Legend

Question

Text missing from PDF

Forum|Forum|19 years ago
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!

PDF output

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Helge Blischke

Participating Frequently

Back to the missing text again:

Courtesy of Bernd, I got some sample files which exhibit this bug. As far as I was able to trace it down, the bug shows up whenever some system component decides to switch from downloading the fonts (or appending native glyph descriptions to a partially downloaded font) to convert the glyphs to bitmaps and download those as part of a Type3 font.

As this bug occurs with both the joined Adobe/Microsoft PS driver for Win2000/XP and the old (kernel mode) NT4 driver, I suspect the issue is not due to the printer driver itself but rather to the Wondows GDI.

To be sure, I'd like to know if this missing text syndrome does occur with other applications as well.

Helge

James Gifford—NitroPressAuthor

Legend

Peter - Yes, that makes sense. Since XP converts all fonts for use, there would be inconsistencies between all-Adobe rendering and a mixed rendering.

I don't typically work with a group where such differences would matter (Only finished PDFs and fully packaged InDesign files leave my hands these days), but it's a point well worth noting.

P

peter minneapolis

Participating Frequently

>Is there any value left in using the separate manager?

I've had the experience that some identical fonts on different machines (copied from one machine to another, not just same name) render slightly differently with and without ATM, on XP. In my case, the slight differences were enough to change line endings and create major content reflow. Both FM instances were same point release and had the same PrinterFontMetrics setting in their Maker.ini files.

So, if all workers in the work flow have the same setup regarding the presence of ATM, there should be no surprises.

HTH

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

James Gifford—NitroPressAuthor

Legend

Art - I quit using ATM quite a while ago, when I realized that XP has almost the same functionality (or entirely the same) built in. Is there any value left in using the separate manager?

A

Art Campbell

Inspiring

Bernd

You're right, the fonts are under Adobe application directory trees, but some (not all) are listed in the Distiller font folders list... which I'd interpret to mean that they're somehow in the mix.

Art

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_Bernd_Meissner_

Participating Frequently

NitroPress,

I'm not completely sure where the problem first appears, and if FM is the main culprit. According to my tests the following happens:

- the FNTCACHE is read (once) during system startup, probably by the windows PS driver.
- deleting the FNTCACHE creates a new one at next startup... BUT:

File properties show, that the "last access" time is *before* the writing of the cache file is done, so I suspect the order of events is:

- create empty FNTCACHE
- PS driver reads empty file
- write font information into file
- finish startup

This is why I always told you to reboot TWICE, in order to make sure the FNTCACHE is definitely read and used (not the initially empty file). A single reboot after deleting the cache file *always* works for the time the PC is running, so this is not a permanent fix...

Sheila,

thanks for offering the files. They need to be read by someone who speaks PS fluently... not me ;-)

Bernd

A

Anonymous

Bernd, I encountered missing fonts in a PDF last night, so I saved the then-current FNTCACHE.dat, deleted it, rebooted, and now have a new FNTCACHE.dat that's the very same size (1.1m). Rebooting and rebuilding the FNTCACHE has fixed the problem for the time being.

Comparing the two files with a binary file comparison shows that they're different, although not being conversant in binary-speak that's as far as I can go with it.

The two zipped are just 356k; if they might be of interest I'd be happy to beam them to you; my e-mail is on the http://www.axialinfo.com website.
(btw, WinXP, 4gigs of RAM)

Sheila

James Gifford—NitroPressAuthor

Legend

Art -

The issue does not appear to be the CJK fonts per se, only their whopping aggregate size. Each CJK font file is 10-20 times the size of a Western font file. It appears to be the bloating of the FNTCACHE.DAT file that is the root cause of the problems.

My WAG is that some part of FrameMaker is sufficiently outdated to choke on a font data file vastly larger than it was designed to handle. Removing CJK fonts from the system, if possible, is a simple fix.

It is sad confirmation that Frame is built on too much "old code" that is likely to continue causing problems until Adobe sees fit to do a thorough review and update.

_

_Bernd_Meissner_

Participating Frequently

Art,

using ATM creates a different situation (from mine). I don't use any font management on XP. About the "hidden" otf fonts: Most likely they have been installed by other Adobe applications within a user/application support folder. These fonts are only used by Adobe apps (but not FM).

Bernd

A

Art Campbell

Inspiring

Bernd & Nitro,

Removing the CKJ fonts on one system seemed to help; they either are or weren't present on the second system that encountered the problem though.

The problem certainly seems to be in the method/size of caching though, I think that's been established (Thanks Bernd!).

On the third hand, a search for *.otf turns up lots of files that don't seem to be either in the font folder or ATM light. So I'd hesitate to use my data about the CKJ fonts as a determining factor -- I think there's some font mapping going on that seems to be hidden from users...

Art

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