Comparison ”…but that’s supposed be done with PDF…!”

So far, the road from MS Office documents to color separated image files went over the two related Page Distribution Languages (PDLs)PostScript and PDF (Portable Document Format, usually indirectly distilled via PostScript). The disadvantages of this method are sufficiently known from everyday practice.

Where PDLs fail in principle

In principle some documents can not be correctly converted into PostScript, for instance MS Word documents containing WordArt objects (for an example please click on the following link, www.DriverLab.de/EXTIFpro/TestDocums/WordArt.doc.):

Above:
Correct printing result with EXTIF pro: not transparent in the overlaid areas, just as in the original document.

Below:
Incorrect result in PDF (created by the most famous PDF converter on the usual indirect way via PostScript):
transparent overlay area; two overlaid opaque areas resulting in erroneous transparency.

Another example:

Printing from within Adobe Acrobat in principle is restricted to 2^14=16384 Pixels, along vertical as well as horizontal coordinates, meaning that, for an A2-sized document with a resolution of only 900 dpi, some areas
at the right hand side and at the bottom of the page remain erroneously unprinted.

This error does not appear when printing the same PDF document from within GhostView. Nevertheless, GhostView does not provide color separation, turning the situation into a perfect dilemma.

Translation losses: "Chinese Whispers" with PostScript

Usual file formats for documents such as:

• *.doc
• *.htm(l)
• *.xls
• *.ppt
• *.ps
• *.eps
• *.wmf
• *.emf
• or *.pdf

contain their information regarding the document generally in non-rastered form, as vector graphics. In order to print a document, it must be rastered sooner or later, meaning a conversion from a vector graphic into matrix graphic.

In contrast, Image file formats like *.tif are already present as rastered matrix graphics.

If the document is not being directly and immediately rastered by the operating system´s graphics engine (GDI), as EXTIF pro does, but translated in PostScript and/or in PDF before finally being rastered, then inevitably the final version will be a distorted picture of the original. For example, a text being translated from German into Spanish, via a translation into Russian, looses definition and the true meaning due to the intermediate steps. By using several steps, the situation cannot improve, and infact become increasingly distorted.

Let’s take a look at an example:

When you print the original document www.DriverLab.de/EXTIFpro/TestDocums/HorzShift.doc, (the beige screenshot in the image below) with resolution “600 dpi Extremely Smoothed" using EXTIF pro, you obtain the result displayed in the green background field in the below image. The 4 red vertical auxiliary lines are meant to mark the outermost right hand side extension of these 4 lines. Comparing the relative position of those lines, you will notice that all the proportions of corresponding document “HorzSchrift.pdf” (see purple background field below) are displaced, while corresponding image “HorzSchrift.pdf” in green background field reflects the original image with high fidelity.

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