Embedded Fonts issues

This Forum is for the use of End Users requiring help and assistance for Tracker Software's PDF-XChange Printer Drivers only - Please do not post requests for older versions of PDF-XChange or the PDF-Tools/OFFice2PDF applications here

Moderators: TrackerSupp-Daniel, Tracker Support, Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team, Chris - Tracker Supp, Sean - Tracker, Tracker Supp-Stefan

Post Reply
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Hello,

I am trying to find out whether I should only buy Editor Pro (love it for reading and need it for page extraction) or get a bigger bundle that includes X-Change Standard or Business. For that end I tested both Lite and Standard it with one of the more complex PDF files I am regularly working with, this included comparison with various free PDF printer options out there. Unfortunately I encountered issues related to embedded fonts with both printer drivers (and Editor).

In my tests I tried printing a page from a multilayered PDF file with text floating over and around images. Turning off all images doesn't change the font related issues, so it's likely not a layer related problem. What is special about this document is that it uses embedded fonts that are not installed on my own system.

To begin with:

The combination of Adobe Reader + FreePDF(XP) are capable of printing the text as text and embed the fonts properly. No other PDF Viewer (including Editor Pro) prints the text and embeds the fonts properly, so Adobe Reader was used for further print driver testing. Unfortunately besides FreePDF only one other print driver prints the text as text and embeds the fonts properly, the latter driver showed other issues, though. I emphasize this to demonstrate that proper printing of these embedded fonts it possible at all.

My observations with X-Change (lite/standard, all compression disabled):

X-Change neither embeds the fonts nor does it even print the text as text. Instead it prints all text either as vector line graphics when DPI settings are 400 and higher, or as bitmap image when DPI settings are 300 or lower. As a consequence the resulting PDF has no text to search through or mark for copying and the letters are only approximations of the true fonts.

Strangely the one font that is embedded is Arial-BoldMT, even though this one wasn't even used on the test page.

Related to that:


Editor (Pro) also isn't capable of printing the same page(s) as text, even in combination with FreePDF. Instead it also prints the texts as vector line graphics without embedding any fonts. So I fear that this might be a shortcoming/restriction of Tracker Software's PDF implementation?!

Some small bugs I encountered:


- X-Change Lite doesn't do anything when the "Default" button is used on the Font setting page, Standard works there.
- Clicking on the question mark symbol (help) in the upper right corner doesn't do anything.
(- Editor (Pro) always uses smoothing/anti-aliasing on image data, regardless of the corresponding preferences setting. Viewer does the same for vector line (b/w) graphics.)

I also wonder if the "Compress Fonts" option does loss-less compression or not? There is no information about it in the manual.
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

Thanks for the post - Can you please post the document that you are working with, or send it directly to support@pdf-xchange.com with a link back to this topic? I'd like to have the same frame of reference when testing here, if at all possible.

Please also send PDF samples containing both the correct and incorrect results.

Thanks,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Hello,

thanks for the quick reply. I just noticed that I posted in the wrong forum, since I am of course testing version 6, not 4 or 5.

The original document is copyright protected and over 80 mb in size. It's a bought PDF manual for a pen & paper roleplaying game. These are often complex in that they mix floating text with many images, sometimes with and sometimes without layers. I will extract one page via Editor Pro (trial) and use that for reference.

One more bug I forgot to post:

- X-Change Standard does not bring its "Save As" dialog to the front, but places it as last application below everything else (ALT-Tab lists it as last on the right side). X-Change Lite does not suffer from this issue.
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

E-mail sent. The attachment is over 10 mb in size (7Z compressed PDF files). If it doesn't reach you I can send another e-mail with a shared Google Drive folder link instead.
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

Thanks for that, I have the email and file :)

I've been testing and see fairly different results from yourself. Is the document sensitive? If not, it would be best to continue dealing with this here so that all interested viewers can see the results.

If the file is sensitive we can, of course, continue via email.

Cheers,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Not sensitive, no, but copy-righted. This is why I chose the page listing the copyrights and authors as an example page. Interesting question in that regard: Does the extraction process of Editor keep the license (and me as a licensee) information intact on that single page? Curiously the table of content is extracted, too, but I just saw that this was an option named "bookmarks" (nice to have that as an option!). I would guess that under a fair-use clause this can be used, especially when we only use a page with no real content in it and use it even for the benefit of the original creators.

