Chinese text with inconsistent characters

[Maria Kazakova]

Hello,

We're trying to create a PDF output with articles translated to Chinese Simplified.
However, the Chinese text looks like it was made up of various characters (slightly different height, random boldface).
Example:
https://ibb.co/crzZN6S

Could you please give a piece of advice how to fine-tune Help&Manual settings and correct the text appearance?
Our colleagues suggested the font change (for example, Microsoft YaHei or Noto Sans SC), but can it be possible to embed them into Help&Manual?

[Tim Green]

Hi Maria,

Generally speaking, problems with text rendering in PDF have two causes: An incompatible reference printer driver for generating PDF, and problems with the fonts and font embedding.

Definitely check the printer driver first, and before that also check that you have set the language settings correctly (Configuration > Common > Language).

Checking and improving the PDF printer driver:

HM uses a printer driver to generate PDFs (remember that a PDF is really just raw printer data in a file, and a PDF viewer is basically a printer that prints to the screen instead of to paper). You can access the reference printer driver settings in View > Program Options > PDF. By default, HM 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.

If the driver of your own installed printer doesn't work well 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. You can also use the Microsoft XPS Document Writer driver, which is always installed in all current Windows versions. However, this driver has the restriction that it can't be set to the higher output resolutions supported by more recent printer drivers.

Windows 10 no longer provides direct access to the list of standard drivers. To access it you must do this:

Select Add Printer, then click on "The printer I want isn't listed"
Next: Select "Add a local printer or network printer with manual settings"
Next: Accept the suggested port (this is irrelevant)
Next: Click on "Windows Update" and wait a couple of minutes for the list to display.

The last step can really take a few minutes. Go and make a cup of coffee...

​After this you will be able to select a driver from the list.​

Important Notes:

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

The output resolution and default paper size are set in the settings for the printer driver in the Windows Control Panel. The default page size set for the printer driver 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.

Font choice and font embedding for Asian languages:

You can embed all the fonts you use, and ALL fonts you use should be embedded for Asian languages. Go to Configuration > Publishing > PDF > Font Embedding to access the settings. For Asian languages it's best to use either the CID or Type3 embedding option. Type3 will always work, but you won't get such high-resolution text as with CID, so try that first.

The fonts you use should include all the characters used in the project. If they don't, Windows will either emulate them, which may look wrong, or if it can't do this it can switch the entire text to glyphs (little graphics instead of characters). This results in huge PDF files with text that you cannot select or search.

Ideally, it's best to create separate text styles for your Latin and Asian characters and use dedicated Chinese (in this case) fonts for your Chinese text.