under the heading of security. Lulu's system will reject PDFs that have such security restrictions. A particularly tricky way a security restriction can inadvertently be set is when you have embedded a font that itself has restrictions on its use. If Acrobat reports that your Document Properties security settings show that editing or extracting of text is not allowed it may be because you have used a font which embeds but embeds only for the purpose of printing. You may need to select another font to prevent a security restriction on your PDF. You can check your font's properties with Microsofts font extension described above.


Q: Why do some PDFs fail to print correctly with the Lulu printer?

A: Even when PDFs are not rejected before the printing process, some books printed from PDFs submitted by authors do not print accurately. Not all the reasons for this are knows. What Lulu can say from experience is that books submitted as more than one PDF present the greatest problem. The problems with multiple PDF submissions appear to be greatest with those that have various fonts that are subsetted. Until Lulu gains more experience with such failures the best recommendations are:

1) Produce your book as a single PDF from a single application, if that is practical.

2) Be sure to select your PDF creationware's "embed all fonts" option and unselect the option to embed fonts as subsets.

3) Do not edit the PDF once it is made. If edits are required, remake the PDF.

4) If you use technical applications (TeX and LaTeX are examples) to create documents with special symbols you may find these symbols are created as "bitmap" images. You may have to do some extra homework to figure out how to best integrate these into your book's main document or the PDF.


Q: How do you setup a custom page size?

A: It should be as simple as selecting the page formatting menu from your word processing application and defining a custom page size. The problem is that the operating system, your application and the PDF creationware's driver all conspire to keep you from using a page size that is not known properly to some demon inside the system. In particular, most applications will try to force your document to only be formatted for a paper size that the document's default printer or the operating system have defined as a possible paper size.

Setting a custom page size for the PDF creation software should be as simple as selecting File=>Print=>{PDF creation driver} and Properties and setting up a custom page size. Unfortunately, some versions of Windows, some versions of Adobe Acrobat and some versions of Windows applications have a bug or bugs that prevent a custom page size that is set in this logical and obvious way from "sticking." The result is that your PDF does not end up with the page size that you set up in the Properties menu. The solution (or "workaround") is to set up a custom page size from the level of the operating system, outside of your particular application and then using that page size from inside the application. The process for doing this differs in different versions of Windows.

In the recent versions of Windows (Windows 2000 and XP, but maybe others) you must create a "form" that is your custom page size. You do that by:

1) Select Start=>Settings=>printers

2) Click on the driver (for example, Acrobat Distiller) without double clicking (you just want to highlight the driver).

defining a custom form

3) Select File from the menubar of the printers window (upper left)

4) Select Server Properties=> forms

5) Choose one of the paper sizes and change it to 6x9

6) Change the name of that setting to something appropriate like 6x9 or Lulu Book

7) Save the setting

Defining a custom form

From Windows 98 and possibly other older versions of Windows the Printers windows does not have a Server Properties menu selection. Instead, you can set a custom page size in many drivers this way:

1) select Start=> Settings=> Printers

2) click with the right mouse button on Acrobat Distiller (or your other PDF creationware).

3) choose Properties

custom page definition win98

4) choose the Paper tab and set one of the custom paper sizes to 6x9

Defining a custom 6x9 page in Win98

5) Click OK to exit the menu and save the selection.

Once you have set the custom page size in the Printer Settings menu you should be able to use that size. In my system, CutePDF's driver did not have a custom page size setting that could be set from the Properties dialog. I could not find a way to make the 6x9 inch page size available with this application.

Warning: CutePDFWriter's uninstall program did more than uninstall CuteWriter. It also made my system fail to boot. This system was Windows98SE running under Linux using Win4Lin. CutePDF's support staff denied that anything in their software could have affected my system. It turned out that their uninstaller was deleting various files in the "root" of the C:\ directory. Under Win4Lin deleting the files "autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" caused the failure to boot. Deleting those files in a normal Windows 98 installation will not cause a failure to boot. However, when I started with a totally blank hard drive, did a totally fresh install of Windows 98 and then tested CuteWriter I still found that their uninstaller deleted various files in the root directory of C:\ . The more files (image files, text files, a few .exe files) I put in C:\ the more files the Cute uninstaller deleted during the uninstall process.

