Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?

Greetings!

I'm new to this group, hope some expert here might help me. Using
Acrobat 7 from CS2 for small scholarly publishing operations on various
computers, ranging from several iBook G4 1.2 GHz models running OS
10.4.x to one Intel iMac 2.8 GHz running Leopard. For the last year or
two we've noticed horribly slow performance when inserting or replacing
pages in a pdf file. Things seem to go expeditiously, then we get a
message at the bottom saying "Consolidating duplicate fonts", and this
can go on for an hour or more. This despite the fact that our pdf files
don't seem unusually large or complex. They are almost entirely text,
with few font changes, usually two or three fonts used within an entire
book.

A printer has complained that they experience the same problem in
working with our files. The printer says our files are created at too
high a dpi resolution, and that explains the problem. My intuition tells
me this shouldn't be true, since we are using vector fonts: why would
this matter unless everything was getting rasterized? We haven't noticed
that this is connected with any particular font or fonts. We use a
mixture of Adobe Type 1 fonts and a couple of Windows .ttf fonts (most
frequently Palatino Linotype). If it matters, my Distiller 7 job
settings used by default on all these computers are Acrobat 3 (PDF 1.2)
compatibility, 2400 dpi resolution, embel all fonts, and subset for less
than 100%. Perhaps these need to be tweaked? BTW our main printer has
old software controlling their presses, and they want us to save into
the earliest possible version of Acrobat, which is why we use Acrobat
3.0 compatibility.

We are at a loss, but this impacts on our productivity when assembling
pdfs. Any informed advice would be welcome. I'm going to try to post
this at some Adobe forum, assuming I can figure out where is
appropriate. I have a second question (assumed to be unrelated, but who
knows) which I will ask in a separate posting.

TIA

George
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Uploaded TeX
    ... Drop-down menu in TeXnics. ... Acrobat Reader to see what information it gives about fonts. ... it will distill it and make pdf; ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: Fonts simply not embedding in Acrobat
    ... - it's just that the fonts aren't actually embedded in the pdf file ... Might try saving it as PostScript, not PDF, then re-opening the ... ..ps file with Acrobat or Distiller. ... Local Fonts" turned on. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.apps)
  • Re: (newbie question) ps2pdf with searchable text?
    ... It also uses type 3 bitmap fonts. ... searchable, they do not have a standard Encoding, nor do the glyphs have ... Acrobat creates similar unsearchable text. ... standard, but the glyph names are standard, then Acrobat knows how to ...
    (comp.lang.postscript)
  • Re: Help: Why extremely slow processing of text pdf files?
    ... Using Acrobat 7 from CS2 for small scholarly publishing operations on various computers, ranging from several iBook G4 1.2 GHz models running OS 10.4.x to one Intel iMac 2.8 GHz running Leopard. ... For the last year or two we've noticed horribly slow performance when inserting or replacing pages in a pdf file. ... Things seem to go expeditiously, then we get a message at the bottom saying "Consolidating duplicate fonts", and this can go on for an hour or more. ... If it matters, my Distiller 7 job settings used by default on all these computers are Acrobat 3 compatibility, 2400 dpi resolution, embel all fonts, and subset for less than 100%. ...
    (comp.text.pdf)
  • Re: Uploaded TeX
    ... Acrobat Reader to see what information it gives about fonts. ... You claim the issue is not with the server on the basis or this: ... As for the file, it could have been mangled in the upload, ...
    (comp.text.tex)