slightly OT concerning pdf's

[Ric Moore]

On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 22:19 -0600, Tommy Trussell wrote: 
> On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2011-01-29 at 10:05 +0100, Nils Kassube wrote:
> >> Ric Moore wrote:
> >> > Our Non-Profit staff created a pdf file for me to put on our website.
> >> > I'm seeing spaces between some of the words. I opened the pdf in
> >> > Ocular and xpdf, and they both look the same. So, I installed Adobe
> >> > Acrobat Reader. The effect is less pronounced. Is there some
> >> > difference between the way a PDF document is created in Windows that
> >> > shows up using Linux? I'm thinking it might be a proportional font
> >> > causing it, I dunno. Ric
> >>
> >> I think the font used by the creating application is not installed on
> >> your machine and is therefore replaced with a similar looking font which
> >> is installed on your machine. You can avoid such a problem if you embed
> >> the used font during the creation of the file but usually that isn't
> >> done because it increases the file size.
> >
> > As a postscript, here's the ~real~ giggle. Using Adobe to view the pdf,
> > it pops up an announcement box that states I need to install Japanese
> > Fonts in order to view the document correctly.
> 
> This COULD be the problem -- you should check the source document (the
> one someone "printed" to PDF) and see what font they used. You can
> also check the PDF properties (using that feature in Evince or Acrobat
> or whatever viewer) and see what font it is reporting.
> 
> I suspect the font either IS a "Japanese" font (and the source
> document is using the Roman glyphs), or Adobe doesn't find it in its
> database and picked a Japanese one that was similar.
> 
> The safest thing to do is either pick a font just about everyone has
> or is well defined (Times, Helvetica, Courier, or even Arial) or pick
> a font that can be embedded so there is no question about it
> displaying properly.
> 
> You may even find that the document has different sections and even
> whitespace encoded in different fonts. If this is a document that has
> been passed around among lots of authors over the years, there could
> be who-knows-what in it.

Bingo! This is an original "creation", but using AcroRead and clicking
on "file" / "properties" / "fonts", I found a font "MS-Mincho" that it
doesn't recognize on the actual font type line noting it as "Unknown".
While this is sorta/mostly OT, I sure learned something about pdf files.
I've passed this on to staff so that they can dwell on it and encode
their fonts used directly into the pdf's in the future. Thanks again, to
all who responded. 

Note, all of the PDF files I create using OO-word, embed the fonts and
the file sizes are relatively small ...several hundred K. 

A lot of our clients are lucky to even have a computer and dial up, so I
keep the graphics down as much as possible. Olde Skool BBS style. You
won't find google analytics slowing you down either. Not on my watch.
Ric


-- 
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256