How to remove hidden lines that display in Acrobat but not in Chrome, etc.?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
July 21, 2021
2 replies
8485 views

I've been creating some PDFs by printing from the old (1996-era) Envoy viewer to PDF. In many of the graphic images on the resulting pages, there are hidden lines (I'm not sure of the exact terminology) that do not display in the original Envoy viewer, and do NOT display when I open the PDF in Chrome or Firefox or macOS Preview, but which are visible when I open the PDF in Acrobat. Here is a sample (attached). The lines seem to be there because they were parts of triangles that were supposed to have two sides hidden and only one side visible.

Is there any way to process the PDF to remove those extra lines? I've tried various export options, without success. I realize that there may simply be no solution to this, but I hope that one of the experts here might possibly have an answer.

HiddenLines.pdf

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Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

I'm wondering if it's the driver you are using to print to PDF. How are you doing this?

E

Edward MendelsonAuthor

Participating Frequently

I've tried Adobe, a half-dozen GhostScript-based drivers, some CUPS-based drivers, CutePDF, NitroPDF, and a few others; a friend tried some OS/2 drivers. The results are always the same.

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

I can see the thin lines in Acrobat & Illustrator, unfortunately, they are composed of very thin filled shapes (not lines or strokes) therefore they are not easy to remove. Selecting by same fill in Illustrator results in selecting other wanted elements. Also, the fonts are not embedded and there are odd color changes when the file is opened in Illustrator. Is there an option to export to PDF from Envoy Viewer? What is the original file type?

Have you tried opening the original file in Acrobat?

E

Edward MendelsonAuthor

Participating Frequently

Many thanks for those further details. The original file type was .EVY - an Envoy file. Tumbleweed's (later Novell's) Envoy was a rival product to Acrobat and did not have PDF export - it was designed an alternative to PDF, to be viewed only in the Envoy viewer or in a runtime executable that had the Viewer built in. The Envoy file was created in 1994, so probably in Windows 3.11 or in something like Ventura Publisher (though I don't know whether Ventura could be output to Envoy). Tumbleweed never made a full EVY-file editor available to the public, so there's no way to edit the original file.

What you say means that there's almost certainly no way to fix this, but I'm grateful to you for trying. One thing I do wonder about is why the shapes don't appear in non-Acrobat viewers: do the other viewers simply ignore lines that are as thin as these?

Again, thank you for confirming and clarifying!

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

This is extremely helpful - thank you again. I'll post that request on the wishform.

Meanwhile, one quick question: for future use, where is the tool that removes actual thin lines? I've searched for it, but haven't found it, and obviously I'm not looking in the right place.

Another question: I have a few PDFs created from this Envoy file; one was created in Windows 3.1 and has Type 1 fonts, but I can't find an option to embed those fonts. Is Type 1-embedding not possible under recent Acrobat versions? (I've read that Adobe is taking steps to get away from Type 1, but I don't know the details.)

Again, a thousand thanks!

Tools> Print Production> Fix Hairlines.

This tool is designed to increase the size of thin lines, but also works to change the line width (stroke) to zero.

After testing this, it does work, but a line with 0 pt stroke still appears in Acrobat. In Illustrator you could either select & delete it or change the color to (none), however Illustrator is not a universal PDF editor.

Is the embed fonts preflight profile not embedding Type 1 fonts? I don't know if this a new issue.

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