Extensis Preflight Pro
Registration colour bug
Never cancel
Duplicate file bug
Rebuild the desktop
Pause at startup
Profiles sub-options bug
Printing inks
Brackets in colour names
Related links
The Extensis Support staff have confirmed that there is an unusual bug in relation to Illustrator 8 EPS files and Preflight 2.1.2: If the file contains just an object that has a fill of white (or none), then Preflight thinks the Registration colour is actually a printing ink (that is, it basically identifies the Registration colour as a spot colour). Apparently, this has something to do with how Adobe Illustrator 8 encodes the Registration colour in EPS files.
Until a fix is found for the next release, there are two solutions:
- Reinstall the previous version of Extensis Preflight (version 2.1) if you have a backup copy (the Extensis Website does not provide the older version for download at this time)
- Ignore the warning in Preflight
- Resave the file as Illustrator 7 or 9 EPS
This bug was discovered by Susan Bolder on March 15, 2001
It's strongly advised that you never cancel a process while in progress in Preflight. This may cause the program to be "un-quittable" and sometimes even cause a system-wide crash. To get around this, wait untill the process has finished, and then start again.
If you have two folders, each with a QuarkXpress document and an imported
file with the same name (that is, each folder has the imported file,
and both files are identical), then adding both QuarkXpress documents
to the same Preflight job will cause an error: Preflight thinks that the
two files are different, and collects both files, even though they are
identical, and places a 1 (one) after the duplicate file's name.
Example:
Folder 1: document1.qxd, file.eps
Folder 2: document2.qxd, file.eps
Preflight collected folder: document1.qxd, document2.qxd, file.eps, file.eps 1
If both QuarkXpress documents and one imported file are in the same folder,
however, there is no problem, and Preflight correctly collects the two
QuarkXpress documents, and ONE imported file.
Solution: Always collect only the QuarkXpress documents in one folder
for each Preflight job. Collect any other documents in other folders separately
into a separate Preflight jobs.
If you get this error message, rebuilding your desktop may help:
[Could not inspect the document 'documentname.qxd' because of an unknown error. The host application may be having trouble, or the document may be corrupt.]
Those of you who've used the Demo may notice that the full release has a longer than normal pause at startup. This is probably due to the program checking the network for other copies with the same serial number. Turning off appletalk may sometimes help with this, but the pause is small enough for it not to matter.
Version 2.1 has a bug that does not allow you to select sub-options in the profiles tab. For example, in the "background none" section of the QuarkXpress profile, the options are TIF AND/OR EPS, but whether you select one or both doesn't matter... Preflight thinks you've selected both. In other words, the "OR" function does not work, and defaults to AND. There is no workaround for this, other than to turn all options off for that particular section.
Preflight tends to get very picky about printing inks. If you get a wrong printing inks error, check to make sure that you've specified the correct number of process colours and/or spot colours. For example, if your job has a cmyk image and one spot colour, then you should select all the process buttons, and set the spot colours to one.
If you have a custom colour set as process in a job, and that colour is comprised of the plates cyan and yellow, for example, then, setting the printing inks to cmyk in Preflight Pro will give you an error. You must select only the cyan and yellow buttons (click the "colours" tab to see details).
Preflight Pro 2.1.2 cannot handle colour names that have brackets in files that are imported into Quark: It automatically adds a "\" character before each bracket character. For example, the colour named "blue (dark)" in an imported EPS file will be renamed "blue \(dark\)". This will, of course, cause Preflight to think that there are two colours. To fix this, ensure that you remove the brackets from the colour name in the imported EPS file.
Related links:
Preflight Pro FAQ
page (Extensis)
Preflight Pro user
forum (Extensis)
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