Curious about the different results?! Did I miss any settings in XChange and/or Editor regarding fonts? I went through all pages and made sure to disable compression, resampling and everything that could have messed with this. This is on Windows 10 64 bit, fresh installation (fresh W7 + Upgrade W10 + reset to factory defaults with no data and programs + W10 anniversary upgrade).

The whole ordeal started when I forgot that Editor can be used to extract pages from different sources into a single destination document. I used PDF printing with appending via FreePDF in the past and just now had the epiphany about Editor. Then I thought to give the XChange driver a deeper look, too, and had the font/text issues.

Here are PNG screenshots of the various results. The extracted example and the Adobe + FreePDF one are the only PDF files with true text content that can be marked and searched as such. Additionally only these two include all the embedded fonts of the original PDF file. All other results are pure graphic content and need OCR to create a new text layer.
Last edited by Timur Born on Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Some things to add here:

The versions where Editor transformed the text/font to vectors is quite closer in form to the original font than the version where XChange did the transformation.

When viewed in Editor the resulting files of the Editor + FreePDF and Editor + XChange looks nearly exactly the same, down to the pixel in case of the text parts. Only some of the graphics parts are slightly different. Still the FreePDF file is only 9 mb in size, but the XChange file is 100 mb in size. For comparison, the extracted file (single page) is less than 500 kb, the Adobe + FreePDF file is less than 800 kb, even the Adobe + XChange file is "only" 13 mb large.

Here is a difference filtered image of layering the Editor + FreePDF over the Editor + XChange after exporting both as TIF via Editor. You need to look closely at some of the graphics parts to see some pixels of difference, the text parts are completely black (negated).
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

I'm not sure what you mean here, can you please elaborate?
Not sensitive, no, but copy-righted. This is why I chose the page listing the copyrights and authors as an example page. Interesting question in that regard: Does the extraction process of Editor keep the license (and me as a licensee) information intact on that single page? Curiously the table of content is extracted, too, but I just saw that this was an option named "bookmarks" (nice to have that as an option!). I would guess that under a fair-use clause this can be used, especially when we only use a page with no real content in it and use it even for the benefit of the original creators.
Curious about the different results?! Did I miss any settings in XChange and/or Editor regarding fonts? I went through all pages and made sure to disable compression, resampling and everything that could have messed with this. This is on Windows 10 64 bit, fresh installation (fresh W7 + Upgrade W10 + reset to factory defaults with no data and programs + W10 anniversary upgrade).
Possilbly. Can you send screen-shots of the Editor's Print dialog, and the Advanced Print Options --> More dialog?
The whole ordeal started when I forgot that Editor can be used to extract pages from different sources into a single destination document. I used PDF printing with appending via FreePDF in the past and just now had the epiphany about Editor. Then I thought to give the XChange driver a deeper look, too, and had the font/text issues.
Re-printing a PDF to a PDF printer isn't really a good idea and there can be a lot of unexpected results. Techinically, we don't support it but there are some instances where we'll have to recommend it because there isn't an alternative. As with my other post, I'd recommend that you take a look at PDF-Tools, you might find that it's batch manipulation options are just what you need:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-tools
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxt6/
Here are PNG screenshots of the various results. The extracted example and the Adobe + FreePDF one are the only PDF files with true text content that can be marked and searched as such. Additionally only these two include all the embedded fonts of the original PDF file. All other results are pure graphic content and need OCR to create a new text layer.
Do the extracted pages also not contain embedded fonts?

Thanks,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Will - Tracker Supp wrote:Hi Timur,

I'm not sure what you mean here, can you please elaborate?
I paid for a license to download and use the PDF file for my own use, the file is (supposed to be) encoded with my license number. It's a tabletop/pen&paper roleplaying game manual and I extract single pages (fair-use clause) for other players of my group. Usually that means that I print some pages out of one or several PDF files into a small collection , mostly for tables, equipment lists or background story information. Even more often I print via FreePDF into a single collected PDF file and share that files with the members of the group.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/index.php
Possilbly. Can you send screen-shots of the Editor's Print dialog, and the Advanced Print Options --> More dialog?
Seems like I had that set to outline font instead of Auto. Still with Auto the fonts are not so properly embedded when printing out of XCHange, while they are good when printing out of Adobe Reader.

