Dingbat glyph changes when pdf opened in Illustrator

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
June 10, 2024
4 replies
4864 views

File created in InDesign, exported as pdf. When I open the pdf in Illustrator, the dingbat bullet changes from the original glyph to something different. This is a new problem since the recent update. (SO many problems with this update).

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Correct answer Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Here's a weird thing. Try type a single character of the box glyph somewhere on the page and send it to the back. Then try it again.

I do remember dealing with this issue back in the olddd (CS3??) days, where glyphs used specifically as bullet list characters (but not elsewhere) sometime encoded differently than the font's native encoding (Always hex:1D (decimal 29) off and this seems to be happening here. your box should be hex0063 but is encoding as hex0046, which is exactly 1D.) so maybe an old issue has resurfaced?

That being said, it's not uncommon for subset fonts (e.g. XXXXXX+Webdings), especialy CID encoded ones, to totally rewrite their own encoding for the purposes of printing the PDF. But when you want to do something else with it, like open them in Illustrator, it's not a recommended practice at the best of times, and weird font encodings is up there on the list.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Correct answer

Community Expert

Here's a weird thing. Try type a single character of the box glyph somewhere on the page and send it to the back. Then try it again.

I do remember dealing with this issue back in the olddd (CS3??) days, where glyphs used specifically as bullet list characters (but not elsewhere) sometime encoded differently than the font's native encoding (Always hex:1D (decimal 29) off and this seems to be happening here. your box should be hex0063 but is encoding as hex0046, which is exactly 1D.) so maybe an old issue has resurfaced?

That being said, it's not uncommon for subset fonts (e.g. XXXXXX+Webdings), especialy CID encoded ones, to totally rewrite their own encoding for the purposes of printing the PDF. But when you want to do something else with it, like open them in Illustrator, it's not a recommended practice at the best of times, and weird font encodings is up there on the list.

R

rosenhAuthor

Known Participant

It's gotten worse... something is terribly wrong. I tried adding a new text box in InDesign and typing into it, and it wouldn't let me type the letter S. (Obviously, I can type it fine anywhere else) and it randomly changed the font to the Webdings font. so... I'm thinking the problem is with InDesign. Now to figure out how to reinstall the previous version?

Monika Gause

Community Expert

How did you export that PDF, which options? I can't reproduce it.

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rosenhAuthor

Known Participant

Default press-quality pdf export. I think this has to do with the recent update, because I've been using these same files for months without an issue.

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Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

When opening the PDF in Illustrator is there any warnings about missing fonts? Does the PDF file preview correctly in Adobe Acrobat DC or Adobe Reader?

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rosenhAuthor

Known Participant

No warnings about fonts, they show up correctly, and it view correctly in Acrobat and online. It's SO weird!

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Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

Has the document been edited across Mac and PC platforms?

Windows has a Webdings system font as well. The glyphs look mostly the same and in the same glyph table assignments. But when I select the factory building glyph (in Windows' Character Map app) the character code listed for it is "0x24." Unicode listsings are grayed-out; I don't see anything that corresponds with the "U+f0fb" register from the MacOS screen shot image in the original post.

If the document had jumped between Mac and Windows platforms it's possible some sort of conflict could be going on between the Mac and Windows flavors of the Webdings font and baked some bad data into the PDF. Generally I don't like taking a PDF generated by InDesign and trying to open it in Illustrator. The files are not very edit-friendly. But you can't open an INDD file in Illustrator either.