PDF Text Garbled

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 6, 2019
2 replies
2432 views

I have one user who regularly gets PDFs from an outside source. That user is the only one where the text is garbled. Running the most up-to-date version of both Adobe XI 11.0.23 and Reader DC 2019.021.20056. Both programs perform the same. I have checked the embedded fonts, ensured that the fonts are also installed locally, tried forcing the machine to use local fonts only and embedded fonts only with no change. I've tried the different rendering options with no change. I do not have access to where or how these PDFs are being generated. When viewing the metadata the source is blank.

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Dov Isaacs

Legend

Generally speaking, such gargling of text is due to some combination of either unembedded fonts, improperly embedded fonts, and/or improper or missing encoding tables for one or more fonts.

You can often figure out what the exact problem is by running the Acrobat Pro DC List Potential Font Problems Preflight profile.

If you can post a file that exhibits this issue, we can see if there is anything that isn't quite kosher with the file in question.

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

S

SAlexanderAuthor

Participant

I wish I had the ability. The document in question has too much confidential information. I thought maybe we could print a page to pdf from the user's computer, but the pages that aren't confidential display fine. The PDFs in question all come from one source and only sometimes exhibit the issue. I'll see if I can't get a copy of Pro approved so that we can test out the Preflight feature. I have attached screenshots of the document properties though.

Dov Isaacs

Legend

Based on previous experience with similar problems and symptoms, the instances of Arial and Times New Roman that use CID Identity-H encoding but are not embedded may be the source of the problems. In general, creating a PDF file without embedding fonts used in the PDF file, even if they are “common system fonts,” is looking for trouble. There are many, many versions of such fonts varying in their encoding, glyph complement, etc. Even versions of Arial and Times New Roman may signficantly vary from one Windows system to another.

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)