Re: PDF File Problems

["D. Margulis" <ampersandvirgule -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET>]

Roger,

Thanks for including the font encoding information in your post, because
that's where the answer to your question is.

A PDF file is basically a simple map that puts a glyph at an X-Y
coordinate. When the system on which you display the file does not have
the font installed--and when the creator of the PDF file has not
embedded a font, the display system uses the special Multiple Master
fonts AdobeSerifMM and AdobeSansMM instead. (These ship with the Acrobat
Reader, so everyone has access to them.)

The display engine does the best it can, but with a low-resolution
device (i.e., a monitor), and with fonts that set wide, such as Bookman,
sometimes the glyphs push out so far to the right that you get the
effect you noted. (Remember, PDF files are really intended to be
printed, not displayed. Have you tried printing the pages, preferably on
a PostScript printer that already has Bookman resident?

Try placing the text selection cursor in the word Manula and using the
arrow key to advance it from letter to letter. You should see it jump
from the position between the n and the u to the position between the l
and the a and then back to the position between the u and the l.

This is the correct behavior.

I suspect that if you use the zoom tool to increase the magnification of
the page, the word Manual will appear correctly.

There is also a preferences setting, "Greek text below _ pixels" that
you may want to adjust, although this probably won't affect the
particular problem you are having.

The solution, if you want to solve the problem for users, is to go back
to the original PageMaker files, print them to PostScript files, and
then run the PostScript files through Distiller. When you do this, set
the Distiller Job Options on the Font Embedding tab for "Embed All
Fonts" and "Subset fonts below 99%." This will ensure that the PDF files
have all of the font information included in them to display properly in
all circumstances. The files will be larger but not unmanageable. If you
need to conserve CD real estate, combine several PageMaker documents
into a single book and print them to one PostScript file. When you
distill this file, the required fonts will only be included once in the
resulting PDF.

Hope this helps.

Dick



Roger Morency wrote:
>
> Here is the situation. We have converted hundreds of Macintosh PageMaker
> files into PDF files using Acrobat Distiller. These files were then moved to
> a PC, indexed, and packaged for use on a CD. The problem is that when we
> open these files from the CD, some of the letters in the document are
> transposed. This seems to happen particularly for large font titles, but
> occasionally body text gets transposed as a well.
>
> For example, on one page we have a header with the name of the manual. It
> should read "XYZ Manual" but it actually looks like it reads "XYZ Manula".
> The funny thing is though, that if you copy this line from the PDF file and
> paste it into a Word document, the letters are in the correct order.
>
> Is this a bug or are we omitting a step? The font information (obtained from
> Acrobat Reader Doc Info) shows that we are using the following fonts:
> AvantGarde-Demi         Type1   Encoding=Custom         Used Font= Embedded
> Subset
> Bookman-Light           Type1   Encoding=Custom         Used Font=
> AdobeSeriffMM
> Bookman-LightItalic     Type1   Encoding=Custom         Used Font=
> AdobeSeriffMM
> Helvetica-Bold          Type1   Encoding=Custom         Used Font=
> Helvetica-Bold
>
> Thanks for the help.
>
> Roger Morency
> rogerm -at- ontario -dot- com <mailto:Rogerm -at- ontario -dot- com>
> Ontario Systems Corp.
> 1150 West Kilgore Ave
> Muncie, IN 47305
> (765) 751-7000