Still I wonder why the output of "outline" Editor + XChange is so much bigger than the output of "outline" Editor + FreePDF? Especially since both files look nearly exactly the same, and they even *are* the same in all the text areas. Judging from my current results I likely wouldn't switch from FreePDF to XChange Lite/Standard, simply because there seem to be more drawbacks than benefits.
Re-printing a PDF to a PDF printer isn't really a good idea and there can be a lot of unexpected results. Techinically, we don't support it but there are some instances where we'll have to recommend it because there isn't an alternative.
That being said, it does work properly with the combination of Adobe Reader + FreePDF, so it's possible. In the past I used FreePDF's "MultiDoc" option to collate several pages from one or more documents into a single file. Now I am looking at the alternatives of using Editor and/or XChange Standard.
As with my other post, I'd recommend that you take a look at PDF-Tools, you might find that it's batch manipulation options are just what you need:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-tools
I will have a look at it, but "batch" suggests that the job can be automated. In practice I choose several pages manually and then only have to create the collated PDF once.
Do the extracted pages also not contain embedded fonts?
Yes, they do. What I meant to say is that the extracted page and the Adobe + FreePDF files *do* contain the embedded fonts, while all other combinations do not. Among others I sent you the extracted file, so you can have a look at both the extracted and FreePDF versions yourself.

Even the combination of Editor (this time with "Auto" embed option) + XChange Standard does not properly embed the fonts, even less so the searchable text-layer (results in gibberish).

And here comes the strangest part:

Today I tried printing from Adobe Reader to XChange Standard again and this time XChange does embed fonts and prints text as text, regardless of DPI settings and regardless of wether I turn "Embed all used fonts" on or off (same with the subset option). The fonts are slightly off, especially in regard to kerning and spacing, but it's text. If you scroll back you will see that last time I checked that combination I got bitmap fonts for 300 DPI and vector fonts for 400+ DPI. Maybe the XChange driver needed a Windows restart to function (more) properly?
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

I need to come to a buying decision, because I do need Editor Pro, but I am still undecided about the other packages. XChange Standard offers a bit easier control over its options and more control over paper formats compared to FreePDF. Is there any chance that the issues with embedded fonts (both input and output) are going to be solved in a (foreseeable) future release?
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

I can't say yet - I'm having issues being able to communicate with the necessary Devs. at this time, but I fly back to Canada next Wednesday (with a day or two off to sort out some personal things). I hate to delay that long, but once I'm back in Canada I'll be able to speak with our Dev. Team leader in person and get his thoughts on this.

Thanks,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

I understand, get home and spend time with the family first.

There are quite a few culprits with embedded fonts (not present on my system) in both Editor and XChange printer, so I am still on the verge. For comparison I am also checking Adobe Acrobat DC + its printer driver. The price difference is huge, of course, especially for my somewhat sporadic use.

Unfortunately I have a use case for Editor right now that I'd like to finish within days, rather yesterday even. Maybe I will use the trial with embedded Click-to-Buy marks for the time being. So buying Editor Pro is a no-brainer, but the XChange print driver is a different case. If I'm going to buy both then I can go for the Pro package, even when I have rather limited use for the PDF Tools.
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

I am in the process of testing a dozen different PDF Writers, both free and commercial. Turns out that among those drivers that work without just transforming to bitmap there are two categories. Unfortunately XChange belongs to the second category.

1. All fonts and text are embedded properly

Printer drivers in this category embed fonts the same as they were embedded in the original PDF file that I printed from. Opening their output files in XChange Editor has their text editable with the correct (embedded) fonts and searchable. Curiously Acrobat DC cannot edit these with their correct font.

All Ghostscript based printer drivers belong in this category, such as FreePDF, CutePDF and BullZip. One proprietary drivers that makes it into this category is PrimoPDF. PDFelements also seems to belong here, but it's not easy to tell with their huge watermark on top of the printed output.

2. Fonts are embedded as .TMP fonts and text can consists largely of special chars

Printers in this category embed fonts as .TMP fonts and may replace text with special chars (sometimes depending on the source file). Opening their output in XChange Editor has their text mostly not editable (no access to special chars on keyboard), copy + paste does work, though. When normal keyboard chars are used for editing then a different font than the embedded one is used. Since the text layers consists of special chars (aka gibberish) instead of letters/words the text layers is not searchable.

XChange belongs in this category, together with other 3rd party PDF printers such as Do/NovaPDF, Win2PDF and SodaPDF/PDFCreator.

I am still trying out other PDF print drivers available for Windows.
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Curiously NitroPDF turned out to be in category 2, which is strange considering that PrimoPDF is category 1 (same company).