This is totally unacceptable behavior. No uninstaller should delete files that the application did not install there in the first place. As long as you keep CuteWriter installed, I think you are all right. If you want to uninstall it, save the files (not the directories--it does not seem to harm those) from C:\ in a backup directory and then restore them after you run the uninstaller (preferrably before rebooting).


Q: What are the easiest/best ways to make PDFs compliant with Lulu's printer?

A: The easiest way to make compliant PDFs is to start with a single document with a common word processor using standard fonts that come with the operating system or the word processing packages. Then make the PDF using Acrobat Distiller or the word processors built in PDF creation application with settings to maximize the embedding of all fonts.

Distiller can make PDFs in several different ways depending on choices and on the application. The easiest was is from within Word. Installing Distiller causes an Acrobat menu item to appear on the main Word menu bar. Clicking on that gets you a set of Distiller menus that is more complete than most Distiller menus and the PDFs made should be compatible if you select all the right options and use standard embeddable fonts.

WordPerfect versions 10 and later and OpenOffice have built-in PDF creation capability. In WordPerfect's PDF menus you can select options for font embedding and subsetting. In OpenOffice your best option is to choose the style of PDF for "Press." OpenOffice did not do well with the freebie Type 1 font I downloaded, but otherwise it seems to make acceptable PDFs. The issue with the freebie font may have more to do with incompatibilities in that font's makeup than with OpenOffice. Using Type 1 fonts under Windows 98 requires Adobe Type Manager or Adobe Type Manager Light. With both WordPerfect 8 and WordPerfect 11 installed on the same machine there was a problem with WordPerfect 11 and Type Manager Light. There was no problem with either WordPerfect 8 or WordPerfect 11 with Type Manager Light when only one version of WordPerfect was installed.

Many other applications will use Distiller as if it were a printer. You select Print from the File menu and then select Distiller from the printer list. Many of Distiller's settings can be set from this menu. In some versions security settings must be made by first running Distiller as a stand-alone from the Programs as described below.

In some ways Distiller is the easiest way to make PDFs, but Distiller (5.0 at least) has a tangled maze of setup and option menus and these menus and the effect of selecting the options vary depending on whether you get to the setup menus from Window's printer settings menu (Start=>Settings=>Printers), run Distiller as a stand-alone application from the Programs menu (Start=>Programs=>Acrobat Distiller), or from your application's print menu (File=>Print=>{select printer}).

Distiller security setting
This figure shows Distiller as run from the "Programs" menu. Some settings, like security levels, can only be made this way.

In Acrobat Distiller 5, click on properties and then the tab Adobe PDF settings. Select conversion settings and set it to press. Select "Edit conversion setting"s and choose fonts. Select Embed all fonts and unselect Subset embedded fonts....From the conversion settings menu you can also select the level of PDF compatibility. I usually choose Acrobat 4 because that makes a file readable by a large number of readers. I am not sure how this might affect Lulu's printer. Back in Distiller's properties menu, select the "postscript" tab and set it to "Optimize for portability."

Distiller font embedding
This menu was arrived at from Distiller's properties menu by selecting the "Adobe PDF settings" tab and then "Edit conversion settings."

There are myriad other possible settings and the menu tree is complex. It may also differ in various versions of Distiller. My best advice is to bring the menus up in the three different ways and browse through all the options. You want to know how to set and have the settings stay set for these things: security (you want no security settings and free permissions for all access to printing and modifying the PDF); embed all fonts; you want to uncheck the box that applies to subsetting some fonts; select a "printing" or "press" job option.


