PDF export problem, fonts look lo-res, in HM 3.3

rpotts · Unread post by **rpotts** » Tue Apr 22, 2003 3:33 pm

After installing HM 3.3 I have noticed that the exported PDFs do not look as good as they use to. They do look fine onscreen. But when I print all the printed text is lo-res, jagged. I am not sure how to affect this. I have reverted back to the previous version of HM. The problem is not present in the previous release of HM to 3.3. Again, the PDFs look just fine on screen, even if I zoom in on text, always looks good. Just hardcopy is poor. Hardcopy from PDF generated from previous version of HM looks nice and crisp. I am assuming a bug here in the PDF engine, but suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ryan

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Tue Apr 22, 2003 8:22 pm

Ryan: I just experimented with this extensively both with the default reference driver and with two other output printer drivers and it's working fine for me. Hmm...

Try checking your PDF settings (particularly resolution and font embedding) in Project Properties. Also have a look at the reference printer driver set in Tools / Customize / PDF Export. See if you get better results with another driver (you can install any driver from the Windows CD, it doesn't have to be a printer physically connected to your computer).

It might also be worth checking the output resolution in the settings of your printer (the one you are using for the hard copy in this case). You never know, it might just have got changed to draft or something like that somehow...

Another possibility is that you might be using a small page format and "zooming" the output when printing. Check the page size setting in the Print Manual Designer.

That's all I can think of for the moment...

Wed Apr 23, 2003 6:54 am

The word and character spacing in version 3.30 is more accurate due to floating point calculation rather than integer calculation. Did you ever try to print a PDF file (created with the older version of H&M) on a different computer? I guess that the results were even worse, it just worked perfectly on that printer that you also used as the reference device to generate the PDF.

rpotts · Unread post by **rpotts** » Wed Apr 23, 2003 10:35 pm

I can take a PDF created with prior versions of HM and print them to anyone of 4 printers have available to me here in our office. Print quality always looks good. If I load a project into 3.3 I have tried changing the resolution to as high as 300 dpi (highest setting in HM, default was 72), this made no difference. I tried changing the printer driver the HM references.. no change. To get a PDF that prints well all I have to do is drop back to an older version of HM. When I installed 3.3 I did not change any properties in my HM project initially, only after noticing the poor print quality did I start playing with settings. I have not created the poor print quality with PDF created with earlier versions of HM. I can try printer drivers till I am blue in the face.... I have an HP laserjet, 2 HP different HP Deskjets and an HP Officejet to name physical printers at my disposal. Can you suggest a driver I might try? Is there any more information I might provide to help?

Thanks,

Ryan[/quote]

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 7:37 am

Ryan: This is very odd and it's difficult to know what to say because I'm unable to duplicate the problem here -- as I wrote, I've tried it with a whole series of printer drivers and I get no printout quality difference between the versions generated with 3.2 and 3.3.

Printer driver suggestion: If you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat available you might try the Acrobat Distiller or Acrobat PDF Writer drivers it includes.

This is probably something you've checked already so I apologize in advance, but just to make sure: Before you print from Acrobat have you checked all your printer settings? Including the "Properties" button for the physical printer itself? In the Acrobat output options both the "Shrink oversized pages to paper size" and "Expand small pages to paper size" options can produce the results you describe. In the printer Properties (these vary from printer to printer) settings to look for are things like resolution, vector/raster for graphics, halftoning, fit to page (similar to the Adobe settings), TrueType output mode (outline, bit image, graphics download etc).

Again, you've probably checked this already and since you're getting different results on the same system with 3.2 and 3.3 of H&M it may not help, but I'm just trying to cover all the bases.

Another thing to try is to create a new dummy project with just a few lines of text and see if this also produces the same results. If it doesn't then the effect may be being triggered by something in the project. If so, and even if not, I would suggest sending a sample project .hm3 file without graphics to EC-Software support so that they can see if they can duplicate the problem.

rpotts · Unread post by **rpotts** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 5:21 pm

I have better news to report today. I have PDFs created by 3.3 printing properly. I am not sure exactly how I fixed it but I will recount for you the steps I took.

