Acrobat Distiller Settings and PDF-Export

Working with Adobe Acrobat Distiller Version 10.1.x or 11.0.x it may happen, that your individual Distiller settings are no longer available from within the PDF-Export. This behavior happens for Acrobat Distiller 10.1.10 or Acrobat Distiller 11.0.07.

RagTime needs to know the Distiller Version in order to locate the Distiller settings. Adobe changed the location of the setting repository with every other release. RagTime utilizes a Mac OS X built-in routine to access the version string. However this routine has some limitations. It is implemented in a way that does not support sub release version numbers with more than one digit.

As a result of this limitation RagTime will get a proper version number if Acrobat Distiller 10.1.9 is installed. But with Acrobat Distiller 10.1.10 the routine reports an error. The same is true for Acrobat Distiller 11.0.07, as this version should be labeled as Acrobat Distiller 11.0.7.

And this points to a possible workaround. The version string is stored as a key named ”CFBundleVersion“ within the ”Info.plist“-file within the Acrobat Distiller.app. If you modify that version string in such a way, that it will have a one digit sub version only, RagTime will show the propper Distiller settings again.

And here are the details. Open the package content of the Acrobat Distiller.app (highlight the application icon and open the contextual menu with a right mouse click) from within the Applications folder and you will find the ”Info.plist“-file within the ”Contents“-folder. It is a plain xml-file, which can be edited with any text editor. Be sure to make a backup copy to your local desktop, before you apply any modifications.

Now search for the string ”CFBundleVersion“ and modify the version string in the next line, as show below.

Before:

<key>CFBundleVersion</key>

<string>11.0.07</string>

After:

<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>11.0.7</string>

Take care, not to damage the XML-Structure (<string>....</string>), as this will crash the Acrobat Distiller, when it launches. Save the ”Info.plist“-file and close the package content folder.

This modification does not change the version string globally. The original version number provided by Adobe will be displayed unchanged in most cases.

Back to the overview