PDF font bug in Preview

I've put Leopard on all 9 of my macs, and I love it.
On one of them (unfortunately the macbook pro that I use all the time), I'm having a nasty bug with PDFKit.
When I open a PDF file that I made in pdflatex in Preview, sometimes it looks fine, but sometimes the fonts are all wrong and sans-serif-y. In many occasions, I an switch back and forth between the good fonts and the bad fonts JUST BY SWITCHING AWAY FROM PREVIEW AND SWITCHING BACK.
bad:
http://www.screenshots.cc/view_image/9eeb21311/ThisLooksAwful.png
good:
http://www.screenshots.cc/view_image/c83d91304/ThisLooksGreat.png
Has anyone seen anything like this? The bad fonts propagate themselves all the way to a printed page.

Indeed, wiping out the caches is not a permanent solution.
I found a couple of threads in some tex newsgroups that discuss this problem. There doesn't seem to be a resolution. There was some discussion that Latex Equation Editor is no longer being developed, but LaTeXIt, a similar program shows a similar font corruption problem. Fonts are fine in Preview until using LaTeXIt (or Latex Equation Editor), when they get 'corrupted'. By that I mean that documents viewed in Preview often come up sans-serif, regardless of the original font, and often special characters, such as arrows above letters (indicating vectors) disappear. Keynote files that use those characters (from, for example, using LaTeXIt under Tiger) show corruption. Rebooting (and possibly simply logging out and back in) 'cures' the problem, ie, Preview and Keynote are once again happy. During all this, Acrobat is always happy.
This is kind of painful, since I give physics lectures using Keynote, and things like integral and summation signs and vectors and such are kind of nice to have around.
Someone has got to know what is going on!

Similar Messages

  • Font bug in Preview PDFs due to ATSSERVER

    Hello all,
    For the past couple of months I have been having a very annoying problem where the text of pdf is garbled. I'll download a pdf file and when I open it some or most characters are replaced with empty spaces or symbols.
    After a lot of searching a few weeks ago I found a post describing this exact problem, but to make this solution easier to find (and since this bug has not been fixed) I will post it again.
    If you pdf files have missing or garbled text, open terminal and kill the ATSSERVER process with the following command line (substitute in your user name):
    killall -u [YourUserName] ATSServer
    After running this command, ATSServer will relaunch right away. If you close the afflicted pdf file and reopen it all the fonts will display properly. I don't know why it happens, and I wish I could find the previous thread on this to thank the person who originally suggested that terminal command.
    Apple, this is a frustrating bug that needs attention.
    Thank you!

    Is there still interest in other details? My problem is that I may get the right font or another substituted generically; the documents always open OK in Adobe Acrobat 9, but in Preview (directly) or by Finder/spacebar I can get different appearances *each time* I open, in quick succession: parts of the document may have the correct, serif, font and others a generic substitution. I'm using documents I've written and compiled using TeXShop 2.26 / MacTex 2008
    Within a minute's interval, opening the same document three times can give different results, mixing the right and the substituted font in the one document, or sometimes only the substituted font.
    I'm not very familiar with the processes that should be running, but I was a bit surprised to find two instances of ATSServer at one time; perhaps this is normal spawn...?
    168 ATSServer marj 0.0 2 10.94 MB 704.14 MB Intel
    615 ATSServer _atsserver 0.0 2 3.94 MB 622.83 MB Intel
    I have screendumps at: http://public.me.com/mjbnks
    thanks in advance for any suggestions!

  • PDF Font Rendering in Preview/Safari on Mountain Lion

    Since upgrading to 10.8.2 a few days ago, I have been unable to read any of the PDF  statements provided by my bank.  To be clear: there was never a problem reading these statements in 10.5, 10.6, or 10.7.  The files are not corrupted, nor are the fonts embedded within them.  The copies I have saved locally display font characters as boxes of varying colors and sizes rather than actual letters/numbers.  The same is true of new copies of the same files I've downloaded from by bank's servers.  Observe:
    So I extracted the fonts embedded within this PDF, and installed them in the Font folder of my user library.  After doing so, the PDF renders in Preview like this:
    ....which is less than useful.
    This PDF, and all the others affected by this issue do render properly in Adobe Reader 10.1.4 -- but that's not the point.  I'd much rather use Preview.  Has anyone else encountered this issue and solved it?
    Thanks.

    Indeed, wiping out the caches is not a permanent solution.
    I found a couple of threads in some tex newsgroups that discuss this problem. There doesn't seem to be a resolution. There was some discussion that Latex Equation Editor is no longer being developed, but LaTeXIt, a similar program shows a similar font corruption problem. Fonts are fine in Preview until using LaTeXIt (or Latex Equation Editor), when they get 'corrupted'. By that I mean that documents viewed in Preview often come up sans-serif, regardless of the original font, and often special characters, such as arrows above letters (indicating vectors) disappear. Keynote files that use those characters (from, for example, using LaTeXIt under Tiger) show corruption. Rebooting (and possibly simply logging out and back in) 'cures' the problem, ie, Preview and Keynote are once again happy. During all this, Acrobat is always happy.
    This is kind of painful, since I give physics lectures using Keynote, and things like integral and summation signs and vectors and such are kind of nice to have around.
    Someone has got to know what is going on!

