FM9 Save CMYK As PDF again: different results for instances of one character

Report · Sep 12, 2013

Hi,

A customer sent me an FM9 document that uses the Symbol font. When he saves the document as PDF, without converting CMYK to RGB, one instance of a character in this font appears in the PDF as a different character in the same font. Other instances of the same character in the same document are fine. Saving as PDF changing CMYK to RGB produces correct results.

Does this sound like the usual don't-use-CMYK-and-Save-as-PDF-with-FM9 type of problem? Or should we look for something else?

Minor variations of the document cause the problem to go away:

1. Deleting some earlier instances of characters in this font cause the problematic one to appear as expected.

2. Some characters in this font occur in tables. Converting those tables to paragraphs "fixes" the problem.

3. Saving as PDF under Win 7 from FM10 and FM 11 produces expected results.

We have only seen the problem on a Win 7 system. On Vista and XP, we get correct results. Editing the document on Vista and saving it as PDF on Win 7, however, fails. A MIF wash does not fix it. Deleting and reinserting the problematic character or the table row in which it occurs does not fix it. While the original document was structured, removing structure did not fix it. Nor did changing master pages.

We started with a longer document and repeatedly deleted content until we had a much shorter document that fails. Somewhere along the line, the erroneous character changed

We can change the documents for this project to convert CMYK. I just don't know if doing so simply masks one particular instance of a general problem, or if CMYK is the real problem.

Thoughts?

--Lynne

Report · Sep 13, 2013

Lynne,

The FM9 and first versions of FM10 (fixed with the 10.0.2 patch) had very buggy behaviours if the SaveAsPDF to CMYK option was used. Many fonts (notably OTF Pro and WGL-TT fonts) would drop characters or even entire blocks of text. The RGB option worked properly. The underlying cause was in part to due to using the old Unix Level1 PS header code for the postscript headers in the CMYK mode.

If the client still has to use FM9 and needs proper CMYK, then I would highly recommend that they use Jacob Schäffer's PubliPDF (now on a GPL license, i.e. a freebie). This maps the postscript RGB output colours to CMYK via user specified settings before invoking Distiller.

It can be downloaded from here: http://design.grafikhuset.dk/index.php/kontakt/downloads/grafikhuset-publi-pdf

For more details and documentation, see: http://www.grafikhuset.net/PubliPDF/

Report · Sep 13, 2013

Thanks, Arnis, I am aware of the FM9/FM10 problems. I'm just not sure whether the situation I've encountered is one of them:

1. My document has several 'f' characters in a particular font. Most of them are correct in PDF. One appears as a 'W' in PDF. This changed character is in a table in the document's main flow. You refer to dropping characters or blocks of text when CMYK is not converted. What about changing characters?

2. How consistent is the CMYK problem? If a particular character is dropped on one system, will it also be dropped on another? Does it depend on the operating system (Vista vs. Win7)?

--Lynne

Report · Sep 13, 2013

What font is being used for those characters? There were all sorts of phunnies going on with some fonts, including substitutions. Also, are there any differences in the colours applied to the fonts where the characters misbehave? There also still (in FM11) are some situations where subset fonts can get rendered with Identity-H encoding which can result in a wrong or double-byte character pair showing up in thee PDF.

From what I recall, it was fairly consistent. I don't think that it was a system dependent function. The issues were in the actual postscript and how it was subsequently distilled (there may have been an issue with older Distillers?).

Report · Sep 13, 2013

Arnis,

The problem character uses the Symbol font. The original document was created with FM9 under Windows 7. Using the same version of FM and of Acrobat Pro, when I save the document as PDF on my Vista system, the character doesn't change.

We are wondering if checking the convert CMYK box really solves the problem or just causes it not to occur for this particular document, which so far is the only one where we've seen a character change.

We are looking for assurance that we won't see this problem crop up again in the future.

--Lynne