And for reference: Adobe Acrobat DC's printer driver is category 1, too. Strange part is that Acrobat DC is not able to edit those documents with proper font like Editor is able to. Stranger even when you consider that Acrobat can even edit scanned pages with the font of that page (scanned letters are turned into a temporary font for editing).
KerriTeam
User
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by KerriTeam »

I am following this post.

We use AutoCAD Mechanical generally, but are using Inventor for a few test items. Inventor does not have the same built in print driver options, so we were hoping to use the PDF XChange Editor Print Driver to send these drawings to PDF.

We run into this issue of embedded fonts with barcodes. The PCs that create the files have the barcode fonts, but the PCs reading it do not always. The font gets 'translated' to a known font and then we lose the barcode.

We would be happy if we could flatten the PDF before printing, but I have not seen that option.
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

It is possible that Inventor does not properly send the fonts to begin with. I tried some the barcode font "code-128" and it is properly embedded by XChange (Standard trial). I have one test file, though, where the lines are all too thick and high, but no idea how I created that (later tests didn't do it).

One more thing I noticed with all kind of third party PDF printers except Acrobat DC is that blank spaces vary in width not only depending on which PDF printer was used, but also within the same printer (i.e. XChange) when different DPI settings were used.
KerriTeam
User
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by KerriTeam »

It is possible that it is Inventor - like I said, the Inventor print driver is no where near as robust as the Mechanical print driver.

Did you look at the pdf on a PC that does not have the code-128 font installed? This is where we run into the issue. Engineers think everything looks good, but production gets text instead of barcode because they do not have the code-128 font installed.

I am just hoping that v6 print driver here will flatten the font so that it does not get 'translated' to another font.

*edit* We did try the "Embed all used fonts" option, but it was hit and miss.
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

I checked on a PC, a Mac and an iPad, they all work. I attach three different examples for you to test on your system. You should also check the file properties dialog in your PDF Viewer (CTRL-D for XChange Editor) and then look at the fonts tab. Is the Code 128 font listed as embedded there?

You should try to use Inventor with one of the various Ghostscript based PDF printers (like FreePDF) and/or a trial of Adobe Acrobat (includes a printer driver). These seem to handle font embedding more advanced than many of the third party drivers. My own case here is somewhat special, but who knows how Inventor interacts with various PDF printer drivers.

You could also print to a PDF printer driver that turns the text to vector graphics instead of font. That way the font doesn't matter anymore, but you need to OCR the pages again if you need text to be searchable. Windows 8/10 comes with a built-in "Print to PDF" driver that does just that, but only up to DIN A3 (seems to ignore user created printer forms).

Or you can really "flatten" the files by turning them into a bitmap graphic (JPG, PNG), which is possible via various means (including XChange Editor). If you absolutely need to send PDF then you can embed that image back into a PDF. Funnily there is an easy way for this within Editor: Just OCR the document and tell it to create a new file. Editor will then create a bitmap graphic and put it over the OCR text layer (actually it even does so if you opt to keep the original content).

Maybe it is worth taking a look at "Revu" (expensive), because it is quite specialized for CAD based source material. There also is another competitor out there whose PDF software can transform AutoCAD files to PDF via right-click menu on the file.
Attachments
code_xchange_s.pdf
Code 128 embedded via XChange Standard (Trial)
(23.59 KiB) Downloaded 178 times
code_ghostscript_1200.pdf
Code 128 embedded via Ghostscript (FreePDF)
(8.53 KiB) Downloaded 183 times
code_adobe.pdf
Code 128 embedded via Acrobat
(20.79 KiB) Downloaded 186 times
KerriTeam
User
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by KerriTeam »

Thank you for your insight Timur. I believe I have fixed the problem and it came down to user error :)

Some people had that Embed fonts checked and some did not and they were giving me mixed samples. I repulled all of the samples myself, and everything is indeed working correctly.
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

I have not heard back from you yet, so I keep wondering: Is there a chance that XChange will be "fixed" to properly embed fonts with their proper names and especially stopping it from using special chars for text instead of real letters?

Other 3rd party software does it even worse, but XChange tends to turn some lines (like headlines) into special chars, too. No such problems with Ghostscript.

