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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

Participant
July 14, 2008
I had the same issue with random text disappearing. I deleted the .dat file and it's all good now! Excellent!

I have no idea how you figured that out, but I certainly never would have, so thanks for posting!

-C
April 15, 2008
I'll just throw this in real quick.

If you want to automatically delete the font cache, as well as a wide variety of Windows detritus, at boot, take a look at CCleaner:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

It's free (watch out for the installer's attempts to force-feed you a Yahoo toolbar), and in addition to cleaning a wide range of default junk, can be told to delete specific files and folders...

Cheers & hope this helps,
Riley
Participating Frequently
April 15, 2008
> But if the font cache is deleted on startup Windows just runs without
> it. Which also seems to eliminate the problem because the font files
> are read directly, eliminating any corruption in the font cache.

No. The FNTCACHE is read before any autostarting commands have any effect. Deleting it on/before shutdown is the *only* way to go.

Bernd
Known Participant
April 15, 2008
For the record.

I have a very large FNTCACHE.DAT file 10.MB). and can print to PDF without text missing using this procedure:

1) Open FM
2) Open any BOOK/FM file
3) Print it ordinarily with options "Print to File" & "Generate Acrobat Data" selected.
4) The resulting PRN/PS file, which is created is not to be used for anything
5) Now choose File Save As PDF (FM7), or Save as PDF (FM8).
6) PDF's are OK!!!!

Repeat this next time you open FM or start a new Windows session.

I haven't got the faintest idea what goes on. But it works. I have several cases in which the FNTCACHE.DAT file however small I make it, still 'forces' incorrect PDF's with missing text.

keep smiling
thomas
Inspiring
April 15, 2008
There was another thread on this, although I'm not sure that it was on Adobe. But if the font cache is deleted on startup Windows just runs without it. Which also seems to eliminate the problem because the font files are read directly, eliminating any corruption in the font cache.

Art
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
April 15, 2008
Well s'prize s'prize that completely new releases fixed this idiotic problem... :P
Inspiring
April 15, 2008
George,

The font cache is built from the Windows installed fonts, so the only way to control is is to minimize the number of fonts you have installed. There are a number of font management programs out there that let you do this. However, the international fonts with glyphs for multiple languages are the largest ones.

Just as an interesting tidbit, I haven't had this problem since migrating to the Tech Comm Suite with FM 8 and Acrobat 8 3-D. And I'm not deleting the cache.

Art
Participant
April 15, 2008
I regularly have this very same problem, it first happened to me about a year ago and I found the solution of removing the FNTCACHE.DAT file the only one that worked, I tend to regularyl print foreign language documents containing complex font information and therefore my FNTCACHE.DAT file gets clogged up regularly, I simply remove it and restart the machine and all is well until I next print a complex document.

Is there a way of preventing the FNTCACHE.DAT file from getting so large?

My temporary soution would be to set up a macro that would remove the FNTCACHE.DAT file every time I start up the machine but this surely shouldn't have to be done!
Arnis Gubins
Inspiring
April 15, 2008
George,

You actually should be deleting the FNTCACHE.DAT file when you
shutdown the machine, not after start up. The data is already read
before you can delete it when the system boots up. If it's not there
on start-up, then Windows recreates it and in the process does a
cleaner job than when fonts get added during a session.
Participating Frequently
January 10, 2008
Nitro--There has been a .later thread titled "Missing Text in FrameMaker, January 9, 2009 and I had pointed out that I pointed out:

To solve this the missing text, I have to print the FM book at least twice and distill twice without deleating the previous files (must be overwritten). This bug shows up as the number of files in the book increases in number and the total page count get larger. I'm at 485 pages (sorry, no idea when it starts).

Rebecca Officer wrote--Printing twice has always worked for us, for PDFs.

Bibo Baggins wrote-Hi all - Well printing to a PS file twice and then generating the PDF seems to have fixed the problem for now.
Participating Frequently
January 10, 2008
Hi,

I wish to look into the problem you are facing.

Would it be possible for you to send them those .fm files from which the text comes missing?

Regards,
Amit