displays ok but prints with some particular characters missing

[john_cummin@adobeforums.com]

Hi,

I have a PDF that displays fine, but when I print it certain characters are missed out. Math characters. But they display OK -- so what can be done?

Cheers,
John.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

How was the PDF created? I suspect that the math font was not properly embedded in the PDF.

[john_cummin@adobeforums.com]

I'm not sure how it was created -- I got it from elsewhere. In Document Properties > Fonts there's a number of fonts, some (including the maths one) with their names followed by "(Embedded Subset)". Then it says "Type: True Type", then "Encoding: built in". Not all the fonts are like that but the one with maths in its title is. All the fonts seem to be displaying OK and not all the maths characters seem to be problematic. The minus sign, plus sign, equals sign, infinity sign and upper case Greek sigma (summation) are five that are not working for example.

Seems very odd the characters display OK but not print OK. Obviously I'm looking for a way to print them -- any ideas?

Cheers,
John

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

Do ALL the fonts have EMBEDDED or EMBEDDED SUBSET?

Jon

[john_cummin@adobeforums.com]

Hello,

No, the font states/situations seem to fit into two different categrories: the "embedded subset" which I already described and the other situation is where it is like this:

Arial,Bold
Type: True Type
Encoding: ANSI
Actual Font: Helvetica-Bold
Actual Font Type: True Type

A few of the fonts are like that. So substitution is occuring because I don't have in the above case Arial,Bold (although I do have *an* Arial, probably not that specific Arial though I guess otherwise substitution wouldn't be happening). And that's happening for a small number of fairly standard sounding fonts; Arial and TimesNewRoman and Symbol (does Symbol have mathematical chars such as an upper case Sigma sign (that's the bent upper case E looking char)).

So is this the problem? There are fonts used in the PDF, which aren't embedded in the document and which I don't have on my machine, so substitutin is occuring. But how come it's displaying fine but not printing fine? I thought with PDFs there is one central base representation, and multiple representations (screen, printer etc) generated from the base representation. My point is if it displays OK then it should print OK, or it should not display OK and not print OK -- all or nothing -- that's what I thought but obviously not.

Cheers,
John.

[john_cummin@adobeforums.com]

In case it's useful the pdf I'm talking about is at this address:

<http://www.dspguide.com/ch2.htm>

and, for example, equasion 2-2 on page 4 (the pdf doc page 4 not the book's page 4) misses the lower case sigma sign, the upper case sigma sign (bent E like character), both equals signs and the three minus signs when printing but it all displays fine.

How can I print it out OK? Why does it display on the screen OK but not print OK?

Cheers,
John.

[john_cummin@adobeforums.com]

With the TouchUp Text Tool I selected the lower case signma sign (a character which is displaying on screen OK but is missing in print out), control clicked on it and chose Properties. In this it states the font is WPGreekCentury -- and that font is one that is listed in Document Properties > Fonts as an "Embedded Subset".

Can anyone say what's going wrong with the print out?

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Cheers,
John.

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

John,

What happens if you print one page at a time?

Jon

[Larry_G._Schneider@adobeforums.com]

Sounds like the printer is being sent only the first instance of a subsetted font which may not contain all the characters. One of m¥ biggest gripes is that Acrobat does not make a "superset" of the subsetted fonts containing all the characters contained in the various subsets.

[john_cummin@adobeforums.com]

Right, got a slight confession now: I was using Acrobat Reader to print and Pro to examine the PDF (didn't have printer atached to computer with Pro). But have just printed one page from Acrobat Pro and it seems to be working OK. Whether that's because I was using Pro this time, or because I printed just one page (bearing in mind what Jon said) I don't know. Can't check to find out for sure as I'm running out of ink and need to conserve it for something else until I get some new ink. Hopefully just using Pro rather than Reader to print is what the solution was as I do not fancy printing page by page.

One of m¥ biggest gripes is that Acrobat does not make a "superset" of
the subsetted fonts containing all the characters contained in the various
subsets.




So it may be printing just one page is what solved it. What you say there sounds like quite a bug.

If it turns out that Pro wasn't the solution and one page per print was the solution is there any way to avoid the need for printing page by page? I suppose some tool / app to process the PDF before printing to consolidate all the various subsets of fonts into one set? Presumably that would solve it?

Thanks for the replies.
John.

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

Well - my suggestion obviously worked then (smile) ;-)

Jon

[john_cummin@adobeforums.com]

Well - my suggestion obviously worked then (smile)




Well, not so fast Mr. Bessant -- maybe, maybe not :) I've just printed an individual page from Acrobat Reader and it still misses the Greek characters commonly used in maths and an equals sign, so it's still not conclusive (and I still can't say because I still haven't got more ink).

It could be that simply using Acrobat Pro solves the problem, or that using Acrobat Pro and printing a page at a time sovles the problem.

[MarkATS@adobeforums.com]

Use "Print as Image" and all these pesky math symbols will probably print properly.

[Jon_Bessant@adobeforums.com]

Marks's idea will get you out of a hole - but text outputs as image only
format - that might be good enough?

Otherwise - have you attempted to print to another printer ?

Jon