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_Ashton_Treadway_
New Participant
March 3, 2009
Question

FrameMaker has correct fonts, PDFs produced with Acrobat 9 don't.

  • March 3, 2009
  • 15 replies
  • 18927 views
We're producing PDFs out of FrameMaker 9 into Acrobat 9, using the Frutiger Next font family. With the exception of a single character format, fonts are coming out correctly embedded in the PDFs.

However, in this one case (Frutiger Next Pro Medium), Acrobat appears to be (for no reason we can tell) substituting Frutiger Next Pro Heavy for medium, which makes the resulting PDF look like crap.

When we print from Frame, it looks correct. This only happens when we save as PDF. The fonts are installed on the machine, Frame uses and shows them correctly.

This only happened after we upgraded to Frame 9 and Acrobat 9, and we're at our wit's end trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
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    15 replies

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    S
    Seanb_us
    Inspiring
    March 4, 2009
    I am having this same issue with ArialMTStd-Black.otf from Monotype Imaging.

    1) It displays fine in FM 8 and in a PDF created using Save as and Acrobat 9.

    2) It displays fine in Word 2002 and in a PDF creating using Acrobat 9.

    3) It displays fine in FrameMaker 9 but is substituted by TNR in the PDF created using Save as and Acrobat 9. Note, I tested on the same files and joboptions that work fine for FM 8.

    4) Reinstalling the font has no effect.
    5) Adobe PDF is my default printer. Am in Win XP all patched up.
    6) The font in question is defined as part of a paragraph style (ctrl+m) and is not an override.

    7) I am unsure how to read DocumentNeededResources. I see it here:

    %%DocumentNeededResources:
    %%+ font ArialMT
    %%+ font ArialMTStd-Black
    %%+ font ArialNarrow-Bold
    %%+ font TimesNewRomanPSMT
    %%+ font Arial-ItalicMT

    The missing font is ArialMTStd-Black. Does that mean FM is or Distiller are having issues?

    8) If I print as a PS file first and then distill it, the font comes through fine, no problems.

    Thoughts?

    Sean
    Be.eM
    Be.eM
    Inspiring
    April 24, 2009

    I am having this same issue with ArialMTStd-Black.otf from Monotype Imaging.

    1) It displays fine in FM 8 and in a PDF created using Save as and Acrobat 9.

    2) It displays fine in Word 2002 and in a PDF creating using Acrobat 9.

    3) It displays fine in FrameMaker 9 but is substituted by TNR in the PDF created

    using Save as and Acrobat 9. Note, I tested on the same files and joboptions that work fine for FM 8.

    I can confirm this bug, I have the same problem with the "Helvetica Neue LT Com 75 Cn" (the whole family). It's a brand new unicode font (ttf) from Linotype. I have tested this on two different computers (both with TCS2 and latest patches) on Win XP SP2 (!).

    Switching the "convert to RGB" option on cures the problem, but I'm using FM 9 in the first place for creating PDFs without RGB, so why should I do this?

    Further findings:

    • After PDF creation, the FrameMaker font menu shows additional entries for the Helvetica Neue (see attached screenshot, before and after  "Save as PDF"). These entries are unusable, and lead to a text display using Courier.

    • One of my two FM9 installations even switches the text display within FM to TNR, after PDF export and rebuilding the screen. Re-assigning the (unchanged) paragraph format cures display, but not PDF export.

    Regards,

    Bernd

    Be.eM
    Be.eM
    Inspiring
    April 29, 2009

    Bernd reports that changing the default printer does remove the ghost fonts, so that's a good troubleshooting tidbit to know.

    Switching printers is not a great productivity enhancement though, and I'd be concerned that if FM docs were open that other things might go bump in the night too, so this suggestion was only meant as a test, not as a "workable" workaround.

    Sheila,

    yes, switching from AdobePDF to anything else as a standard printer removes the ghost fonts temporarily from the list. But this alone is just a cosmetical issue. As you said: this was a test, and it's not a workaround in any way, because it cures nothing (but the font list itself). It's still impossible to create a working PDF, and the ghost fonts reappear after the next PDF export.

    Bernd


    Well, the more I'm doing tests, the worse it gets. Obviously more OpentType "Pro" fonts aren't working with the current build of FM9. Some do, some don't. I have attached two PDFs which clearly show the problem. One is a CMYK PDF with fonts getting lost, and one is an RGB PDF, with all fonts working, exported from the same FM document. This is definitely a bug in the "Create CMYK PDF" module, whereever this one sits.

    Bernd

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    _Ashton_Treadway_Author
    New Participant
    March 3, 2009
    Hi, Arnis:

    Thanks for your assistance: I printed to a .ps file, and those fonts are not in the DocumentNeededResources or DocumentProvidedResources.

    However, the resulting PDF out of the .ps file turned out looking the way it should have, so I think you're right in that this is YASAPB (Yet Another Save As PDF Bug).

    I'll drop it into one of the existing bugthreads.
    A
    Anonymous
    March 3, 2009
    How were the missing fonts being applied in the text -- are they applied as 1) an ad hoc character override, 2) with a named character tag, 3) at the paragraph tag level.

    How was the text originally created, was it entered into FM directly, was it cut-and-paste via the clipboard from somewhere else, was it imported from a different app (e.g. Word) and if so, how, exactly.
    A
    Art Campbell
    Inspiring
    March 3, 2009
    You may want to try installing that family again...

    Make sure that the Adobe PDF printer is set as the system default, and instead of using the SaveAs PDF... is there a difference when you Print to the PDF printer?

    Art
    Arnis Gubins
    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    March 3, 2009
    Is the location of the Frutiger Next Pro Medium specified in the
    Distiller font locations section (Settings >Font Locations)?

    Have you printed directly to the AdobePDF printer instance instead of
    using Save As PDF? If you redirect to the print to file option, check
    the .ps file to see if this font is actually being referenced there.
    Look at the following sections (of a small, few page test print) at
    the end of the .ps file:

    %%DocumentNeededResources:
    %%DocumentSuppliedResources:

    Look at the %%+ font entries. If you see the font there, then it's
    getting out of FM properly and something in your Distiller setup is
    fumbling the ball.

    Note: if it works fine going the manual print to postscript file and
    distill route, then that's probably one more thing that was fubar with
    the SaveAsPDF option in FM9. There are a few threads here listing
    other things that were broken.
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