Newly created PDF files contain misformatted text

[Kerstin Thaler]

We've been using H&M 7.5.3 build 4740 since its release in September.

At that time the PDFs looked alright. The base font used is Lucida Sans Unincode. For certain purposes in italic style.

The same project at the same state with the same H&M build version now creates PDFs where all italic strings are moved to the left and overlap with the previous normal formatted text leaving a gap to the following normal formatted text.

The only thing that changed in the meantime ist Windows. It happens under Windows 7 and 10 with all the latest updates.

Is there anything known about this mystery?

P.S.: On a system with Windows 1903 the newly created PDFs are still OK.

[Tim Green]

Hi Kerstin,

I can't reproduce this with Lucida Sans Unicode on an up-to-date Windows 10 system. We need a little more information:

• What are your Font Embedding settings, including all the checkbox settings at the bottom of the settings page at Configuration > Publishing > PDF > Font Embedding?
• Which PDF viewer are you using? A number of older viewers are known to have problems with current PDFs and an update may solve the issue.

[Kerstin Thaler]

I found the solution in the German forum.

In Help+Manual under View / Program Options / PDF Export the option "Use default printer as reference device" solved the problem.

So I assume the Windows update changed something that made the first option to create the misformatting.

[Kerstin Thaler]

Which PDF viewer are you using? A number of older viewers are known to have problems with current PDFs and an update may solve the issue.

Thanks for your quick reply.
Both the good and the bad PDF are opened in the same viewer.

[Tim Green]

Hi Kerstin,

In Help+Manual under View / Program Options / PDF Export the option "Use default printer as reference device" solved the problem.

That's interesting. Normally when a bad reference printer driver or the screen driver causes problems in PDF it affects the kerning of all the text (the correct spacing between characters). It's unusual that it should affect just the italic text; that's why I didn't initially suggest changing the driver as a solution. FYI, here's some more background on this:

H+M uses a printer driver to generate PDFs. You can access the reference printer driver settings in View > Program Options > PDF. By default, H&M will use the screen device driver, but you can often get better results by using a real printer driver. By the same token, some printer drivers can also cause problems, particularly optimized drivers from printer manufacturers. It is generally better to use one of the standard drivers supplied with Windows.

We recommend trying the Microsoft XPS Document Writer driver first, which is always installed in all current Windows versions. You just need to select it as your reference driver. Otherwise you can activate and select one of the known good standard drivers included with Windows. You don't have to actually have the physical printer. Just add the driver with Add Printer in the printer section of the Windows Control Panel and then select it as your reference driver in Help & Manual. The standard Windows Brother HL-2040 and HL-2060 drivers deliver good results, and standard LaserJets and DeskJets are usually also OK.

Important Notes:

DON'T use use "PDF printer drivers" like Adobe Distiller for this! This will not work properly and is actually counter-productive.

The default page size set for the printer driver in the Windows control panel must be at least as large as the page size you have set in your print manual template. If it is smaller you will get clipping in your PDF pages.

[Kerstin Thaler]

That's interesting. Normally when a bad reference printer driver or the screen driver causes problems in PDF it affects the kerning of all the text (the correct spacing between characters). It's unusual that it should affect just the italic text; that's why I didn't initially suggest changing the driver as a solution.

I stumbled over this solution by accident

H+M uses a printer driver to generate PDFs. You can access the reference printer driver settings in View > Program Options > PDF. By default, H&M will use the screen device driver, ...

Yes, but until yesterday we never had this kind of problems and thus I had never even looked for this feature before.

Thank you very much for your additional information. So far we're happy that our documents look again as they should, respectively as they looked before, but I will try other drivers to see if they lead to even better results.