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I have published several textbooks that were typeset using pdflatex. In each case, when I sent them to the commercial book printer, the technicians doing the preflighting invariably found some supposed deficiency in the file that wasn't caught by the Acrobat Pro preflight function that I use. Here are sample quotes from their messages:

"Inside front & back covers pdf file: Quartz can be problematic with copy dropping out. We recommend the cover files be created in Quark or InDesign. If we are to proceed with this as is, you will need to review your proof very carefully for copy that may drop out."

"The customer is using a program that we do not support called LaTeX. Unfortunately we won't be of any help to this customer because we don't know anything about it or how to communicate any ideas on how to fix it. The only suggestion we can give is to direct him to the Internet and try to find forums on the issues he is having with the files to see if there are suggested ways for him to fix them in LaTeX."

When I used Acrobat Pro (latest version, on Mac OS X El Capitan) to fix up some issues with transparency and sent the printer the resulting pdf output, I got this message back:

"The pdf file supplied was produced using apple's osx pdf creator, pdf quartz context. refining a file created this way can cause unexpected results; these anomalies may not appear in a soft proof. if the customer chooses to proceed with the file, it is recommended that the customer review a hard proof to check for errors caused by using quartz. sbi does not support these files and is not responsible for the results in using these files. customer can proceed as is based on information above or can supply a new file."

I following up with the question/comment: "So pdf files created by the latest version of Acrobat Pro for Macintosh are not supported by your digital press? Or is there some way to bypass the use of quartz in this environment?"

The response:

"Quartz files are the problem, they are similar to Word files, which are also not supported. They work fine for the Internet and Electronic posting, but they do not work well for print manufacturing. The only way around it would be to recreate the files in InDesign or another Publishing software."

Summary: A major commercial book printer with both web offset and digital printing doesn't know what LaTeX is and doesn't consider it "publishing software." Likewise, even pdflatex output that has been preflighted/postprocessed by Acrobat Pro is deemed unsuitable for print manufacturing.

My question: Is it generally true that pdflatex output is somehow problematic for commercial book printing and, if so, are there ways to avoid issues like those described above? And where does Quartz fit in?

Grant Petty
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    Quartz is an Apple thing, as far as I know. You should, I think, be able to avoid its involvement. You could try producing postscript and passing that through Acrobat's Distiller programme. However, I don't know if that would help. They do not really seem to know what they are talking about because there is no such thing as a 'Quartz file' as far as I know. So it is not at all like a 'Word file'. I take it they mean that the PDF producer/creator is given as Quartz, but that doesn't tell you what problem they have, just what they believe to be the cause of it. – cfr Feb 06 '16 at 03:34
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    I wonder what they would say if you compiled your files on Linux, instead, where they would hardly be able to blame Quartz. The complaints are too vague to be helpful. They aren't giving you specifics. What about the file 'causes copy to drop out'? What do they mean? Do they mean letters missing? Or... ? It *is* true that PDF files produced by pdfLaTeX do not always print correctly, even when they are correct on screen. I don't think this problem is specific to pdfLaTeX. (It can't be Quartz in my case.) I avoid this by printing the files as images, but a publisher wouldn't want to do that. – cfr Feb 06 '16 at 03:37
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    For example, I've had a few hundred pages printed (in multiple copies) in which roughly 90% of lower case serif ts were missing. Everything else perfect. Occasionally, ts perfect, but you can't do anything but bin print out when it is like that. (t is a more important letter than you think until it isn't there.) I've also seen ligatures missing and em dashes (---), numerals and en dashes (--) disappearing and other things randomly converted to semicolons. So they might have a point. But I've seen this with non-LaTeX PDF, too, although not to the same extent. – cfr Feb 06 '16 at 03:42
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    How does quartz even get involved if you are using Adobe, is it still adding things through a quartz filter? Are you at any point using preview, because that thing has caused us problems. Just opening a pdf in preview and saving it caused the pdf to be altered and things like the horizontal lines in fractions and sqrts disappeared. – daleif Feb 06 '16 at 08:00
  • Btw: how can they see if it was created by quartz? If it say so in the pdf properties then it might be something in the Adobe tool chain. – daleif Feb 06 '16 at 08:01
  • I view the output in Preview, but never save it from Preview. I'm surprised and puzzled by the claim by the printer that Adobe Acrobat Pro somehow produces problematic PDF (when used to preflight/fixup pdflatex output) while Adobe InDesign does not. Is quartz involved in one but not the other? – Grant Petty Feb 06 '16 at 08:06
  • When you look at the Description tab of the document properties in Acrobat/Reader, what does it say for "Application" (below dates created and modified), "PDF Producer" and "PDF Version"? – Max Wyss Feb 06 '16 at 08:15
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    If you are unlucky, then just opening a pdf using preview, changes the PDF. It should not happen, but worth checking. On the Mac, in a terminal, you should be able to run md5sum fil.pdf or similar, in order to get a signature to see if the file was changed, do it after each step and note the resulting her numbers. FYI I haven't tested to see if Mac OSX include the md5sum command or the equivalent sha1sum – daleif Feb 06 '16 at 11:07
  • Btw could we see the file that the firm is complaining about (via private email), I'm very curious to see this file. – daleif Feb 06 '16 at 11:08
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    The files in question show the following: "PDF Producer: Mac OS X 10.11.2 Quartz PDFContext." "PDF Version: 1.4 (Acrobat 5.x)."