1. Uninstalled 3.2.

2. Installed 3.3 into a new folder. I normally install new versions into the same folder as the previous version after having uninstalled the previous version.

3. I entered HM 3.3 and started a new project. I exported the project to PDF and proceeded to print a page. The page printed fine. I tried playing with the Transparency Quality/Speed setting under Advanced in the Print dialog. I thought this might be a source of my problems, so far this setting has had no affect.

4. I loaded one of my existing HM project created with 3.2. into 3.3 and proceed to compile a new PDF. The PDF only consisted of a small portion of my project because it takes a few minutes to compile the project. (I'll compile a full PDF in a little while, I'll report any problems if there are any.) SO far the PDFs I am creating with 3.3 are printing fine.

The only thing I can think of that I have done differently than usual is to install 3.3 into a new folder. I didn't allow it to install to the default HelpMan3 folder. Looking at the HelpMan3 folder left behind after uninstalling 3.2 there are several files. I do not know if these would cause problems with 3.3 or not. I do not know if installing 3.3 into a new folder mattered either.

I'll continue to monitor the cituation as I use HM and will let you know if I ever come across it again.

Thanks for you help and suggestions.

Ryan

Fri Apr 25, 2003 10:11 am

I tried playing with the Transparency Quality/Speed setting under Advanced in the Print dialog.

Ryan, there is no "Advanced" setting in the print dialog box of Help & Manual...

Do you perhaps print the user manual to a PDF printer driver? This may work but is not the way the PDF export is meant. To create a PDF file from your help project, you are supposed to export it in PDF format (menu: File|Make help file... -> PDF).

rpotts · Unread post by **rpotts** » Fri Apr 25, 2003 3:03 pm

Alexander Halser wrote:
I tried playing with the Transparency Quality/Speed setting under Advanced in the Print dialog.
Ryan, there is no "Advanced" setting in the print dialog box of Help & Manual...

Do you perhaps print the user manual to a PDF printer driver? This may work but is not the way the PDF export is meant. To create a PDF file from your help project, you are supposed to export it in PDF format (menu: File|Make help file... -> PDF).

No, I am not using a PDF printer driver. I actually use the Officejet printer driver. My discussion of the Transparency feature in the Advanced section has to do with printing from Acrobat and not changing a setting in a PDF printer driver prior to exporting to PDF.

Essentially uninstalling 3.3, then installing 3.2 back to the HelpMan3 folder, then uninstalling 3.2, and then reinstalling 3.3 to a new location seems to have made the problem go away. I don't know this for fact, but that is my perception.

Ryan
Ryan

anan · Unread post by **anan** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 4:55 am

in H&M 3.3 - PDF Export will generate blank charecter for Thai string

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 7:07 am

Anan: This is normal, unfortunately. H&M does not provide support for Asian character sets that require more than one byte per character (or for any languages requiring right-to-left writing).

anan · Unread post by **anan** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 9:59 am

H&M 3.2 can export Thai charecter to PDF but encode string not correct,
but H&M 3.3 can't (return blank char).

both H&M 3.2 and 3.3 work very well with HTML,HELP or Print manual

Thai Charecter use only one byte per char

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 2:30 pm

Ah, thanks for the information.

I thought Thai was a 2-byte set. Please contact EC-Software Support directly for help on this at:

support@ec-software.com

Tue Apr 29, 2003 9:48 am

To be honest: we never tested it with Thai and I am surprised that it works at all with HTML.
But I cannot speak for PDF as the PDF library is a 3rd-party product.
Does it perhaps help if you embed all fonts that you used in your project?
The font embedding option is in Project|Properties -> PDF -> Fonts

Tue Apr 29, 2003 12:31 pm

I contacted the supplier of the PDF engine in the mean time and got a quick reply: it should work...

So if font embedding doesn't solve the problem, could you please send in a demo project to duplicate the problem? Please send it to support@ec-software.com

anan · Unread post by **anan** » Sat May 03, 2003 12:35 pm

thank you,
I aleady send Info&sample Project to support team.