PRS-500 PDFrasterFarian v2.0 beta

[alex_d]

PDFrasterFarian 2.1.1 is out. If something doesn't work, try 2.0.1 and let me know about it. (note: switching between versions is easy, just rerun install)

NEW:
Way faster
Customizable defaults
Better text quality using 'simple' processing.
No need for password stripping

FIXED:
Blank pages crash
Various PDF incompatibilities (e.g. destwart's PDF, ABC-generated PDFs)
Clarifications of some error messages and captions
Autoimager's been cracked so it won't expire (this is a short-term solution)

KNOWN ISSUES:
Still incompatibile with some filename characters (e.g. parentheses)
When autocropping, the original cropbox is ignored. If something is revealed that was hidden, autocropping will include it leading to a larger page than with autocropping disabled.

Important: I have switched from passing ghostscript PDF files directly and instead I run them through PDFtoPS first. Ghostscript is like a retarded kid choosing ice cream when it comes to pdfs, and converting to postscript both gives the huge speedup and also allows some previously unreadable pdfs to be processed. PDFtoPS, however, is probably not perfect either. Let me know if you find PDFs that it can't handle. I wonder if there's some that ghotscript can read but pdftops can't.

EDIT: I fixed the pdftk/encryption issue. Also, manually inputing filenames wasn't working. Hence, 2.1.1

[alex_d]

2.1.0's been updated to 2.1.1

download it from the OP

[mosh]

Well I finally gave up trying to figure out why PDFRastaFarian could not create output files or why, after removing that section, it would continue to fail on extracting the pdf.

I am now running PDFRastaFarian on Win2k in a VM.

It appears that Ghostscript is unable to find gs_init.ps and therefore no png files are created.

Generating preview....
...Creating EPS file from PDF page
...Performing autocropping (this step may take several minutes)
...Rastering PNG file from EPS file (this step may take several minutes)
AFPL Ghostscript 8.54: Can't find initialization file gs_init.ps.
...Running PNG file through Sharpening filter
convert.exe: unable to open image `C:\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.1\\temp\prv_5.png': No
such file or directory.

SOLUTION

This issue occurs because the "kernel-preview.cmd" and "kernel-processing.cmd" both call GS with "PDFrasterFarian 2.1.0" as the directory whereas it is now "PDFrasterFarian 2.1.1".

A quick search/replace in both of those directories did not resolved this problem.

I had ensure that the drive letter was appended on this line in both files:

SET gs_includes=-I"c:\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.1\software\gs\gs8.54\lib" -I"c:\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.1\software\gs\gs8.54\Resource" -I"c:\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.1\software\gs\fonts"


Mosh

[alex_d]

my apologies, you're right! posting 2.1.2 now, find it in post #1. (actually, the line should read "%relpath%\software\gs\gs8.54\lib")

[NatCh]

Thanks, alex_d!

[fifidong]

I still experience 0kb output file size on 2.1.2

[alex_d]

I just redownloaded the zips and retested with a couple pdfs. It seems to be working for me. If anyone else is having problems, PLEASE SPEAK UP.

fifidong. One thing you could do is, right before it says "Press RETURN to close" is to post the file lrs2lrf.log, which will be in the same directory as your pdf, and the file temp.lrs, which will be in the 'temp' directory inside pdfrasterfarian. Also, take a look in temp\result and see if you see all the pages to your doc. Lastly, post the pdf too for good measure.

[fifidong]

Input File Name : C:\Documents and Settings\dongsshi\Desktop\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.2\\temp\temp.lrs
Output File Name : C:\Documents and Settings\dongsshi\Desktop\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.2\_30__revive.lrf
ファイルの整合性をチェックします
整合性のチェック完了
[Warning ] Publisherの文字列が長すぎて、表示しきれない場合があります。
書誌情報ファイルの整合性をチェックします
書誌情報ファイルの整合性チェック完了
[Warning ] Invalid value blockrule. Set Default value [line: 37]
[Error ] Invalid file encoding. [line: 39]
ファイルが正しくありません
強制終了
次のファイルを削除します。:: C:\Documents and Settings\dongsshi\Desktop\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.2\_30__revive.lrf

That's what the lrs2lrf.log file contains
I have no clue why those Japanese Fonts are in there.
Also, I have installed East Asian Languages but, Language for non-Unicode programs is set to English (US default).

I attempted on several files, including this one (12 pages)
and eBooks. However same thing happens.

[alex_d]

The pdf seems to work for me. Please attach temp\temp.lrs. (zip it up and use the attach function)

[fifidong]

temp.lrs attached

[fifidong]

I'm not sure but kernel-LRS.cmd and the temp.lrs seems to be non-ANSI encoding.

in Textpad when I try to open, it says

"WARNING: "kernel-LRS.cmd" contains characters that do not exist in code page 1252 (ANSI - Latin I). They will be converted to the system default character, if you click OK"

[alex_d]

thanks.
hmm... I am at a loss at what's wrong. It does seem to be something with how your system handles foreign characters (seeing as your lrs is identical, and looking at the error lrs2lrf spits out). The japanese there is by default, since the .dll is from the Librie. The input LRS file also contains a bit of japanese to define a font (dunno, i just copied it straight from another LRS). It's encoded in UTF-8, which is a bit of a weird standard. However, my non-unicode language is also set to English, and i've got East Asian languages installed as do you. I've got no clue... anyone else have this problem?

In other news, I found a typo that prevented table of contents from working, and another bug that messes up page ordering in quarters-of-a-page mode. I'll post 2.1.3 tonight, whether or not we figure out fifidong's issue.

EDIT: yeah, textpad can't handle UTF-8. Neither can wordpad. Notepad, of all things, seems to work. However, that in itself isn't the problem.

[alex_d]

2.1.3's been posted with the aforementioned fixes

EDIT: hmm... fifidong, aparently everything works if you just delete the part where you specify a japanese font. I'll put it in the next release. I think you'll probably be able to do it yourself (it's a short tag in kernel-LRS.cmd). let me know if it works.

[jakeluck]

simply amazing software, all my 2 columns peer-review papers are all nicely sectioned into 4 pages. thanks for the great job!

[JimCuk]

Alex,
Any idea why I ALWAYS get pages out of sync. Almost all of them fall in a random order. Even if I go through all advanced options. Trying to create a portrait LRF from a PDF, tried using the latest version but no luck.