pdf font substitution problem

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sleddriver

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I'm using Foxit 5.4.5.xxxx on WXP machine. When I display this star chart, it looks fine on my LCD screen, even fully zoomed in. However, after printing it on my Brother HL-1240 laser printer, it looks 'full of holes'. Literally. I got out the magnifying glass and it looks like Foxit substituted some printer-font that has 'holes' in it. I can actually see them. Very odd.

When I put this pdf on a thumb drive, take it to a copy place and have it printed it looks excellent.

Using Foxit I am able to view the fonts used in the document if that helps.

I'm a bit out-of-my-league when it comes to printer fonts, font substitution, rendering, etc.

Anyone else had a problem with a pdf that printed poorly?
 
Originally Posted By: Rand
does it print right with adobe reader?


Was just thinking the same thing
smile.gif
 
Haven't tried it yet with Adobe reader; haven't used that in years. But agree it's a good place to start.

Very odd to examine that printed font & find it shot full of tiny holes! Holy Cow!

Will try this & report back. Thanks for the replies!
 
The application must have a table of substitutes for fonts; and I'll bet there is something in the application's preferences, a configuration file, or through the Windows Registry that can specify which fonts get used as substitutes for which fonts. For example, a .pdf that used (but has not embedded) the "Helvetica" font would be substituted with "Arial" as they are darn near exact replacements for one another. You may have to manually specify which of you installed fonts you want to use in place of the ones used in the document that you do not have.

You may want to let the publishers know of your trouble: It is a little irresponsible of any publisher to NOT properly embed the fonts directly in their documents.
 
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
The application must have a table of substitutes for fonts; and I'll bet there is something in the application's preferences, a configuration file, or through the Windows Registry that can specify which fonts get used as substitutes for which fonts. For example, a .pdf that used (but has not embedded) the "Helvetica" font would be substituted with "Arial" as they are darn near exact replacements for one another. You may have to manually specify which of you installed fonts you want to use in place of the ones used in the document that you do not have.

You may want to let the publishers know of your trouble: It is a little irresponsible of any publisher to NOT properly embed the fonts directly in their documents.


Last night I did find a few searches talking about PostScript printers that have a tab in their control panel or properties panel that clearly shows this information. No joy with the Brother laser properties panel. It's incredibly simplistic.

Further, I printed out a pdf google directions map this afternoon and the street names are unreadable. It's worthless. Looks fine on screen though.

I found the Win fonts folder in the control panel, so I know what's on board.

Frankly, I haven't messed with fonts in years...decades?? I remember dealing with it on my old Macs, with TrueType, etc. But printing out a readable street map should be a no-brainer these days. Something's FUBAR.
 
Originally Posted By: sleddriver
Frankly, I haven't messed with fonts in years...decades?? I remember dealing with it on my old Macs, with TrueType, etc. But printing out a readable street map should be a no-brainer these days. Something's FUBAR.


No mystery here as to what is FUBAR: the designers of the .pdf used a font that is NOT widely installed or available as a substitution (ie. Helvectica, Arial, Liberation Sans all kinda jive in terms of kerning) without embedding those fonts in the document. If you're going to use a strange or rare font (such as glyphs or symbols or something stylistically unique) you simply MUST embed that font in the document; else those reading it who do not have it installed are completely dependent on their OS's (or .pdf reader's) substitution guesses.
 
Well, I'm having a [censored] of a time trying to edit a 'print screen' using OOo draw and just save what I cropped. When I go back to look at what I saved, it's the entire 'print screen'! I don't understand this at all. @#$%! windows just drives me nuts sometimes. . . .

I've figured this out before but forgot how I did it!
 
No. I finally figured it out AND made myself some notes so when the swiss-cheese that surfices for my short-term memory these days goes into 'wholy' mode, I have a memory backup.

Now here's some screen shots (edited) of the files in question:

This shows the fonts used in the star chart mentioned earlier. I'm assuming 'embedded subset' indicates the fonts are included, correct?

starchartpdfprop_zpsd4f4f5c4.jpg



Next up are the doc_props from the google map that was unreadable:
googmap_zpsc4a70917.jpg


Finally when I looked at the doc-props for the pool pump manual, it was blank.

So all three of these are pdf's and all three are in various stages of unreadable.

I have heard back from Foxit. Then want me to erase the reg_key, reinstall and check again. I also want to try acro_reader first to see how it handles these.

That's all for now.
 
Update: I installed pdf Xchange. The docs looked fine on-screen. Printed? They looked worse: Didn't think that was possible. The completely black area at the top was printed with white dots in it, like maybe the printer is in draft mode. Problem is there's only two settings: 150 or 300dpi.

Next I installed Adobe Rdr 10.xx. They looked fine on-screen. The star chart looks MUCH better, but the white circles are now white pin-holes; still not solid black like when I take it somewhere else.

The gogle map looks better, but barely. Text quality is still very poor.

The pool pump pdf is much improved. The best out of all three.

I've borrowed an older Epson ink-jet photo printer to try it vs. the old brother laser. Also, not sure if deleting the laser driver and reinstalling it might help.

More suggestions?
 
Originally Posted By: sleddriver
More suggestions?


At this point I would install software that is a pdf printer: Meaning, it would essentially be present as a printer in your OS's printing dialogue, but would generate a .pdf file. I might be sorely tempted to print your .pdf as a .pdf and hope that the re-formatting of the .pdf done by the pdf printing application set things right. Stranger things have happened.
 
More weirdness ensues. . . I decided to uninstall the printer driver, download from brother & reinstall. Turns out brother had an uninstaller, which I used.

That went ok...I restarted....went to control panel > printers > selected the printer, properties, new driver etc. When I clicked OK to install it, my machine just went nuts!! The OK box became gray, the pointer icon turned to an hour glass, cpu usage went up to 45% and Process Explorer showed multiple copies of the brother quick print/setup window which I had a tough time killing off.

Really, really odd behavior. Don't understand at all. Why would my confuser go nuts like that?

Another digital black hole. . . .
 
Been there; done that. No joy. Ran through the whole process today with Brother tech-support on the phone. Can't remember the last time I had that much trouble installing a driver. Odd.

Despite all that, it didn't make a bit of difference.

So I fired up the Epson 1280 I rarely use, cleaned the heads multiple times to wake it up, then printed a B&W of the google map in high-res mode. Perfect! Then another in low-res: still readable and far superior to what the Brother laser was cranking out.

Printed the other .pdf's and they too looked MUCH better on the Epson ink than the Brother laser. Something weird is going on here. . . .

Next when I was at my local community library, I printed out the same doc's on their HP PostScript laser printer. All were deep black.

So my ancient Brother is not cutting-the-mustard when it comes to printing maps, nor pdf's. It looks fine when printing Word docs, notes and text. I thought 300dpi would be enough. It does only have a limited amount of memory, 2Meg maybe??.

So what B&W lasers do you guys recommend as a good bang for the buck? Looks like I'm in the market for a new one. I've heard the new ones print at 1200dpi to start. Wow.
 
Lexmark makes a number of them in your price range, we use Lexmark pretty much exclusively in the healthcare industry FWIW.
 
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