pdf does not print special signs correctly. What you see is NOT what you get.

[PeterEduard]

When viewing my .pdf (made in illustrator, all latest versions) - the sign å and Å shows perfectly. 
When printing, the o above the A is truncated - only 1/5 comes out. It looks more like a small dash than an o.

How do I correct this?

The error shows in the print preview window - and alas, the preview window matches the print perfectly.

Best wishes,

Peter

[ls_rbls]

What program(s) are you opening and printing the PDFs with that are created in  Illustrator?

[PeterEduard]

adobe acrobat.

[ls_rbls]

Have you try embedding all fonts using the Advanced Print setup or changing the Unicode type?

There are more tests that you can try to troubleshoot that PDF like the Accessibility Tool to run a full report or the Print Production tool.

[PeterEduard]

I think the above solutions would have shown in adobe acrobat. 

Adobe acrobat shows the poster perfectly. 

It just fails at printing it. 

[ls_rbls]

Well, viewing or displaying a file on screen, and the actual process that took place for that file to be converted to a PDF (such as a scanned image, for example) or the interactions that occur between sofware, hardware and device drivers are entirely different from each other in many levels.

If this is only happening at the software level, I would need more details, like for example, which font type did you used with Illustrator when that file was exported to a PDF?

The Å character contains that overring ligature o, which is not available with all font types that are currently shipped with any version of Adobe Acrobat (or with every existing operating system font libraries).

But anyway, as I suggested earlier, using the Accessibility Tool and running an Accessibility check  will produce a very detailed report which may indicate what could be the potential issue(s):

Tools => Accessibility => Accessibility Check or => Accessibility Report (see what comes up in "Character Encoding": fail or pass)

On the other hand, if you're referring to the end result that  is produced by a printing action on a sheet of paper:

• Assuming that this is not related to an outdated printing device driver,

• nor lack of character encoding support for a particular font type, by which, such character sets that contain specific ligatures, are not mapped correctly between the Adobe Acrobat software and the operating system

I would say that it could be a printer device setting or a printing software preference that can be tweaked.

Since I don't know your printer brand or printer model, or the operating system that you're on, I went ahead and recreated the scenario by printing to a PDF  file.

I typed the letter Å on my document using ALT+143 keyboard shortcut,  and executed Print => "Adobe PDF".

I did this to, first and foremost , to rule out  if the issue could've been with my operating system regional settings, localization, etc.

And secondly, to rule out if the issue was related with the Acrobat Distiller.

But because I am not scanning a file I cannot test anything that could be related with the Scan and OCR settings on Acrobat.

However, the file printed just fine and I was using the default standard preferences settings.

It reproduced a PDF document from the print action with a perfectly visible overring semi-ligature using the Consolas font type.

Maybe you should also check what type of font was embedded in the PDF:

=> Go to File => Properties

In the "Document Properties" dialogue window go to the  => "Fonts"  tab

This will display what actual font, font type, and encoding  was subsetted with that PDF when you opened it with Acrobat for viewing.

[PeterEduard]

The file was created in Adobe Illustrator. 

The font used was Syncopate, installed on the machine and accessible by BOTH illustrator and acrobat. Syncopate works fine with æøå.

Again: The .pdf looked fine in acrobat - but was defective when using the print preview function. Same if trying to print from Illustrator.

I tried to print on an Epson WF-C8690 and a canon lbx315 b/w laser - their output matched the preview perfectly (i.e., flawed)... Not that the printer type matters, since the preview already confirmed that it was acrobat and illustrator that failed in correctly implementing the letter "å". 

It's just Adobe that fails to have a correct Wysiwyg implementation still. 

And yes, I could get this to work by outlining the font; this was what I ended up doing. That's not the point - when paying as much as we do for a software suite in 2022 - it should bloody well be able to handle our native characters!