PDF question

michaelejahn

Well-known member
I have not encountered a PDF before that does this.

Was giving our system problems generating a thumbnail - so i opened it in Adobe Acrobat and this happened

2023-01-25 FirstGX

I have no idea why. I was shocked to see there were no fonts in the PDF, yet, when I clicked Edit tool, it loaded the fonts and then I was able to save the PDF with the fonts embedded.
@Dov Isaacs ? Any idea on what font may have been used in Adobe Illustrator PDF?
 
Last edited:
I think I heard / read my name used in vain here … ;)

There are several issues here.

The first issue is that your document initially shows no fonts when you invoke Document Properties => Fonts. The reason for this is very simple. Whoever/whatever generated the PDF converted all the original document's text to filled polygons (i.e., vectors), a discredited technique known in the industry as “outlining text.” Contrary to what some self-proclaimed experts claim, such “outlining” of text:
  1. Doesn't make display or print of a document more “reliable”

  2. Does bloat the size of the PDF file due to each “glyph” becoming an individual vector object

  3. Impacts display or print rendering time (more to interpret and no caching of already rendered text glyphs)

  4. Could significantly impact display or print quality of the “text” usually yielding either ragged edges, artificially embolded text, and/or filled in characters due to the lack of the “hinting” that is available when rendering from fonts as opposed to polygon fills. This of course depends upon the particular font's design, the rending point size, and the device (screen or print) resolution.

  5. Makes subsequent text touch-up in Acrobat (a generally bad practice anyway) somewhat problematic at best. (Acrobat's text edit capability should be viewed primarily as a method of last resort for dealing with minor corrections such as price or date changes, noting of course that the original font must be installed on your system in order for Acrobat to properly perform such text touch-up.)

  6. Text is not searchable (unless you do OCR; see below).
The second issue is that you have Acrobat configured to do automatic optical character recognition when you enter edit mode. This is set in Acrobat as shown below:

2023-01-25_16-45-14.png


Ignore the fact that your file is not a “Scanned Document” – this Recognize Text function occurs if you try to edit a file, regardless of whether the PDF file is from a scanner or any other source. Anything that looks like text will be replaced with some (probably very wrong) font. Disable the Recognize Text option (it is sticky) and the problem will go away.

The bottom line is that you should always demand files in which text is realized via use of fonts, which of course should be embedded for proper quality and performance as well as searchability and the ability (not recommended) to touch-up text in Acrobat (assuming you have the corresponding proper fonts installed on your system).

- Dov

PS: Your URL didn't embed in your message properly.
 
here is the file
The bottom line is that you should always demand files in which text is realized via use of fonts, which of course should be embedded for proper quality and performance as well as searchability and the ability (not recommended) to touch-up text in Acrobat (assuming you have the corresponding proper fonts installed on your system).

- Dov

PS: Your URL didn't embed in your message properly.
agreed. I fixed the original post so the URL now works - thanks for pointing that out as well. I had no idea that OCR would work on outlined characters.
 

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