Tracker's font rendering engine has its own quirks, some of which are beneficial when used for screen viewing, but not necessarily for printing. Still your XChange driver offers many good options that other drivers lack or are harder to access, so I'd like to give it a go (aka buy the whole Pro package).
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

At this point, I think it would be very useful to have a remote session with you, that way I can see exactly what's going on directly on your PC and how (if at all, the results differ from my PC). If that's something that you amenable to, let me know and I'll shoot you an email with the details.

Cheers,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Sure, no problem. Since you are in London we are only 1 hour apart. I have Teamviewer 12 and Splashtop already installed, but can install whatever you need.

That being said, I don't think this is a system specific problem. Why would most 3rd party PDF printers show this particular behavior while Acrobat and Ghostscript printers do not?!

What XChange (and other 3rd party) does is that some - but not all - text is replaced with special chars. Combined with the embedded (tmp) fonts this looks like real readable text in a PDF viewer, but cannot be edited or searched for as it doesn't consist of real letters/words.

I append screenshots of the Properties -> Fonts dialog for a XChange created file and a Ghostscript created file (Acrobat looks the same). As you can see Ghostscript and Acrobat embed the original fonts properly, while XChange replaces them with transformed tmp versions.
Attachments
font properties.zip
(44.19 KiB) Downloaded 151 times
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

Great! I'll fire off the email after this post :)

It's not that I necessarily believe that there's something system-specific going on, it's just that I'd like to take a lot and get a visual example of exactly what you're experiencing and how (if at all) it differs from what I see.

Cheers,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
ANI
User
Posts: 56
Joined: Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by ANI »

Bump.

I'm not completely sure if this is exactly the same annoying issue that I have come across with several times, but to save the number of threads I decided to try here first...

My scenario can be reduced to the following:
  1. Configure the default format for PDF files as PDF/A-2u
  2. Start a web browser, e.g. Chrome
  3. Print the selected web page to PDF-XChange Standard V6 Printer
  4. Expected result: a searchable PDF document
  5. However search finds nothing inside the document
...or maybe I''m just missing something obvious...(?)
User avatar
Patrick-Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 1645
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2014 6:14 pm
Location: Vancouver Island
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Patrick-Tracker Supp »

Hello Ani,

Thank you for the email. This is a known limitation with Chrome and certain web pages. When printed, the text is sent to the printer as a set of curves rather than textual information. The IE add-in for converting web pages to PDF does a much better job.

I have attached 2 examples of the same printed web page. You will see that the IE add-in retains images, backgrounds and links. But this information is stripped when printed from Firefox.

Unfortunately, the limitation lies with the information sent to the printer. With the IE add-in, the print preparation that is usually performed by web browsers is circumvented allowing it to make use of the page content more effectively.

I hope this helps!
Attachments
How to Install a Bathroom Sink 13 StepsIE.pdf
(729.73 KiB) Downloaded 154 times
13 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHowFIREFOX.pdf
(21.47 KiB) Downloaded 154 times
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Cheers,

Patrick Charest
Tracker Support North America
ANI
User
Posts: 56
Joined: Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by ANI »

Hi Patrick,

Thank you for your explanation, it helped! Since I usually use either FF or Chrome and I had encountered the problem with both of them, it didn't come into my mind to suspect the browser as guilty to this behavior...

Indeed it seems that with IE the pages are printed correctly.

May I ask also another question concerning the fonts and printer driver...

I use Microsoft Outlook 2010 for my email client. Sometimes I have a need to print a received email to a PDF file. Quite often (if not always) the font size in the produced PDF file is remarkably smaller than it is in the mail message that I have received. Is there something that I can do to get the font size in the printed PDF file to be equal to that of the original message?
User avatar
Tracker Supp-Stefan
Site Admin
Posts: 17820
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:07 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello ANI,

Yes - it is the browsers at fault here - but when printing to paper - this produces much more consistent results, so that is why they've opted for such behaviour. In fact we also do this for some special types of fonts in PDF files when you print them from inside the Editor.

On the second issue with Outlook - have you tried to change the DPI settings used there? Try a higher setting - and the text might appear much closer to the original size. Please also check whether the default way Outlook shows e-mails is not with some zoom applied - this will make the print look smaller, but it will be in fact the Outlook showing the e-mail larger originally :)

Cheers,
Stefan
ANI
User
Posts: 56
Joined: Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by ANI »

...DPI settings used where? Sorry, I wasn't able to figure out where that setting exists.

