Skip to main content
C
ClairePhilpott
Participant
November 10, 2010
Question

Cannot Read Font Metrics Issue on Save As PDF

  • November 10, 2010
  • 3 replies
  • 3770 views

Hi All

On saving a document as PDF, the FrameMaker Console displays the message:

The font file may be damaged.
maker: Cannot read font metrics from font file named Tahoma-Bold.

The PDF is created but it contains squares in place of letters.

This only happens for one document within my book.

I have removed and reinstalled Tahoma, with no effect.

What has happened and what do I need to do to enable save to PDF for this document.

I am using FrameMaker 9.0 installed as part of Technical Suite 2 and running on Windows 7 professional.

Thank you for your help.

Claire

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    A
    Art_Campbell1
    Inspiring
    November 3, 2011

    What happens when you generate a PDF by printing to the Adobe Acrobat printer (which should be set as your system default printer) instead of using the (perpetually broken) SaveAs PDF?

    A
    Anonymous
    November 3, 2011

    In answer to Art's question -- I tried the other way first, Print Book --> Adobe PDF printer, with slightly different but equally unsatisfactory results. I only tried Save As PDF because the other didn't work. After the fix of clearing the check box, they both work. But I just reversed it to test again, so I could tell you more clearly what happens, and now Print Book --> Adobe PDF printer works and Save As PDF is back to not working.

    There was another issue, possibly related or possibly not -- a second version of the Adobe PDF printer appeared in my Printers list. The IT folks deleted the dup. That's the only other change that might affect the above.

    M
    michael_hunsberger
    Participating Frequently
    February 28, 2011

    I am having a similar problem.

    I get the following messages in the FrameMaker Console:
    The font file may be damaged.
    maker: Cannot read font metrics from font file named Tahoma-Bold.

    The font file may be damaged.
    maker: Cannot read font metrics from font file named Tahoma.

    PDF also contains squares where Tahoma font is used. No other fonts are affected.

    Tahoma font displays correctly on the screen, and when generated to PDF from MS Word.

    I am using Windows 7 64-bit. and just updated to SP1. No problems before this.

    I found that if I select the "Convert CMYK Colors to RGB" option, the PDF prints correctly and the Tahoma font displays properly. I have NO idea why, but would be interested if anyone else finds similar results.

    Michael_Müller-Hillebrand
    Michael_Müller-Hillebrand
    Legend
    March 2, 2011

    Claire, Michael,

    Have you patched your FrameMaker installation to the latest version 9.0p255?

    Making sure that Convert CMYK to RGB is checked when creating PDFs via Save As PDF unfortunately resolves several problems with color and fonts. The PDF generation process has not changed for FrameMaker 10 and this »method« therefore applies to the latest version as well. Sad.

    - Michael

    A
    Anonymous
    November 3, 2011

    I'm on FrameMaker 10, installed about a month ago, and suddenly, yesterday, I started getting this exact error on PDFing a book I'd previously had no trouble with. Nothing apparently changed in my setup between everything working fine and getting these "the font file may be damaged" console errors. Interestingly, it's on exactly the same font as reported by Claire and MichaelH; Tahoma and Tahoma-Bold are listed as the troublesome fonts. These are not the commonplace Frame console "missing font" errors -- they totally mess up the PDF.

    Both these fonts work perfectly in Word. We tried reinstalling, with no change, and I was about to call Adobe support, as recommended by our IT desk, but checked this forum first.  A million thanks, Michael Müller-Hillebrand, for posting the exact solution to the problem. I cleared the Convert CMYK to RGB box and everything is fine now. Thank you SO much.

    Adobe, could you please fix this? First message on this thread was almost a year ago and my copy of Frame was purchased last month. The issue should have been fixed by now. This has cost me about three hours, plus the time of the IT desk reinstalling FrameMaker.

    Van Kurtz
    Van Kurtz
    Inspiring
    November 10, 2010

    Claire,

    I would first make sure that the bad document is indeed using the installed version of Tahoma-Bold, and not some other version that is not installed but may have been in the past or on another computer. If your content is tagged properly, you can import the formats from a good document; then see what happens.

    Maybe the content in the bad document was imported or copied from another application file. If so, this could be the source of the wrong font.

    Maybe the content in the bad document was created in an earlier version of FrameMaker that was not unicode compatible. You may have to fix each square character manually.

    Van

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices