PDF problems of the version 5.1.1

[Ben Tam]

Hi Tim,

The new version (5.1.1) is still not usable, although it fixes the Chinese shifts up problem and makes the spacing between Chinese characters tight (and too tight). (Please note that the character spacing in version 5.0.3 is too large.)

However it creates the following new critical problems.
1. Ugly right alignment, which may be caused by reduced character spacing.
2. Exaggerated spacing before non-Chinese (English, numbers, symbols, etc)


The following figures show the problems.


New version 5.11



Version 5.03




Please also note that other previously reported old problems (e.g., unable to set Chinese font,...) still exist.

Ben

[Tim Green]

Hi Ben,

As listed in the release notes for this update, the PDF issues have not yet been corrected. These are known issues and the development team is working very hard with the PDF engine producer to get them corrected. We hope to have a fully corrected update soon.

[Dorte]

Hi Tim,

I was wondering whether you have any news on progress with identifying and fixing the bugs related to generating pdfs in "exotic" languages like Arabic, Chinese and Japanese? Our translation agency practically refuses to generate pdfs from H&M because they had sooo many problems doing the docs for our last release - and we really do need to support "exotic" markets as well.

Best regards,
Dorte

[Tim Green]

Hi Dorte,

We're very aware of these problems and are working very hard to correct them. At the moment you can improve your output significantly by selecting the "Export Text as Glyphs" option in your PDF options (Configuration > Publishing Options > PDF > Font Embedding). This exports the characters as graphical glyphs which makes the PDF file larger and text is no longer selectable in the PDF, but this should hopefully not be a problem in this case.

[Winsteps]

Does anyone know if this character-spacing problem also occurs if the process is:
HM5.1.1 → publish to RTF file → Microsoft Word → print to PDF

[Tim Green]

Does anyone know if this character-spacing problem also occurs if the process is:
HM5.1.1 → publish to RTF file → Microsoft Word → print to PDF

No, you wouldn't get the problem there because you are using a different PDF processor. However, your formatting options in RTF are limited compared to PDF. What you can also do is export to PDF from Help & Manual using the Print Manual option, using either the full version of Adobe Acrobat or any of the numerous alternative available. This article lists the current options with links showing where you can get the programs:

30 Alternatives to Acrobat

The best free solutions are probably CutePDF and PDFCreator.