Hi, already finding great topics and people that share their knowledge here on this forum, thanks for this!
I would like to ask, can anyone help me to create a workflow to convert a .pages file to PDF and then, for example through ADOBE ACROBAT preflight to a compliant PDF/A profile?
I have a script to convert .pages files to PDF (through CloudConvert in Hazel - tag pages files with 2PDF and wait for the offsite conversion, I can share…), but I’m stuck at the next step, convert to PDF/A.
I know about droplets (have created a couple), but I wanted to ask, if there is a way to automate this and do this in background through Automator/Apple/JavaScript.
Take a look at this ghostscript solution. You can wrap this in a shell script action in Automator and AppleScript. There might be a way to do it in Javascript.
It looks readable on the dropbox web link, but if you download the pdf, the fonts are garbled…
And the terminal output:
GPL Ghostscript 9.23 (2018-03-21)
Copyright (C) 2018 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Processing pages 1 through 1.
Page 1
GPL Ghostscript 9.23:
Warning: HETVSG+Arial-BoldMT cannot be embedded because of licensing restrictions
GPL Ghostscript 9.23:
Warning: YKXKRD+HelveticaNeue-Light cannot be embedded because of licensing restrictions
GPL Ghostscript 9.23:
Warning: ROGEYK+HelveticaNeue-Bold cannot be embedded because of licensing restrictions
GPL Ghostscript 9.23:
Warning: HETVSG+Arial-BoldMT cannot be embedded because of licensing restrictions
EDIT: Ok I got it working by using “-dNoOutputFonts” in the script. But I’m afraid how it will display for users that not have the fonts installed (aka Windows users for example).
So, now I have to figure out how to append this into the cloud convert script I have set up to convert .pages files to PDF.
here is the script I use to convert .pages -> PDF
set CLOUDCONVERT_APIKEY to "my_cloudconvert_API_key"
-- Get POSIX file path
set inputFilePath to POSIX path of theFile
-- Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ".pages"
-- Add .pdf extension.
set outputFilePath to first text item of inputFilePath & ".pdf"
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs
set theDate to short date string of (get current date)
set theTime to time string of (get current date)
set theMessage to theDate & " " & theTime & " converting " & inputFilePath & " into " & outputFilePath
do shell script "echo \"" & theMessage & "\" >> ~/Library/Logs/Hazel-AppleScript.log"
set theCurl to do shell script "curl -L \"https://api.cloudconvert.com/convert\" -F file=@\"" & inputFilePath & "\" -F \"apikey=" & CLOUDCONVERT_APIKEY & "\" -F \"inputformat=pages\" -F \"outputformat=pdf\" -F \"input=upload\" -F \"wait=true\" -F \"download=inline\" > \"" & outputFilePath & "\""
EDIT2: I might stay on the manual preflight procedure I use now, because I think that I need to embed fonts into the PDF/A-1b document.
I wish there was a way to automate the preflight through Adobe Acrobat, but I only managed to create a droplet for PDF/A-1b conversion and leave it at the doc and I always drop the PDF files on it and it converts them
Sorry to revive this topic, but Apple has updated the Preview app to support PDF/A conversion. No scriptable syntax has been found yet, but I’m keeping my faith Will update if there are any updates on this.
Now, there is a new function in the Preview app on macOS, to convert PDFs to PDF/As, with an option to export a “linearized” version. However, I think this has not been exposed to be used with scripting. I really hope this will be integrated on the system level and in Pages, because i’m tired of using Acrobat for this
Almost a year after the last message and the Export to PDF/A option still hasn’t been exposed for scripting…What a bummer. In the EU, almost all electronic communication with the authorities has to be done with PDF/A docs (because of security and preservation of content) and it is sad that this has not been followed up with a simple scripting support patch. Hopefully macOS 13? And maybe Shortcuts support for this? Anyway, just reviving this topic so it stays relevant in case something changes.
Will update if there are any updates on this.