System information

5. Preflighting and checking PDF documents

5.1 What is preflighting?

Preflighting defined

Preflighting is a term derived from the airline industry. The pilot has the responsibility to determine

the airworthiness of the aircraft before take-off. This means that he or she has to perform a number

of checks prior to each flight.

Preflighting PDF documents basically means the same thing: the "pilot in command", i.e. the

person who creates or processes a PDF document, has to make sure that the document is

"airworthy", or rather, "outputworthy", before sending it for output.

"Outputworthy" means that the PDF document is "fit for use", for example:

• That a PDF document to be printed on a four-color printing press contains only CMYK images

and that all the necessary fonts are included

• That a PDF document intended for online viewing contains only RGB images

Moreover, properties of a PDF document which do not meet the requirements of the preflight

check can be reported as a "problem" and fixed in the same process.

Preflight Profiles

To preflight PDF documents, you use Preflight Profiles. A Preflight Profile is a collection of criteria

which a PDF document should meet to be outputworthy. For each criterion, you can specify:

• If it should be checked or not

• How it should be listed in the preflight report, i.e. "Warning" or "Error" if a deviating property

is detected in the PDF document

• If an error or warning can be Signed Off.

Moreover, some criteria allow you to specify how detected problems, if any, should be fixed.

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