Blake_S

If you attempt to data merge PDF files into an Image frame, it doesn't work correctly if PDF has a trim box defined - all content outside of the Trim Box gets cut. Suggestion - either change the behavior to use a crop box when deciding which content is shown, or let the user select it somewhere. As it stands, Publisher cannot be used for any data merge jobs that involve merging PDFs with trim boxes.

Not possible for my workflow, there are anywhere between a few to several hundred links in a template, depending on the job. You'd think that, but it doesn't work. I tried it before, it doesn't seem to do anything with PDFs. If it did, this thread wouldn't exist.

Except it doesn't when replacing a file. When you place the first file directly, t1 for example, its placed at 100% scaling, 50mm green square is still 50mm When you replace it with t2 via Resource Manager, the new file now has 50x50mm dimensions, while its real dimensions are 70x70mm, and the green square is 41.5mm instead of 50mm - Designer scaled it down to 71.4% of its real size. And I want to avoid this scaling.

I don't really get what you mean by that. Its very clearly scaled. Both files have a 50mm square in them, so if when placed inside another document its no longer 50mm, then its scaled. As simple as that. When you send files to print, you can't just have them arbitrarily change their dimensions, that completely f***s your layout.

This only works if you place PDFs directly, as a new linked file. If you replace PDFs via Resource Manager, they are scaled. Which is the whole point of this thread. Place t1 file, then replace it with t2 via Resouce Manager. This fails the test. The issue is with files getting scaled during replacement. In Illustrator I can freely replace existing files, and option "Preserve: File Dimensions" ensures that replacement file will not be scaled. This is very important if you have some form of a template, in which you constantly replace linked files.

Then my feature request still stands - to have an analogue to Adobe Illustrator's option called "Preserve: File Dimensions", in Placement Options of a link. With that option any placed PDF is always placed retaining correct size. Using the same PDFs from above, I can create a placement test in Illustrator which both files will pass. Well it shouldn't be in my case. In both documents the green rectangle is 50mm, so I need it to be 50mm when placed, not scaled to whatever else value. This is what "Preserve: File Dimensions" option enables.

Yeah this is what I was looking for, previously I had no idea what this option even does. Well, its confusing that you need to change two settings to be able to work with bleed area. I'd argue that "Show Bleed" and "Clip to Canvas: off" should be the default, and they won't matter for people who do not use bleed

By default, Designer hides bleed area, so you can't see anything in it and can't properly work with your document as a result. However, once you enable "Show Bleed" option, then Designer hides document bounds, so now you have no idea where they are. When "Show Bleed" option is enabled, document bounds should still be shown, like in all other programs that have ability to separate bleed area of the document. Here is an example from Illustrator: Black line is the document boundary, red line is the bleed area, and the content is seen in both areas. This is currently impossible to do in Designer - instead you have to draw the document boundary line yourself, every time in every document.

the issue is with replacing PDFs via Resource Manager, so you would need two PDF files to check - 1 already placed, and another to replace it. I've created the following test: afpub file with a picture frame in it, where PDF will be placed. Over it is the 50x50mm square, to check whether PDF are placed correctly or not two PDF files with a green 50x50mm square, but with different document and bleed sizes. If placed correctly with no scaling, green squares should match the square from afpub. One of the test files when placed doesn't. and this is the main issue - when one of the PDFs is already placed, and you replace it with another in Resource Manager, squares should again match, and they don't. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y7Of_LeTJ0LD59LHpSCw7Bc4bQ_OjsHg/view?usp=sharing

I did. Pictureframe doesn't have an option to always preserve 100% scaling, hence the existence of this thread. It has several Frame Properties, but none of them restore/maintain 100% scaling.

Currently when you replace a PDF file in Resource Manager, a new file is always placed in a wrong size since its scaled to some arbitrary value, so after each replacement you need to manually reset the scaling back to 100% for each replaced PDF. An option is needed to replace PDF files without any scaling being applied, so that scaling always stays at 100%. As an example, Adobe Illustrator has such an option called "Preserve: File Dimensions", in Placement Options of a link. With this option enabled, no matter what file you replace the link with, its always placed with correct file dimensions, without any scaling.

Currently the only option in Designer to deal with missing fonts is to replace them. Even if you choose not to replace them, text is still displayed using the wrong, replaced fonts, and if you attempt to convert it to curves, the version with the wrong fonts will be the one converted. It would be a good alternative to be able to convert text with missing fonts to curves instead, using the embedded fonts data from the PDF, if the fonts are embedded. Current version of Adobe Acrobat Pro can do it for example via preflight fixup: https://www.copperbottomdesign.com/blog/converting-fonts-to-outlines Inkscape can also do it with this option when importing a PDF:

Any other solutions, that don't involve changing each placed PDF individually or changing them every single time?

if I click "Update" in Data Merge manager, yes. This is however with a file which merges only text and nothing else, with a PDF background on master page, haven't tested with files which merge images or PDFs.

