Killing Two Stones with One Bird (was: "Acrobat and Distiller Printer" and "Print to PDF does not look format correctly"

[Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>]

All:

Two messages appeared on these lists today that have quite a bit in
common, problems with layout associated with fonts seemingly
disappearing and/or being substituted when producing PDF files.

Some responses have been given already, including a technical one by
Shlomo. I would like to address the underlying issues and provide some
solutions that appear to work in most situations:

(1) A major negative feature of current operating systems is the
"feature" by which the OS treats any "printer resident fonts" as if
they were also available on the host computer. For display purposes,
the OS fakes the display. This "feature" is a holdover from the days
before the availability of Type 1 and TrueType font support on the
host computer system.

(2) The result of (1) above is that depending upon which "printer" is
currently chosen, a different selection of fonts would appear to be
available to the application program especially if the available
printers use different technologies and/or have different selections
of available "printer resident fonts."

(3) It also turns out that printer drivers determine how the metrics
of these "printer resident" fonts are reported back to the application
which in fact may differ from how the OS reports back the metrics of
the same or similar fonts resident on a user's host computer system.

(4) As a result, one ends up with faux-fonts for displays, missing
font or embedding errors for distillation, or other weird anomalies
associated with layout and text.

(5) Professionals do not consider (1) above or programs that otherwise
fake fonts that aren't installed as any type of "feature".

(6) The best way to avoid problems is to effectively force the
printer drivers to make believe that no fonts (or maybe at worst,
one common font) is actually resident for all printers.

(7) It turns out that the "fix" for the ITC Zapf Dingbats display
problem under Windows 2000/XP in fact provides the "fix" for (6) above.
I first posted this "fix" last November. I am repeating it below.
Apply both the "WORKAROUND" and "FURTHERMORE" sections.

(8) I believe that if you follow my suggestions, you will not see
find that you need any other operational workarounds such as suggested
by Shlomo. I would be most interested in hearing off-list from any of
you if you in fact any of you find that after applying these fixes, you
still need to do anything funny to avoid reflow problems of any type
under Windows 2000 / XP.

        - Dov (on the road, tonight in Quebec, Canada)



ORIGINAL POSTING OF NOVEMBER 15, 2001:

There is a known problem under Windows 2000 and Windows XP (all flavours) 
in which characters chosen from the ITC Zapf Dingbats font, one of the 
“base 35” PostScript Type 1 fonts, display in the TrueType WingDings font 
on the screen, but print OK to PostScript printers and generate correct 
PDF files. A similar problem occurs with Carta and any other Type 1 
symbol fonts (other than the actual font “Symbol”) that might be resident 
in the PostScript printing device (as defined in the printer's PPD file) 
and also installed on an end-user's computer system.

(Obviously, if a font is printer-resident but a copy of that font is not 
installed at all on an end-user's computer system, characters in that font 
will not display correctly!)

This problem affects many but not all, applications. These applications in 
which the problem occurs appears to include many applications which use 
Windows 2000/XP's font rendering services as opposed to applications which 
internally control their own fonts. The applications affected include 
FrameMaker, Microsoft Office, and Lotus Smartsuite, amongst others. No other 
Adobe applications are affected being that they control and manage their own 
font services.

Adobe is aware of the problem. The cause of the problem is a mismatch 
between how the OS font rendering system and the PostScript driver “see” 
what are ostensibly the same fonts. Unfortunately, a short term driver/OS 
fix are not forthcoming.

A VIABLE WORKAROUND

The following is the best known workaround that effectively solves the 
problem in a manner that would be compatible with any future fixes issued by 
Adobe and/or Microsoft:

(1) Logon as “Administrator” or with a user ID that has administrator 
privileges.

(2) Make sure no printing is occurring or spooled to any PostScript printer 
and close all regular applications.

(3) Go to directory “C:\WINNT\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3”.
For Windows XP, it may be the “C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3”
directory.

(4) For each .PPD file in that directory:

        (a) Copy the PPD file to a backup location in case you need to 
        subsequently retrieve a pre-modified version.

        (b) Open the PPD with an ASCII text editor, such as “NotePad”.

        (c) Find the line in the PPD file that begins “*Font ZapfDingbats:”

        (d) Change the initial “*Font” in that line to “*% Font”

        (e) Save the PPD file and exit the text editor.

(5) Delete all the .BPD files in directory 
“C:\WINNT\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3” or 
“C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3” as appropriate.

The PostScript driver will then recreate the .BPD files as necessary from the 
edited PPD files. Note that with this solution, you do NOT need to delete and 
recreate the printer instances. This hackery is only a Windows 2000 and XP 
solution. The problems mentioned above do not occur with Windows'9x or Me.

FURTHERMORE

I PERSONALLY recommend that at stage (4)(c-d) above, you change ALL the lines 
that begin with “*Font” to “*% Font” with the exception of the one line that 
begins with “*Font Courier:”,

Why? Because this effectively tells the driver and operating system to always 
use the fonts resident on your computer system as opposed to those which may 
be ROM or disk-based in your printing device.

