We've been trying the last few weeks to get our pages to our printing
company using PDF format (via FTP). The first issue of the
semester worked fine, but the last three have not. We have no idea why
it would work fine the first time but not the subsequent times. As far
as we know, we didn't do anything different.

Originally, we were saving our Quark pages as EPS files and then
distilling
them using Acrobat. This didn't work the second time. So we 
tried exporting them as PostScript files and then distilling them.
Again, no luck. Finally we installed the PPD and tried printing the
file to a PostScript file and then distilling it. Didn't work.

On their end, they are getting errors ranging from font problems to 
image ones. We've done a lot of e-mailing back and forth and phone 
time trying to solve the problem. We've consulted Adobe and Quark's 
Web sites.

A few questions I'd like answered:

1. We're using Type 1 fonts. These were originally TrueTypes but were
converted to Type 1. We use Adobe Type Manager for them. Could this be
a problem?

2. We use all grayscale TIFFs with NO compression. Is that correct?

3. FTP: binary or ASCII?

4. Should we force distiller to include our fonts?

5. What are the correct settings for the distiller and PPD (if we need
to use that)?

6. What are we doing wrong and how do we fix it!?

there's a bunch of things that can go wrong in this process, and a lot
of questions that would need to be asked to solve the problem...

what platform are you on?
what platform is your printer using?
what is their RIP setup, and have they used it to run film/plates from
pdf successfully from other clients?

i'm not going to be able to give you an answer to all of your
questions, but i can answer a few.

i doubt that the type 1 fonts are the issue, but i'm uneasy about the
fact that you've got truetypes converted to type 1. again, i doubt
that this is the problem, but it's not the ideal setup. it's always
better to stick to legal versions of type 1 fonts from a reputable
vendor.

grayscale tiff files with no compression are good.

ftp: binary

you should definitely force distiller to include the fonts that are
used in your document. otherwise you'll get font replacement.

i'd suggest a two things:

first, download the quark PDF filter
(http://www.quark.com/support/downloads/details.jsp?idx=401). it makes
the process of getting a pdf from quark a lot easier.

second, read the manual. assuming that you have a legal, licensed
version of the software (acrobat specifically), it should address the
workflow of pdf and answer some of these questions.

good luck.