Q: Are there any other Acrobat ways to make a PDF?

A: The full version of Acrobat that includes Distiller also includes another printer driver type of PDF maker called PDFWriter. Adobe's documentation suggests that PDFWriter is for documents that are relatively simple and consist mostly of text. It installs itself as a printer much like Distiller does and so should be accessible from the Print menu of your application. It has fewer settings than Distiller. You set the embedding options from the Properties=>Fonts menu window and can unselect subsetting of both True Type and Type 1 fonts. When this is the setting, it appears to fully embed most True Type and Type 1 fonts. Adobe's help says that some TrueType fonts cannot be embedded. The files it makes tend to be quite large. Some people think that the typesetting of PDFWriter is not as precise as with Distiller but I could not see much difference. It may be worth trying if other options fail to work with Lulu's printer. Evaluate a PDF made by PDFWriter critically, especially if there are images.


Q: What if my application refuses to embed fonts?

A: When Acrobat Distiller from the full Acrobat program installs, it activates links inside some other programs that permits direct creation of PDFs from the application. However easy these links may be, they do not always give you control over the full set of configuration options that using Distiller as a printer driver does. So, if you have made an "easy PDF" from the direct link in your application that causes Lulu to give an error message, one thing to try is to use the Print command with the Distiller printer driver interface instead. That way you have control over the postscript input to the printer driver as well as Distiller's specific PDF options of font embedding.

Various packages do font embedding to different extents. If you have a font that has a license restriction against embedding then you can try the "send fonts as outlines" setting of some creationware. See the FAQ page on using the 2-step method for details of this setting with the Adobe postscript driver (which is also used with Distiller and some other PDF creation packages).

Q: What are some free ($) ways to make PDFs compliant with Lulu's printer?

A: Several free packages exist to make PDFs in much the same fashion that Distiller can be used as if it was a printer. These include CutePDF (now called CutePDFWriter or CuteWriter on the Cute website), PDF995 and PDFCreator. These all use Ghostscript as the final step in PDF creation. Installation generally makes these programs appear on your installed list of printers.

I will repeat my warning: I found that under some conditions one or more of these free applications installed something on my computer that clobbered Distiller's postscript driver interface. This is not entirely surprising since postscript printers seem to share one or more helper programs. It is not particularly dangerous but it was annoying that Distiller lost some of its functionality that required it to be reinstalled to restore. I do not know for sure which applications were the worst offenders. If you find that a postscript printer behaves weirdly after installing PDF creationware, you may need to reinstall that printer driver.

Also, all of these packages have their issues. CutePDF's uninstaller deleted some files from my C:\ root directory. That made my particular installation of Window98 fail to boot up until I recovered the files. That behavior in an uninstaller is unacceptable. I informed the Tech Support at CutePDF and they denied the possibility that their uninstaller could do this. I repeated it 10 or more times on two different machines. It is a bad thing to have happen and it's worse that they won't acknowledge and fix it.

PDFCreator refused to embed all fonts in spite of all my efforts. That may not be a problem but some of the fonts that it wouldn't embed were not even used in the document and they were still listed. That seems flaky to me. PDFCreator was one of the packages which clobbered the postscript driver menus of my Acrobat Distiller installation. Again, I don't like that.

PDF995 comes with one of the versions of ghostscript that may not be 100% compatible with Lulu's printer. That's something that can be changed but the instructions for changing it may put off some folks.


Q: What is Don's idea of a great free way to make compliant PDFs?


Adobe, the inventors of postscript, make software for producing postscript printer drivers. The process combines a postscript printer description (PPD) file with their generic driver to make a specific postscript driver. Interestingly, Adobe also makes a PPD file for Acrobat Distiller. Combining these two Adobe files produces a generic postscript driver made for producing postscript files. Then you can use GSView, a front-end to Ghostscript, to produce a PDF from the postscript file. This 2-step approach sounds more complicated than it really is. I've moved the instructions for installing the software to one page and the instructions for using the software to make a PDF to another page.