Using "Update" button in the Data Merge Manager seems to fix this issue, after that the merge takes <5 seconds, nothing is written to disk. If I don't save this afpub file, re-open it, and attempt to do the merge, then 2 minute processing time + 30GB of data written returns, unless I click "Update" again. Only manually clicking the button works. If I first click Generate, then Publisher presents an option to update data sources before merging, and I confirm the update, this does not work - then it does the slow 2 minute merge.

This actually seems to resolve the issue regardless of color mode. When I deleted the PDF from a master page, placed it again, and then updated data sources, data merge happened in less than 5 seconds. I did a few more tests, and it seems like even deleting PDF is not needed - what makes the difference is clicking the "Update" button in Data Merge Manager. Clicking Generate, and then confirming the data source update before merging did not work. ____________ Check if just clicking "Update" button in Data Merge Manager before the merge fixes the issue on a file which produces the slow merge, without changing anything else.

I actually knew about this trick, however there is a problem - the text I am copying is usually in some kind of a table, with cells corresponding to text frame / page locations, so I can't just convert the entire document to a pure text file. So I'll stick with the "paste without format" option. No, it actually would. Basically, I don't care at all about which styles the text has currently. Once I am done populating the text frames with text, I go to the master page, then using an override option apply the correct styles on the master page - styles on all pages also get changed to what is set on the master page. If I do this as a last operation, than I have a 100% guarantee that styles in the entire document are set correctly. As long as there is no need for frames with multiple styles in them that is, in that case yeah, you need to check yourself in some way.

I mean to make default copy paste operation to not copy formatting. I checked and thankfully the Ctrl+V shortcut isn't hardcoded, so I guess I can just swap 2 shortcuts.

I switched document color mode to RGB but this did not influence the results, still got 30+ GB written on disc. well I did provide CMYK PDF files for testing that I use, but so far no one repeated the test with them. With my files switching document color mode does nothing.

On a data merge operation Publisher consumes all available memory, then proceeds to write 30-40GB to disk in a PersonaBackstore.dat just to make 500 record merge that when exported has a size of 3.5 MB It also takes around 2 minutes to process. Test was done with a 1-page document with a 2MB PDF placed on the master page and applied to that one page, all data merge fields were text only and did not influence the results. Using different PDF files also did not influence the results in any significant way. Checking the PDF files used with Preflight of Acrobat Pro shows no errors. PDF objects use CMYK color space. Placing PDF directly on the page or placing it on the master page and applying that master page to the regular page did not influence the results. Amount of data written to disk is dependent on the number of records processed: 250 records - 14,6 GB written 515 records - 33 GB written 750 records - 59.5 GB written

Its not. If the function existed, then it would have simply applied the same style to all frames, no need for any automatic checkers in that case too. If you modified anything later then, simply re-run the style override. But this is assuming you are dealing with the book or some other more complex document, with multiple different styles in the same text frame - in this case you simply wouldn't use such a function, since obviously it won't make sense to override styles on the entire frame then. Is there any way to switch the default behavior - have a copy without styles be default option, and to copy with styles be a modifier? When copying from external documents copying without styles is an option I need close to 100% of the time.

Well sure, but if we are talking specifically about styles, then there would have been an extremely easy way to avoid any errors - an ability to apply the style on all frames at once which are derived from the same master page text frame. Click on a master frame, select override styles, select the style, done. Then you know 100% that all frames have a correct style set, with no need to check anything related to it. Except this function doesn't seem to exist.

Yeah that would be another way to reset the scaling, however this is used to fix the problem, and only on one file, while I am looking into preventing it in the first place, in all files. If I have a 100 PDFs placed, clicking on each one to reset its scaling after replacement is not feasible.

More concrete example: suppose we have a 100 page document, on each page there are 6 text fields, 3 with Style A, 3 with style B on one of the pages one text field has an incorrect style set - A instead of B How do you find that page among 300 results using Find & Replace function? This is however assuming that you know that the problem exists. Normally you wouldn't know that. What use would Find & Replace even be in that case? Also, what if there are 10+ styles, not just 2?

Well, there is a difference between "we could print it" and "we guarantee that the colors will be printed correctly" - these are two separate cases. As an example, we have a Ricoh laser printer which uses 4 regular inks (CMYK) + 1 special optional ink (like gold/silver/white/etc.) Its software supports 6 different RBG color spaces + any CMYK color spaces. So, we can print both RGB and CMYK files. However, with RGB, we cannot guarantee that all colors will be printed correctly, since the most saturated colors are impossible to print. Inks are just not bright enough. They will be converted to whatever the printer can actually output, and the result might look completely different. Like 255G - toxic green, or 255G 255B - light blue, can't print them, they will be way duller on print compared to what's on screen. So in our case, its better if submitted files are in CMYK, since then all colors can be printed and there is no "surprise" color conversions. Meanwhile, Inkjet printers should be able to print brighter colors, so they will print RGB color space more accurately. In conclusion, inquire what type of printer is used first, and then request some test prints.