Skip to main content
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

Arnis Gubins
Inspiring
July 28, 2006
I'm assuming that you are using the Adobe PDF printer instance when
creating the output from FM. The dropped text issue can sometimes be
resolved by changing the default setting for the printer instance
Graphic > Print Quality to 600 dpi (located under the Printing
Preferences > Layout > Advanced and also under Properties > Advanced >
Printing Defaults > Layout > Advanced - change it at both locations).
This is described in the following technote:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/324972.html

This 600dpi setting only affects the object placement granularity on
the page, not the actual resolution of the objects. There is a magic
number based upon the page-size, font height and the graphic
resolution that causes all sorts of phunnies if you leave this setting
at the default (4000dpi, I think).
MichaelKazlow
Legend
July 28, 2006
Can you post a Frame document that only uses Adobe PS fonts that we
might own that has this problem to see if we can duplicate the problem?

Mike