Q: How can I make compliant PDFs from Linux?

A: The good news for Linux users is that postscript is the default printing methodology in Linux and other UNIX operating systems. OpenOffice is available for word processing in Linux and it has a very convenient Export to PDF command that many Lulu authors have used to produce PDFs for their Lulu books. Unfortunately, the Export to PDF command does not have explicit settings for embedding all fonts or preventing subset embedding.

A custom page size can be set from OpenOffice's Format=>Page menu. Choose Format again from the Page settings window and select User to enter a custom paper size. After selecting Export to PDF from the File menu you are prompted to enter a file name and then you click on Save. A window pops up giving you a choice of compression options. Selecting optimize for press seems like a good guess. The resulting PDFs have the correct page size but some fonts may not be fully embedded.

Another option is to install a generic postscript printer. OpenOffice has its own printer installation program but that did not work for me within Fedora Core 2. Instead, I installed a generic postscript printer from the system settings menu. This generic postscript printer then showed up as available within OpenOffice. You can then select generic postscript as your printer, print to file and produce a postscript file. Other postscript printers could be used if you found one that would accept a custom page size. From the File=>Printer Settings=>Properties=>Device menu you can set the resolution and "prefiltering" of the postscript. You can experiment with these options. Counterintuitively, I found "Embed Ghostscript fonts only" permitted me to make a PDF using GSView that fully embedded the fonts in my test document.

Printer setup from OOo in Linux

In Linux you can produce a PDF from the postscript file using ghostscript from the command line or from within GSView. I liked using GSView because it allows setting options like embedding from the user interface and then these options are already set the next time you use it. I did not find a precompiled binary for AFPL/GPL Ghostscript 8.x to use in Linux. Lulu has apparently not found problems with PDFs created by Ghostscript 7.07 (the current version of GNU Ghostscript).

From applications other than OpenOffice you will generally be going to a postscript file and then converting through Ghostscript or GSView. There are notes that can be turned up in Google searches about problems specifically with PDFs produced from TeX and LaTeX and possibly other similar layout programs. The issue appears to be due to the applications forcing some characters of special fonts to be output as bitmaps. There are probably ways of dealing with that or getting around it but you will have to seek those out on your own.

The same caveat applies as above: I have not yet tested these recommendations with Lulu's printer.


Q: What are things to avoid in making PDFs for Lulu's printer?

A: If at all possible try to make your book with a single application and produce a single PDF from that application. Do not edit your PDF in Acrobat to fix minor mistakes because that editing process is unlikely to properly embed the fonts used in the editing. Make your PDF with all fonts embedded and with subsetting not selected. If you make your PDF with Acrobat Distiller and you use True Type fonts (nearly all fonts on typical Windows systems) then some fonts will invariably be subsetted. PDFWriter, another Acrobat application for creating a PDF through a virtual printer may embed more completely than Distiller. (However, it is not yet clear PDFWriter makes PDFs that are any more compliant with Lulu's printer.) Subsetted embedding by Distiller may not be a problem for submitting a single PDF. It may be an issue if you submit multiple PDFs that Lulu must combine into one.


Q: What can I do if Lulu tells me that my PDF fails to print?

A: One of the potential advantages of the two step process of making a .ps file and then converting that file using GSView is that virtually all fonts are completely embedded. You can even open a previously made PDF in GSView, select convert and set EmbedAllFonts to true and SubsetFonts to false and convert the PDF to a new PDF. This is not a recommended procedure, but if the original document cannot be reconverted to a PDF from the original application it is something that can be tried. After doing this virtually all fonts will become completely embedded. Some fonts will show up with different names in the Document Properties => Fonts window of Acrobat Reader but nearly all or all of them will be fully embedded. It is not clear that this will solve problems created by multiple PDFs combined to make a single book but it is one thing to try if other things fail.