And why is that important? Two reasons:

(1) We continually hear about problems in which users compose documents with 
fonts that appear in the list of available fonts but surprisingly enough, fail 
to be recognized or embedded when creating PDF files. This problem is caused 
by the fact that the operating system in conjunction with the driver allows 
on-host access for formatting purposes to fonts that are printer-resident, 
even if they cannot be really accessed or displayed on your computer because 
they are not actually installed on your computer! When you “switch” to the 
Acrobat Distiller printer instance, the fonts seem to “disappear.” Well, they 
weren't really there to start with. This “fix” eliminates the “phantom phonts” 
and the problems associated with same.

(2) Over time, changes have occurred in fonts, especially in the size and 
content of their character sets. The best example of this is the addition of 
the Euro symbol into many Type 1 fonts that can also be “printer resident.” 
In some cases, such as the Arial and Times New Roman families, the fonts 
being shipped with Windows 2000 / XP each have over 1000 more character 
definitions (from multiple alphabets and symbols) than the equivalent 
printer-resident fonts in PostScript 3 implementations and some PostScript 
Level 2 emulations. This fix forces use of the host-based font when printing 
and thus virtually eliminates the possibility of missing characters on output 
due to font mismatches.

Note that it is critical that you DON'T change the line for Courier. The driver 
appears to “die” if it doesn't have at least one printer-resident font to chew 
on and Courier is the font that will likely cause you least grief with any of 
the two issues above.

- Dov



At 7/11/2002 03:27 AM, John W. Bevan wrote:
>Just when you thought all questions about the Acrobat Distiller Printer had
>been asked.
>
>Following Sean Brierley's email late last month summarising this topic, and
>even after I contacted him for clarification on some points, I have more
>questions/comments.
>
>I use FMver5.5.6, Acrobat 5.0.5, Win 98 on a PC and have successfully, until
>now, used the PS4.4.4 driver I downloaded from Adobe website about 12 months
>ago (I have always used this driver to successfully print from programs such
>as Excel, Word, FM, Illustrator, etc). Following Sean's/this user-group's
>suggestions, I tried using the Acrobat Distiller Printer (DP) but, of
>course, got the ".fonts have altered.." message from FrameMaker.
>
>Firstly, I am bemused as to why I can print a Word doc to pdf using the
>Distiller Printer and open it in Acrobat to find the original fonts, but FM
>won't. Sean writes that this is because Word "substitutes or fakes the
>missing font" which I guess I'll accept, but I'd love to know why FM doesn't
>posses this functionality.
>
>Specifically, my book files use Helvetica, Bookman OS, Avant Garde, and
>Arial. When I print a file via the DP all of these except Bookman OS and
>Arial get changed to TNRoman.
>
>Q1. It would therefore appear I have to add fonts to my computer. How? To
>where? The DP has no resident fonts; my computer already has and can use the
>fonts I want (it uses them in Word and in FM).
>
>Q2. Sean asks me if I have the fonts I want actually installed on my
>computer, and to check my fonts folder. Again I would say that my computer
>does use these fonts in other programs: doesn't that mean they are
>installed? But if they are not installed, how do I do it?
>
>Q3. Where does Adobe Type Manager fit in with all this, if at all? I have
>ATM version 4.00, dated 1996.  Is this still current? This program was
>downloaded with FM off the CD I guess when I first installed and I have
>never fiddled with it really because frankly I'm not sure what to do with
>it. For starters when I read the help notes on how to add fonts, it refers
>to dragging and dropping fonts from the drop-down list. I have no fonts
>showing when I open ATM and when I browse to "C:\WINDOWS\Fonts" I get no
>detail or reference to any font names. Is something not set up correctly?
>
>This will do for the time being as I must have Valium. Perhaps someone can
>answer some of the questions for me or point me in the right direction for
>further reading :D
>
>What really scares me is that I'm about to upgrade to FM7, so God knows what
>font issues that's going to raise!
>
>John Bevan

*

At 7/11/2002 11:12 AM, David Coverston wrote:
>I am using FrameMaker 7 on Windows 2000 system using an HP Laserjet 5 Si.
>My printed copy does not match the PDF when I use the Save as PDF command.
>However, if I print to a file and run it through the distiller, the PDF
>does match the hard copy.
>Distiller gives me the %%[ Warning: Helvetica-Oblique not found, using
>Font Substitution. Font cannot be embedded.]%% message for several fonts,
>which are not used in the doc or template as far as I can find. I have
>tried the List of References for the "missing" fonts, and tried saving as
>MIF and looking for a reference to them in both the file and the template
>it was based on. Couldn't find it any where. There are no eps graphics in
>the file.
>I don't know for sure if it is a font problem, since the position on the
>page of the text elements is different between the print and PDF files
>also.
>Any ideas on what to do? 
>Thanks,
>David



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