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James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
July 28, 2006
Question

Text missing from PDF

  • July 28, 2006
  • 102 replies
  • 63808 views
I am a long-time and very experienced user of FrameMaker, Acrobat, and all associated tools. My XP-SP2 system is thoroughly debugged and fully updated.

When I create PDFs in Frame, sections of the text come up missing. The document remains correctly formatted and organized - there are simply missing sentences, paragraphs, etc. in no discernible pattern. I have tried every fix I can think of and all those I have found by searching online - to no avail.

These documents are created from scratch in Frame 7.2p158; I have updated the installation at least once without solving the problem. The PDFs are being created by every known process: print to Distiller (7.0) within Frame; Save As PDF; print to generic PostScript and pass to Distiller. The missing text remains consistent within all processes.

The fonts involved range from junk of unknown origin to (most of my fonts) true Adobe Postscript. Changing fonts does not cure the problem, although it sometimes changes which parts disappear. There is no particularly complex formatting involved (no equations, no unusual character overrides). These documents are mostly contracts and other simple but rigidly formatted documents. None involve imported graphics.

I have tried all variations of saving to MIF and RTF and re-importing. This sometimes changes the faults, but does not cure them.

This problem occurs ONLY with FrameMaker. I can export perfect PDFs, some from very complex source documents, from Word, InDesign, CorelDRAW and a dozen other tools, using any fonts on my system.

(I am dismayed at how hard Adobe support has gotten to use - as the owner of nine of their most expensive apps, I should be able to get better online support without calling in and begging permission!)

If anyone can point me to a known bug, a known fix, or a good starting point for unraveling this problem - or confirm that they've seen a similar error - I would appreciate it!
This topic has been closed for replies.

102 replies

H
hirsute_123
Participant
February 21, 2012

I have exactly the same problem with word

Neil

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 21, 2012

The hotfix isn't just for FM, it applies to all XP systems - it was a bug in the font handling in memory that caused it to lose track of fonts

S
stormcloud96
Participant
July 2, 2009

Are there any suggestions out there for those who did NOT create the file and are simply trying to read/print a Adobe file that keeps turning up with missing text? Strangely enough I use my home computer and this same file showed up no probelm, I use the work computer and text goes missing. Any clues again for those who did NOT create the document and are just trying to view it. I also am just trying to get Adobe to pay attention and fix this problem. At least so people like me can read on their website, we know sometimes text is missing and we are trying to correct the problem would be nice! I did try the printer settings issue since that is something I understood and could do, however it did not work.

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
July 2, 2009

Are you referring to text missing in a FrameMaker .FM file or in a PDF file produced from FrameMaker? If the latter, the problem turned out to be a very obscure bug in Windows for which Microsoft has issued a hotfix that you must download and install.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
S
stormcloud96
Participant
July 2, 2009

It is just a PDF file, I am unsure of how it was made. I would be willing to try the hotfix, however someone had posted the link which no longer worked. Do you have the link so I can try it?

_
_erictung_
Participant
October 20, 2008
Dear Kenneth,
Thank for your suggests but I feel to complex and hard to implement it. Maybe at the moment we would continue to work by the old way, it's slowly but easy. And wait until other Vietnamese fonts can work together with FrameMaker or VNI-Helves fonts vendor to enhance their product.
_
_erictung_
Participant
October 20, 2008
Dear Kenneth,
Thank for your suggests but I feel too complex and hard to implement it. Maybe at the moment we would continue to work by the old way, it's slowly but easy. And wait until other Vietnamese fonts can work together with FrameMaker or VNI-Helves fonts vendor to enhance their product.
_
_erictung_
Participant
October 17, 2008
Dear Kenneth & George,
Thank for help.

Actually this problem happen in FrameMaker and think the reason is VNI-Helve font don't support bullet characters. Now We also use George'solution to work but in long-run I think must have better solution since it's very slowly our work especially when we work with hundreds above pages document with many bullets.

So any other solution? Now I think about these solutions:

1) Edit VNI-Helve fonts to support bullet characters

2) Use XMF editor to edit FrameMaker's MIF files to change any characters in Univers 45 Light font to VNI-Helve font but don't change bullet characters. ( I did it already by Notepad or Microsoft Word but it will change all of characters include bullets so it not work also. But if by which way that this change exclude bullet characters so it'll work)

What do you think about these solutions & other better solutions?
Thank in advance
_
_Kenneth_Benson_
Participating Frequently
October 17, 2008
> since it's very slowly our work especially when we work with
> hundreds above pages document with many bullets.

If this is Framemaker, then your bulleted lists should have been made
using Formats. The bullets should be automatic, and changing the font
the bullets use should be as easy as specifying a character format in
the Numbering section of Paragraph Designer.

If your bullets are not automatic, then, yes, it's going to be a lot of
work, probably a good deal less work to make a new paragraph format
using automatic bullets and delete the manual bullets. I would want to
use some sort of creative Find/Replace: Find bullet (it's still there,
even if it doesn't show, and it's probably ALT 0149, ), Replace by
Pasting after Copy Special, Paragraph Format (copy the new automatic
bulleted list format); then find bullet and delete. This would be more
complicated if you have more than one type of bulleted list.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com
_
_georgelowndes_
Participant
October 16, 2008
I think it may simply be because the font you are using, in this instance Vni-helve, does not support the bullets as characters.

You may have to set up the bullets in a paragraph style and assign a different font to the bullets than to the rest of the document text.

I'm afraid it has been many years since I have used PageMaker so I can not inform you any further but this is my general thought on the subject.
_
_erictung_
Participant
October 16, 2008
Problem with bullets in PageMaker!

Dear all,

I have question.

I use PagamMaker 7 to edit an English brochure to Vietnamese.

Our company translator was translate English to Vietnames using Unicode font.
Now in PageMaker, I want change font to VNI-Helve ( a popular Vietnamese font).
But everytime I change font to Vni-helve, every bullets disappear..
What is the main reason ?

Please help me A.S.A.P
_
_Kenneth_Benson_
Participating Frequently
October 16, 2008
This is the Framemaker forum, not Pagemaker.

But I agree with George: if changing the font makes the bullet
disappear, there must be nothing at that character position in the new
font. Either try a different character position in the new font, or use
the old font for bullets.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com
James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPressAuthor
Legend
July 14, 2008
Fantastic! Thank you!

(I really wish I had more time to read the forums here - I think I would save more time, net, than I expend on running fixes and workarounds!)
A
Anonymous
July 14, 2008
There is a new Microsoft HotFix update that takes care of the issue on Windows. Here is a posting about it:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b5ba92?50@@
James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPressAuthor
Legend
July 14, 2008
Unfortunately, I've had the problem return. My font list is clogged with dozens of "garbage" fonts installed by various apps (all high quality and commercial - I don't install shareware or junkware). I have tried deleting the Asian fonts, but many won't let me - even as Administrator it says I don't have permission.

I also can't locate the .DAT file any more. Has everything changed under Vista? How can I fix this problem under Vista 64?

And is there any permanent fix, say with FM 8.x or Acrobat 9?
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