Overprint issue with white type.

Question

We have been creating Digital PDF successfully for over 10 years. This is a problem that comes along once in a great blue moon.
Please read complete text before forming an opinion or answering the questions. The focus of these questions are on Digital AD's from outside vendors/customers.
We create our publications using Quark 6.5 on Windows XP
(We are locked into this version because of some other proprietary software tied into Quark, so upgrading Quark is not an option for us).
We compose a page of some type, some MAC EPS Illustrator 5.1  files and at least one Digital AD (PDF's which are  from our advertisers/customer that we pre-flight) on to the page.
Print the page to a postscript file, distill postscript file with Acrobat Distiller Ver. 7 on PC's into a PDF file with Crops and Registration Marks.
We got a PDF (Digital AD) from a customer that was created in InDesign CS6 on a Mac. There is some white type in the AD ( See Photo Below)
The Last "E" in Engineered is selected in each screen shot.
The Top one is the AD untouched before Pre-flighting it. The White Type "E" letter is set to knock out and is still type (not converted to outlines).
(Pitstop is showing this in the dialog box on the right)
In the Bottom screen shot the type has been converted to outlines and is set to overprint.
First problem is white type should never overprint. Unless you specifically set it to in the original program.
This type was originally set to knockout and then when it was distilled from a Postscript file from Quark into a PDF with "Preserve Overprint Settings" check in (Distiller Settings) the type is converted to outlines and the type was set to overprint.
(If I turn off "Preserve Overprint Settings" and re-distill the postscript file the type doesn't convert to outlines or change to overprint.... it remains a knockout.)
Second Problem is catching this while using preflight tools. I have Pitstop tools to show Overprinting and Acrobat has a Output Preview/Color Warnings/Show Overprinting feature too.
Using Pitstops Overprint does show it in the inspector window, but not a Pitstop report.
Acrobat's Show Overprinting does NOT show that the type has been set to overprint.
So our workflow now is to flag any white type and check it throughout the whole pre-press process to make sure the type holds the knockout function.
Below is a scan of how the type ran when it was printed on sheet feed printing press paper.
Talk about overprinting... this is not what it looked like in the above pictures.
I am aware of this problem from Illustrator. It's an order of operations when dealing with white type.
If you set type, change the color  to something other than 100% black and then convert it to outlines... it will knockout.
If you set type, convert to outlines and THEN change the color from black to white, it will hold the overprint from being black type.
It doesn't always do this every time, but it does happen enough that I have to double and triple check my white type.
Questions:
Does anyone have this problem in their workflow (White Type Overprinting) and do you have a solution to better catch this when you have to process 50+ AD's each week?
Obviously anything with white type will be looked at much closer now that this AD got through. It would be nice if these settings would hold through the whole preflight to printed piece process.
Any Words of Wisdom would be appreciated too.

Answer 1

You can set Pitstop up to catch this and even fix it.
In the preflight profile, under 'Text', select 'White Text' and add it to the list of checks, you can also enable the fix as well so it's just resolved.
I'm using PitStop 11 update 2, but it's in earlier versions as well.
If you need futher information you can always drop me a mail. I am the Product Manager for PitStop, [email protected]