Yet again, a project goes off to the printer, and I get an e-mail saying the Inkscape generated file cannot print. Failed in the RIP, I believe, and the printer can't provide me any useful infomation about the problem.

Fortunately, I have the Adobe CS Suite, too. I generated PS instead of PDF from Inkscape, then ran the PS through Adobe Distiller, and sent the new PDF off. Haven't heard back, but I'm guessing that will fix it.

Had another case recently with a PDF sent to a school district. Two people tried to print it there on regular office printers, I think. One could. One could not.

Reading around the web a bit about PDF print problems in general (and I'm sure they are not exclusive to Inkscape), it sounds like layers and transparency are often issues. Anyone have more information or know if this is getting attention from the development community?

Are you saying that you
1. generated a PDF from Inkscape,
2. opened it in Acrobat and it looked fine to you, then
3. sent it to be printed and it did not print properly or at all?

druban wrote:Are you saying that you
1. generated a PDF from Inkscape,
2. opened it in Acrobat and it looked fine to you, then
3. sent it to be printed and it did not print properly or at all?

Yes, exactly.

I have confirmed that Inkscape->PS->Distiller worked for the most recent case.
Looks like I'll have to use that method every time now. But that's not an option
for most Inkscape users.

And did they tell you what they are using to try to print the file? My guess is they are using Illustrator or Pagemaker instead of printing directly from Acrobat... Are you asking for CMYK separations or anything like that?
Thanks for the workaround info!
What happens when you try to print the PDF yourself?

In my experience the problems with tranparency and blur (any filters, really) are only when initially converting to PDF from the Inkscape SVG. Anything that converts properly and is visible in the PDF when opened in Acrobat has always printed properly - from an up-to-date Acrobat, of course...

druban wrote:And did they tell you what they are using to try to print the file? My guess is they are using Illustrator or Pagemaker instead of printing directly from Acrobat... Are you asking for CMYK separations or anything like that?
Thanks for the workaround info!
What happens when you try to print the PDF yourself?

In my experience the problems with tranparency and blur (any filters, really) are only when initially converting to PDF from the Inkscape SVG. Anything that converts properly and is visible in the PDF when opened in Acrobat has always printed properly - from an up-to-date Acrobat, of course...

Thanks for the replies... The printer is a print shop. I've only talked to them on the phone, so I don't know their setup. They got the original files directly from my client. I can print the files fine, and they say they can view them fine in Acrobrat Reader.

Just before releasing the files I did have one big problem. I have a fade-out masking on oen photo that was imported. Until that last revision that worked fine, but then it didn't show up in the PDF. So I scrambled and did the masking on a copy of the photo in GIMP and imported that. Very strange that it stopped working when I don't think I'd altered it. And since it was now just a plain picture again, I don't think that would relate to the problem at hand.

Anyway, with regards to your last paragraph, that has definitely not been my experience! I consistently produce things that look fine on the screen, usually fine (since 0.48) on my printer, but don't print at a commercial print shop or some home or office printers (and I'm not even getting into the CMYK issue).