(Actually I also noticed that I made a mistake when describing the problem. Naturally Outlook 2010 has the "PDF-XChange V6" tab and I use the command "Convert to PDF" there to produce the PDF document. But the produced PDF file seems to have much smaller text than the email message. Sorry for having given erroneous information...)
User avatar
Tracker Supp-Stefan
Site Admin
Posts: 17820
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:07 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello ANI,

I spoke with a colleague from the dev team working on that plug in, and here is his explanation of how the Outlook one currently works, and why we get the results we do:

We are currently just rendering a plain HTML as it is in the email (Using IE as the rendering engine), so there is no way to change the font size at this moment.
We will look at possibilities for this in future versions. We are planning on using a different technology - Webkit, and with that it will be possible to change the scale of the whole HTML page.


So for the moment it is not possible to change that behaviour, but in the future it will be.

Regards,
Stefan
ANI
User
Posts: 56
Joined: Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:03 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by ANI »

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for the explanation. I's good to know that your development has also noticed the problem. This feature is currently practically useless, for business purposes at least - and we have to use workarounds like copying the email contents to Word and then convert (which does not sound like a professional business procedure).

But otherwise the product is great. Keep up the good work!
User avatar
Tracker Supp-Stefan
Site Admin
Posts: 17820
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:07 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello ANI,

Another temporary solution could be to use File -> Print inside Outlook - this way Outlook will prepare the e-mail content and arrange it in a printer friendly outline with sufficiently large font size, and you can then still "print" to our virtual printer, rather than on paper - and the result will be a better looking PDF file.

Regards,
Stefan
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

I just sent you an e-mail with two PDF files that demonstrate the ongoing font embedding issues. All headlines in those files are either printed as bitmap (300 DPI or less) or outline (400 DPI or more), instead they should all have been embedded fonts.
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe that you're printing the file(s) that you sent us from the Editor to the XChange Standard printer, is that right? If so, this would more likely be a problem with the data sent to the printer (i.e. a problem with the way the Editor prints), rather than with the Standard printer. If that is the case, then please make sure that under File --> Print --> Advanced Printing Options --> More --> Text Rendering Mode, you have Auto selected, as in my test here fonts were successfully embedded and there was still text present in the document, not bitmaps or curves.

Cheers,
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Hi Will,

no, these files were printed from Adobe Reader to the Standard printer. Printing the same files from Reader to Ghostscript (Primo) results in properly embedded fonts for the headlines and properly editable text for everything. So the problem is with X-Change printer.

Furthermore, printing the same file from Editor results in all fonts not being embedded at all, but being printed as outlines, regardless of the "Text rendering mode" options. I reported this in more detail here: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/forum3 ... 71#p115371
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Seems to me that both Editor and Printer cannot properly handle fonts that are embedded in a PDF file but not present on the system?!
User avatar
Tracker Supp-Stefan
Site Admin
Posts: 17820
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:07 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi Timur,

Your files use Type1 fonts - and yes - we can not handle those the same way as TrueType fonts - and still have field for improvement here.

Regards,
Stefan
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Thanks for the information, Stefan!

This explains the many issues I had with my files, both using Editor and Printer for printing. The workaround for Editor is to use the very useful Launch button and print in Reader until Editor learns Type 1.

For Printer I do now understand why fonts printed from Type 1 to Printer are turned to (temporary) True Type fonts. But I still don't understand why their names are turned to TMP and why their character set is garbled? Is this done by Adobe Reader when it prints to a Printer that does not support Type 1 fonts or is this done by Printer?

The workaround for Printer is to use a Ghostscript based PDF printer, but since these are far less powerful - and my list of printers too long - I would like to see Type 1 support in Printer in a foreseeable future. ;)
User avatar
Tracker Supp-Stefan
Site Admin
Posts: 17820
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:07 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hi Timur,

Thanks for your understanding.
We will indeed look at improving both - but I do not have any time frames for this at the moment.

Regards,
Stefan
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Any news on implementing Type 1 support?
User avatar
TrackerSupp-Daniel
Site Admin
Posts: 8436
Joined: Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:52 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Timur,
Currently we have no news on type 1 fonts, and i am sorry to say, but support for other font types is unlikely to make the cut compared to our other features, such as proper XFA support.
Have a good day!
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
Timur Born
User
Posts: 874
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:50 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by Timur Born »

Thanks for the information.
User avatar
TrackerSupp-Daniel
Site Admin
Posts: 8436
Joined: Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:52 pm

Re: Embedded Fonts issues

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

You're Welcome :)
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
Post Reply