Red line appearing along one border of a graphic (from Word)

Question

Using: Acrobat 6.0 Professional (yes, I know it is downrev).
Source: MS Word 2003 for Windows.
Problem: A red line appears in the PDF that looks to be the invisible (right hand) border of a graphic that looks fine in Word. This occurs only on one of many graphics. We have tried converting the original image to PNG, TIFF and JPEG and all formats produce the same result. We have tried both printing to PDF and using the Distiller button that is in the Word interface. The problem persists.
Has anyone else ever seen this?
-- Typeaux

Answer 1

Aandi Inston wrote:
> When you see the grey box in recent versions of Word,
> for an EPS, it means that Word tried to understand
> the PostScript and make a screen preview, but failed.
Just to clarify, in this particular case I get a white box, not gray. But I imagine it is the same thing -- an empty box. Also, I would like to mention at the top that I greatly appreciate your input and explanation, Aandi. Thank you. I have more questions, though!
> That's fortunately an easy one. Two parts:
> (a) an EPS file can contain a preview. This isn't part
> of the vector graphic but can be used for on screen
> display. Sadly, recent versions of Word ignore this!
Out of curiosity, which format does the EPS preview supply to Word? Word does understand TIFF, JPG, PNG, WMF and BMP (among others). You say that Word "ignores" this, but that sounds intentional. Rather, it is a format that Word doesn't understand or doesn't have the routine necessary to decode and display the preview. Any clue why? Not critical, but I'd like to understand the mechanics a bit more.
> (b) EPS files often start with a large number
> of PostScript instructions that are the same
> in every case.
A preamble, then. Some information embedded at the head of each EPS file?
> These aren't drawing instructions, but definitions.
Definitions that define the parameters of the typeface, font, line weight etc. needed to create the drawing?
> After that, sometimes hundreds of KB, the drawing starts.
That is a LOT of instructions. A typical page of ASCII text takes up approximately 4KB of space. 1,275KB seems like an awful lot of instructions for a graph with only 20 words or so and perhaps 100 lines for cartesian coordinates. A "bitmapped" file of the same drawing takes up only a fraction of that, even uncompressed (TIFF or BMP for example, with JPG or PNG taking up far less than that, perhaps only 15 to 35KB in this case).
> When a PDF is made you are left with nothing
> but the drawing instructions.
I'm not arguing, just failing to understand the mechanics. Of course, I had two gigantic books on PostScript on my desk ten years ago and I never did read most of them...
Again, I thank you for your time and discussion, Aandi. Always helpful as usual, though I'm not sure I'd be comfortable trying to convey your description of the EPS-to-PDF process to others. If they asked a question, I'd be stuck!
Regards,
-- Typeaux