    The inside cover file (single page) shows: "Application: TeX."

    The book text file shows: "Application: LaTeX with hyperref package." Probably the technicians see "Quartz PDFContext" in the PDF Producer line and automatically issue dire warnings about text dropouts etc. regardless of whether the file has subsequently been preflighted/fixed-up in Acrobat Pro, which leaves the PDF Producer line unchanged.

    In reality, I bet the files would print just fine.

     – Grant Petty Feb 06 '16 at 17:23
  • In short, I gather that pdflatex (on my machine at least) uses the Quartz engine for producing the file. This is news to me; I thought pdflatex was self-contained. – Grant Petty Feb 06 '16 at 17:25
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    There was a similar post on comp.text.tex. It seems that MacTeX uses Quartz. Have you tried post-processing the pdf file with ghostscript? I always do this with jmakepdfx (which is just a frontend to ghostscript) for my books and have never had any complaints from my printers (but I use Linux rather than a Mac). – Nicola Talbot Feb 07 '16 at 12:31
  • I suspect the problem with the covers is that a physical printer cannot print all the way to the edges. See http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6834/change-paper-size-in-mid-document – John Kormylo Feb 07 '16 at 18:04
  • There is a minimum 1/2" margin on all sides. I think if the margin were the problem, the technician would have mentioned that rather than talking about Quartz. – Grant Petty Feb 08 '16 at 05:45
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    The PDFs produced by pdftex should conform to the PDF specification. Any good print shop will preflight all PDFs they get (e.g. with Acrobat) and should be able to handle them without any problems. If the shop makes a fuzz (like yours did "is using a program that we do not support called LaTeX"), search for another. And if you want to be sure and have Adobe Acrobat, convert the PDFs to PDF/X-something. – Martin Schröder Feb 09 '16 at 22:07
  • Very strange. My PDFLaTeX output (MacTeX 2015, El Capitan) says nothing about Quartz: http://tinypic.com/r/1jm33a/9 – NVaughan Feb 09 '16 at 23:12
  • Hmm.. Are there options that affect the pdf generation engine used by pdflatex? Could one person's copy of MacTeX use an internal process while another uses Quartz? – Grant Petty Feb 10 '16 at 23:01
  • I think you should not use preview as it just adds shit (sorry) to your file properties. But i agree with @Martin, that looking for a more aware printing company is a good idea. – Johannes_B Feb 13 '16 at 08:49
  • Sorry to jump so late to this issue. I'm just curious. Do you managed to solve it? Did you got more feedback from the publisher? It might be a MacTex problem, or maybe some options in your setup. You could create a VM in Parallel and install a light linux (xubuntu), install LaTex there, recompile your files within the VM, and if the publisher have the same complains about the output file. – phollox Feb 22 '16 at 14:35
  • Quick summary:

    1. Some files I created using pdflatex on my Mac show Quartz as the PDF producer; others show LaTeX with package hyperref. Not sure why some show Quartz as the producer and others don't.

    2. Despite the printer's warnings, the files with Quartz as the producer did not have any actual problems printing.

    3. A new problem emerged: my PDF file has a hairline box right at the page edge that isn't visible when you display the file on the computer but which appeared inside the edge of the page when it was printed. They had to shave 1/16" off the trim size to get rid of it.

     – Grant Petty Feb 22 '16 at 21:17

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I have published two books of my own with commercial publishers, and we have typeset many more, all with LaTeX, and the only comments that came back were from the designers and platemakers who were surprised that all the files went through clean first time. They had never had this happen before with client-supplied files, and they wanted to know what software we were using.

But we use have only used Unix or GNU/Linux, never Windows or Mac, so whatever it was we were using (apart from LaTeX) obviously worked, and it wasn't Acrobat. And we have not done much four-colour process work, only CMYK spot colour and machine tints; the couple of illustrated books we have done all had the separation done elsewhere: we just left spaces.

All I can suggest is that you stay well clear of Adobe software: let other people mess things up, not you.

Peter Flynn
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