Preview doesn't match PDF proof

[mheisler]

First time posting, so bear with me if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about (certainly feels that way).

 

I'm building a document with 4 variable text fields, stacked from top to bottom of the page. Between each field I've inserted an inline graphic to serve as a horizontal rule to separate them. The bottom two text fields are optional, so I wrote a rule to suppress the inline graphic if there's nothing for it to separate.

 

In Acrobat everything worked out -- all the records from my data file previewed exactly as I expected. I collected and uploaded the template to my store and everything continued to behave as I expected. When it came time to preview the template, though, the inline graphics didn't show up. So I adjusted the Enhanced View, and then they showed up fine. And if I had clicked "publish" at this point, I wouldn't be any the wiser.

 

Instead I opted to create a PDF from the Preview window. I wanted to be sure of the print quality of my inline graphic, since the line was only half a point thick. But the graphics had once again disappeared. I saved the PDF to my desktop and opened it in Illustrator, just so I could double check on its contents. The horizontal rules are nowhere to be found.

 

I've tried reformatting my graphic as an EPS, a PDF, a TIF. Same results each time.

 

So I have two questions:

 

1) why does the graphic show in the Preview window if it doesn't exist in the final product?

 

2) on a different note -- is there an easier method for creating a simple horizontal rule in a text box without using a graphic?

 

I don't want to use the underscore key. I tried it and it has a tendency to break up, resulting in very poor line quality. Neither can I simply add the horizontal rules to a static background image; the text fields vary in size and the horizontal rule needs to stay within the text box in order to adjust to them.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Everything I've done has worked as expected up until the very final proofing stage, so I'm totally baffled as to what I'm doing wrong.

[step]

This sounds like a MarcomCentral question (which I'm not familiar with) but I would imagine that the graphic is visible during a preview because it's local. Maybe you could try defining a path to your graphic or importing it as a resource.

[Dan Korn]

Yes, your main question is definitely a MarcomCentral question, and should be asked on the MarcomCentral forum.

 

As for creating a horizontal rule, you can just insert a series of underscore characters, or spaces with underline in effect, in the Text Editor. Or you can do something like this in a JavaScript rule:

return "<u><space count=30></u>";

[esmith]

Or you can do something like this in a JavaScript rule:

return "<u><space count=30></u>";

Dan needs to publish a book ("Korn-y FP Solutions") to serve as a supplemental to the outdated and poorly commented user guides.