Re: I have a requirement to produce PDFs with large print and I am having issues, need help

Hello Reginald,

in addition to some comments from others…


Am 27.02.2024 um 19:00 schrieb Reginald Finney <rafinney@xxxxxxxxxx>:

I wrote programs that create PDFs for a health claims processing company. I create the PDF using printer files and using AFPTOOL to first copy the printer file to a TIFF file and then convert the TIFF file into a PDF.

This is far from optimal processing. By converting vector data (fonts and probably other page elements) to raster data, the amount of data is considerably expanded. Compression for PDFs can partly counter this. And you need to send much more data through your internet uplink than strictly necessary.

Because page data is now pixelated to a hard "dpi setting", printing the resulting PDF can lead to jagged lines and other visual artifacts because of uneven scaling to fit the whole page on a sheet of paper.

Also, pixel data in PDFs can't be searched unless you use OCR and add an invisible layer of text. OCR isn't perfect and can misinterpret characters.

I strongly urge you to leave a vector PDF as vectors and not raster it.

Just some side-thoughts from me regarding my former experiences in the publishing industry…

The company has received a requirement to be able to provide large print for those members who document larger print as a preference.

I can't speak from my own experience here. The whole thing about AFP, IPDS, fonts, and generating printed output is a rabbit hole in itself. I did not yet dig into this particular rabbit hole, yet.

If you leave the PDF in its original form, receivers of it can just use their PDF viewer's "zoom" function to ease reading without the pixelated content becoming unbearably ugly. Would that be an option?

:wq! PoC