GRADIENT TEXT TO OUTLINES

[oleh_melnyk]

I have a problem: when I export PDF with gradient text – in Adobe Acrobat everything looks ok, but in online viewers, like Dropbox or sites like issue or joomag or any other PDF viewers that works in the browser – this gradient text became either black or gray. So I need to manually find this text and make outlines – then everything works as expected.

so I’d like to have a script with just 3 buttons: [<< find previous] [convert to outlines] [find next >>]
or is there a better workaround for this problem?

cross reference: http://indesignsecrets.com/topic/gradient-text-to-outlines

[Pickory]

I don't believe that is correct. Dropbox just deliver the file, it doesn't care what the file is. Your browser, or reading application does the interpretation of the file.

Welcome to the world of browser / reader incompatibilities.

P.

[oleh_melnyk]

too bad, because I already wrote at least two times that for example when I open PDF in built-in Google Chrome PDF viewer - it renders gradient text correctly, and when I open same PDF in dropbox or issuu - text becomes black, which means that dropbox and issue use their own PDF parser, which is different from what is built-in browser...

Same thing with Firefox: it shows gradient text in issuu, but dropbox in Firefox shows it black, and when I open PDF using built-in browser PDF viewer - I got yellow text instead of gradient or black - so in Firefox I got 3 different results, which means that each use it's own PDF parser

[Pickory]

Just did a google.

Dropbox and Adobe partnership makes working with PDFs simple | Dropbox Blog

So, is dropbox using some server side stuff to render your pdf?

Didn't know that.

Why would you want to do that. I would like to choose my reader.

I hope you find a good solution to this.

All the best.

P.

[oleh_melnyk]

As far as I know - browser understand only HTML, CSS, js, XML and plain text... in order to be able to show PDF in browser - it needs to be parsed somehow, for example using this js script - GitHub - mozilla/pdf.js: PDF Reader in JavaScript

Also, dropbox and gmail can view PSD and AI files... Same as some other file formats, like Office files, fonts, etc. which is not rendered by the browser.

You asked, why would I want to do WHAT? I'm making magazines and send PDF for review to my clients via dropbox. They open dropbox link and see PDF file in the browser, without needing to download it to the desktop and opening in Adobe Reader / Adobe Acrobat. But, the problem is when I use gradient text in my design - dropbox pdf viewer shows this text as black, and I have to explain to my clients that this is not how it should look, that this is dropbox bug, and that they need to download file and open it in Adobe Reader or something like that... And once the design is ready is ready - my clients upload PDF files to issuu or joomag, and again, the gradient text becomes black... That's why I have outlined that text to preserve gradient colors. But I made it manually, till today...

[Laubender]

Hi Oleh,

also check this one here:

XODO PDF Reader & Annotator

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender]

And the technology behind this seems to be PDFNetJS .

You can find an introduction in the YouTube channel of the PDF Association.

PDF Association - YouTube

Scroll a bit down or use this direct link:

Introducing PDFNetJS: the first complete PDF toolkit for the browser - James Borthwick - YouTube

Regards,
Uwe

[oleh_melnyk]

just a quick update: recently I received response from the issuu team:

"...

We have two types of readers, flash reader and html5 reader. If you open the following publication: https://issuu.com/olehmelnyk/docs/gradient_text in browser where flash player is disabled, then you'll get the right result. I have fixed the problem for flash player by rending the publication as bitmap. So now it should look fine in out flash reader as well.

We are working on our new reader product which will replace the current ones. It'll be free of flash player and we'll fix the issue where the publication opens in another window/tab in a non-flash player. Read more about it here:

http://blog.issuu.com/post/145571374118/reader-3

..." - so basically life is getting better now (knowing that dropbox also working on fix, and joomag already have fixed that)