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We have a legacy application written by a developer which takes a PDF/text file and converts it to a TIFF. The user just prints the file to a custom print driver.Output of the driver is a Printer control language file and finally TIFF.
The user doesn't see the PCL file. PCL file is internally produced and inputed as a binary reader which gets converted to a TIFF.

How do I see the PCL File?? I would really like to have a small stand-alone test program which converts a PDF to PCl using this print driver and then TIFF. The print driver is written in C, C++ code.

This driver was written in 2010. With the new Adobe version 2018.009.20050, text in adobe forms is not being captured.

I'd appreciate some pointers!

user575219
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1 Answers1

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I do not have an answer but I wish to comment and follow the topic.

Like the poster, I'm working with a few virtual print drivers and have noted this change of behavior from Adobe Reader 2018.009.20050 is impacting them. Examples: Foxit's PDF Printer, as well as an HP PostScript Driver I've been using whenever I need to redirect a printstream to a file.

The issue seems to be that the new release of Adobe Reader is no longer recognizing these PostScript printers as such. A tell-tale sign is that Adobe Reader, when printing, has 'Advanced' options that would typically let someone designate some PostScript options/preferences. With the recent Reader release, these options are now disabled for all of my PostScript-capable printers, except when using the "Adobe PDF Printer".

My guess: like many Windows applications, when Adobe Reader prints to a device that it thinks is NOT PostScript-capable, Reader will choose to rasterize the PDF's text into image/vector data, rather than expressing it as text-and-font information. ( ..and some applications, like Chrome, seem to always do this, nevermind the type of printer. )

I am hoping that Adobe sees a bug here to be fixed soon. It's creating quite a headache otherwise.

In the meantime, I've found that Foxit's most-recent PDF Reader does NOT have this same issue. It continues to create PostScript for my set of virtual printers.

UPDATE (1/2/18): This is Adobe's support article describing a different issue but the same proposed registry change for avoiding text rasterization.

Shane
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  • I submitted a bug to Adobe and this morning they had me do some registry changes to see if it can fix the problem. I am sharing them here hoping it might help someone 1. Open Registry 2. Go to - 32 bit machine: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureState 64 bit machine: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureState 3. If FeatureState is not already present there, create it as a New key 4. Inside FeatureState, create a new DWORD and rename it as – 4033257 5. Assign the value 1 to 4033257 key 6. Run the respective Print workflow – user575219 Dec 15 '17 at 22:02
  • These registry changes didn't make a difference for us.I just noticed what you mentioned. All the Post script options are greyed out for all printer except "Adobe PDF Printer". I would also like to point out that this printing works correctly for Adobe Acrobat full version, which is paid. The problem is with the reader. – user575219 Dec 15 '17 at 22:03
  • Hi thanks for the share. I tried this registry change and found it made no impact on my issues either. PDF text continues to be rasterized. – Shane Dec 21 '17 at 18:45
  • Hi Shane, adobe told us change the registry dword value from 1 to 0 and that helped us. – user575219 Dec 22 '17 at 20:09
  • Hi @user575219 - thanks for the update. It didn;t seem to change my postrscript issue but, hey, maybe I need to reach out to their support. : - ) – Shane Dec 22 '17 at 22:06
  • Hi @user575219. I think my test document was not a _good_ one for evaluating this issue ( such is my luck ). I have now repeated my tests with other PDFs and, so far, I have found that the registry change you suggested is generally successful with addressing my issues. – Shane Jan 02 '18 at 18:31
  • Hi Shane, Is this registry fix still working for you.. Our users have to delete the existing key and add it again. – user575219 Feb 05 '18 at 22:56
  • @user575219 I've not heard reports of my users needing to reapply the registry change. To be honest, it's not the kind of thing that would normally bubble back to my desk; my users often retry their workarounds and fixes without necessarily saying anything about it.. unless it becomes a particular frequent nuisance for them. – Shane Feb 09 '18 at 18:02