Arabic weight statements jump to the wrong side in the table when exporting pdf

Report · Feb 11, 2019

For our Arabic packs a FDA table is required. We create these tables in InDesign, using xml.

The build up of these tables is as following (reading direction = right to left) : Nutrients + weight statement (e.g. "Fat 31g" or "Sodium 60mg"), then a tab (right to left) and then percentages (aligned to the left side).

In InDesign it looks fine but when exporting to PDF for print, all of the weight statements are moved to the left side, next to the percentages. Only when exporting using PDF/X-1a:2001 the weight statements are placed correctly. But we can't use this setting because it saves to Acrobat 4, thus losing all of the layer information which we need for further processing.

I've attached a screen shot. On the left side = pdf, the wrong placed weight statements are marked red.

A link to this file : https://www.dropbox.com/s/ibave960pg77j4y/SFDA.indd?dl=0

Tested this on both Mac OS 10.9.5 + InDesign CC 2015 and Mac OS 10.12.6 + InDesign CC 2018, same result.

Any ideas?

Report · Feb 11, 2019

If the tabs create issues, would you consider splitting the cell in two, so each value is contained in a cell?

Report · Feb 11, 2019

Hi Eric,

thanks for the advice.

Thought about that, too. If there is no other solution I guess we'll have to do so. But as said we use xml for this and it would require a huge change in the build up of this table, meaning lots of work and lost time.

Further on it's clear to me that this isn't about the build up of the InDesign file, it's the pdf creator that's going wrong since the PDF/X-1a:2001 setting is capable of outputting the text correctly. So building in two cells would be a workaround, not a solution.

Report · Feb 11, 2019

I agree, the tabs should be stable.

Are the settings of the tabs stored in styles or manually applied. I don't think it should make any difference, just in case...

Have you tested it after outlining the text on a copy of the file, just before export?

Report · Feb 11, 2019

Hi Eric,

the tab settings are stored in the Paragraph style attached to the Cell styles.

Good thinking about the outlining. Though it's not useful for us since we have to keep our texts "alive" for text comparison purposes, it might be a good way to check if there's something wrong with the .indd file. So I checked. However the outlining goes fine, no problems there.

Think I found a workaround : placing a space behind (in this case : on the right side of) the tab seems to solve the problem. It's not the best solution but hopefully it's reliable for now.

Thanks for the thinking!

Report · Feb 11, 2019

koenraad.bats@ds-n.com wrote
…
In InDesign it looks fine but when exporting to PDF for print, all of the weight statements are moved to the left side, next to the percentages. Only when exporting using PDF/X-1a:2001 the weight statements are placed correctly. But we can't use this setting because it saves to Acrobat 4, thus losing all of the layer information which we need for further processing. …

Hi,

what are your exact values when exporting to PDF then?
Are you working with a PDF/X-4 preset and did you change that for exporting the layers?

Regards,
Uwe

Report · Feb 11, 2019

Hi Uwe,

I attached my pdf settings as screen shots. So far we didn't use the PDF/X-4 setting because there was no need for it since these PDFs are for further processing in our own workflow. I could test the PDF/X 4 but I'm not sure if we have any benefits from it.

Actually we only need PDFs containing layers, high res images, 100% subsetted fonts and bleed + slug from the document.

.