PDF export messes up Greek characters

[ep_nna]

Hello all

We've been having this problem for a while now and sadly, this entry did not really help.

We're using FrameMaker 17.0.4 on Windows 11 Enterprise. The regular text is in Univers Pro Next but there are a few Greek symbols. These used to be in the Symbol font but we've replaced them with Noto Serif. These don't display properly in the PDF which we export through the regular publish function, not via Distiller.

The fonts are locally installed and the display in FrameMaker is correct. However, the PDF displays Noto Serif Light with a slight contour (0.0857mm says PitStop). If I "bolden" it with the Acrobat edit functionality and then "unbolden" it, the font looks correct. Even stranger: Noto Serif Bold is exported as Noto Serif Extra Condensed Bold in the PDF. They are not displayed at all if Extra Bold Condensed is not installed on the system. I could not find anything regarding this font in the maker.ini but I might've missed something.

I'm pretty sure this is not an issue of the fonts, since it also doesn't work if I use Open Sans instead of Noto.

What can I do to fix this?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

First thing I would do is stop adding images as attachments to your post - makes it much harder for people to see what you're talking about (use the Insert Photos icon to stick them in your post).
You reference another thread as not being that helpful, but did you see this one? https://community.adobe.com/t5/framemaker-discussions/embedding-fonts-used-in-fm-source-files-to-pro...  

[ep_nna]

Hi Jeff, thank you for your reply. Apologies for the image handling, I have added the images as a reply, I hope that's okay.

I had not yet seen the other thread but it sadly doesn't solve my problem. I installed Noto (downloaded from Google, not Adobe) for all users and rebooted my system and the issue persists. In our export settings, "Embed all Fonts" is checked.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I'm still not 100% sure what the issue is with the Greek letters in the PDF - they look ok to me at first glance. Have you experimented with creating the PDF by using the Print to AdobePDF printer instance? Or what about selecting the "Use Distiller" option in the Publish route's settings?

[ep_nna]

Light

Bold

[Bob_Niland]

ep_nna: … a few Greek symbols. These used to be in the Symbol font but we've replaced them with Noto Serif.

You probably have this aspect of the update in hand, but did the code points for the text characters get revised to Unicode?
The legacy FM Symbol scheme was an overlay/codepage font substitution.
α alpha was codepoint \x61 (ASCII letter a, now U+0061) with Character Format Symbol applied.
β beta was codepoint \x62 (ASCII letter b, now U+0062) with Character Format Symbol applied.

When using a modern Unicode font, that populates the Greek and Coptic block, these need to be changed to:
α U+03B1 GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA
β U+03B2 GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA
and the Symbol character format needs to be removed.

[ep_nna]

Thank you Bob, however I don't think that's the issue. The character in the PDF is correct but the formatting is wrong.

[Bob_Niland]

ep_nna: The character in the PDF is correct but the formatting is wrong.

The next thing to look at might be whether Noto was installed as the Variable instance or the Static instances.

FM doesn't really support Variable yet, as far as I know.

[ep_nna]

I read about that as well so we made sure to implement the static instances, not the variable ones.