I have a question about printing to PDF

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XacTactX

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So, as the title says, I'm trying to print something to PDF (tried doPDF and one other program) and the file will not print. I am using Zinio to read an issue of Stereophile, and I am trying to print the magazine to PDF because I don't like the Zinio eReader. But when I try to print the page or pages, the pages do not print. I tried printing other files to PDF using doPDF, and it worked fine.

So my question is: has anyone been able to recently print any magazines from Zinio to PDF successfully? If yes, what did you do, or what program did you use?

Thanks guys. I did some intense Googling and didn't find anything, so I was wondering what the Internet's finest can do about it. ;)
 
Just to add to this, what is even more perplexing is that if I do a normal print and send it to my HP printer, it prints fine (with a watermark). But it only keeps me from printing if I try to send it to PDFCreator or doPDF or something like that. It seems like Zinio knows what kind of program you are trying to send it to. I wonder if there's a way to circumvent that.
 
(no experience with Zinio here, but general printing/PDF input)
If you have a Postscript printer, you can usually choose to Print to File in your print options (depending on the program itself).
If you don't already have a Postscript printer installed, install a 'fake' one. Easiest way is to set it up as a network printer and give it some dummy IP address for the TCP/IP hostname. Find a driver for a PS printer on your system; there's a bunch auto-installed with Windows, I found a few under HP but check around and see what you can find on yours. (any one will do; doesn't matter really)

Install a PS printer, then try in Zinio to pick that printer and see if it lets you Print to File. If it does, check that box and then it'll ask you for a filename, just put whatever. It should then dump a Postscript file in your home directory (ie under XacTactX in Win7 or whatever your name is). You can dump that PS file into Acrobat Distiller and it'll make a PDF of it, which you can then do whatever you want with it. If you don't have access to Distiller (ie you're not using Acrobat Pro), *I believe* you can use PDFCreator's Print Monitor to dump in PS files and get a PDF out of them. One other alternative would be to dump it on Dropbox, Box, Filedropper etc and put up a link here and if someone else doesn't do it for you, I can run it through Distiller for you and dump you a PDF link somewhere. You might want to zip it though if you have to put it somewhere, because usually PS files are fairly large since (in a nutshell) Postscript = raw printer language.

I use this trick sometimes at work; it's something we figured out a long time ago back when I worked at Kinkos. (I've been in the print industry for far too long :D)
 
I use a program called doro PDF writer. It installs as a printer on your machine, so you can simply click Print on any program and it dumps the print job to a PDF file.
 
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