I've read through the previous posts on the topic and have a little to add:

Things commented on in previous posts:

"When I output to PDF all my formatting (bold, italic, etc.) is lost"

"I made a design with many text elements, including bold and italic text. These all exported fine. I then edited my design,

changing a few words and text sizes. On the next export attempt all text was rendered as normal (i.e. not bold, italic, etc.

as it should have been)."

The usual reply:

"Use the proper font faces (i.e. "<fontname> heavy") rather than clicking the bold button."

My experience

I can have two files open. The first is a file that is having the export problems seen by the people quoted above. The

second is a new file. Into the new file I can insert text, using the bold, italic and bolditalic styles. On export (using

the same export settings as the "affected" file) the text renders properly. On copying the text from the new file to the

affected file the text looks just the same in the freehand window... but on export it loses it's formatting (as expected).

Conclusions

The flaw is not held in the properties of the "text box" (text properties). The flaw is not in the export settings for the

file either. The flaw is global and affects all text within a file. The flaw is not dependant on the text properties of an

individual text object (see below) but rather on all the text properties of a group of similar text boxes... (best explained

by test below)

The test

Take one file affected by this "loss of style" issue. (Detail: font suffering difficulty in this file was Arial)
Add a text object by the following procedure:
select text tool from tool pallet
click on canvas/page (text input guides appear and text properties appear in properties menu)
select style "plain" and font Arial
enter text "hello"
Now do the same but with style "bold"

You should now have 2 text objects, one "bold" and one "plain". On export to PDF these should both appear as "plain".

Now, delete each object on your page (except your 2 new text objects) and export to pdf after each deletion until you find

that the two "hello"s render properly (one "bold" and one "plain").

first findings

The text objects rendered properly when all instances of "plain" Arial text had been removed from the page. (test this by

changing the order in which you delete things... it's not one individual bit of text)
Bold Arial text seemed not to affect rendering.

further tests... going deeper

Assuming we now have our two test text objects (lets call them "hello" and "hello") and our last bit of plain Arial

(lets call it "problem text"):

"hello" and "hello" will render properly if:
problem text is deleted
problem text style is changed to bold *
problem text style is changed to italic *
problem text font is changed to anything but Arial *

"hello" and "hello" will continue to render wrongly if:
the document has it's output resolution changed
problem text has it's "text fill" removed
problem text has it's "text fill" overprint setting toggled
problem text is edited **
problem text is edited such that an interior word is changed in style (example: changing "hello my friend" to "hello my

friend")
any of the following text properties of "problem text" are changed:
font-size
text alignment
line spacing
distance between characters (kearning)
vertical distance character is raised above baseline
text effect
apply style button (I could only change from "+normal" to "normal")
problem text is attacked with the following tools: perspective, rotate, resize, etc. (all non-destructive tools)***

* selection with black arrow cursor and text property changed
** you double click text object "problem text" and add or subtract characters in plain Arial
*** to do this you have to select text object and then group it (just with itself)

barking up the wrong tree
Whilst the previous tests have shown us some things about where the fault is... all we can basically say is that any process which does not swap one font (or sub font - bold, italic, etc.) for another will not change the situation. All text will continue to format improperly. Any process which swaps fonts or sub fonts on all affected bits of text will solve the problem. Annoyingly, swapping "problem text" back to Arial plain brings back the problem.


I'm taking a break now. I've got an idea that this is about internal and external specifcation of "bold" within the same text object but I'm way too tired to prove it right now...


Alan Geering
[url]http://www.algee.co.uk[/url]