  • Accordion fonts compresses in preview

    Fonts compresses during preview or preview in browser, when I use an accordion, while they are normal during editing. can someone help with this bug. I tried changing fonts no avail.

    I'm experiencing the same issues when opening PDF created by PDF-XChange.
    They open correctly on Adobe (for mac) but only show question marks on Preview (on all mac computers we have at the office).
    The font in question is Calibri and I confirmed the fonts are embedded.

  • PDF files created in Preview won't open in Adobe Reader

    I consider Preview to be a swiss army knife when it comes to working with PDF and graphic files. Lately (since the last OS update?) PDF files created in Preview won't open in Adobe Reader. Reader either crashes or just becomes unresponsive. I've been able to open the files in older versions of Adobe Professional but Reader 8 or 9 can't open the files. Anyone else experiencing these problems?

    Yes. We noticed this problem after upgrading to 10.6.7. When we made a PDF from Word 2011 or even Text Edit through Adobe's "Save as Adobe PDF" it would hang. When we made a PDF using Apple's "Save as PDF" it would lock up Acrobat Pro 9 and also Acrobat Pro X. NOTE that this only happened using Adobe OTF fonts.
    I posted this problem on Adobe's forum and received a message from admin there that this was caused by a change in font handling with Apple's 10.6.7 update.
    As of yet, no solution has been posted. I also received a message from Adobe's Tech Support that it was forwarded to their engineers.
    Still waiting.

  • PDF document opened with Preview does not show french accents

    Hi everybody,
    I've got some issues with PDF documents opened with Preview.
    They show a blank space for all the accented vowels.
    If I open the same document with Safari, it's the same. But with Chrome, it works perfectly.
    I assume there's a problem with fonts, but, nothing wrong with fontbook (checked duplicates for instance).
    Last information : it looks ok within chrome on my Imac, but the issue comes back when I try to print from chrome app...the accents are gone on the sheet.
    Any idea ? I don't want to install Adobe reader...
    Thanks for your help !
    http://www.art-shots.net/

    I don't want to install Adobe reader...
    Why not?  It can handle some pdf's that Preview can't.  At least it's worth a try.
    In case you change you mind get it from here.

  • Controlling Font Size in Preview

    Is there a way to increase font size in Preview before printing? The default is too small for me, and I don't see where to control font size.
    Thanks.

    Yes, you'd have to load them, (HTMLs), into another APP, say Text Edit even, select all, then set the Font and/or size before saving as a PDF.
    Once it's a PDF, it preserves the Font, size and everything else.
    Another Option would be to load the PDFs into a PDF editor, say Acrobat Pro, and change the size there.

  • How can I make PDF forms filled in Preview show correctly in Acrobat?

    Dears list members, there is a known issue with PDF forms filled in Preview: the fields do not show properly in Adobe Acrobat. How can this issue be solved? On the internet, I found two basic solutions: (a) to flatten the document by printing it as a PDF and (b) to use a costum-made script. Is there an official correction for this bug that does not involve installing suspicious scripts? Thanks!

    Information only - No one was successful in this discussion.
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/21453922#21453922

  • How to change the default font (Noteworthy) in Preview Annotation Note ?

    How to change the default font (Noteworthy) in Preview > Annotation > Note ?
    Thanks for any help guys. Noteworthy is horrible, in my view. But this does not matter. I simply do not want to use it, and woudl be fine with having helvetica back as the annotation typeface.
    Neither is Preview responding to changes I attempt in the type menu, nor did I find an entry when using “defaults read com.apple.Preview” in the Terminal.
    Any idea? Cheers.

    Sorry if this doesn't apply in Mountain Lion (no way to look at ML right now), but I see this in Preview under Mavericks:
    I click the annotation button (circled in red) and draw a box. I can then change the text to any active font using the drop down menu (circled in green).

  • Some PDFs not working in Preview. Mac created PDFS work but windows created PDFS dont

    Some PDFs not working in Preview. I installed adobe reader and then deleted it because the software was aweful and PDFs have been haveing issues ever since. I can open up PDFs created on my Mac in preview just fine...
    But when I try and open a PDF created on a windows computer it says:
    "Please wait...
    If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to display this type of document.
    You can upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Reader for Windows®, Mac, or Linux® by visiting http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
    For more assistance with Adobe Reader visit http://www.adobe.com/support/products/ acrreader.html.
    Windows is either a registered trademark or a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Mac is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. "
    I am not sure why where the PDF was created would make a difference but couldnt help but notice that was the difference between the PDF files that work and the ones that give that message. I can view the PDFs on a windows computer just fine and never had issues untill adobe, it seems to have messed up PDFs on my Mac and I am so frustrated with them. I have searched my computer for any remaining adobe files, deleted them and restarted my computer but I am still getting this message.

    Uninstall Adobe Reader's plug-in.
    Remove the following two files from  /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/:
    AdobePDFViewer.plugin
    AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin
    Open Safari Preferences > Extensions. Do you see AdobePDFViewer? If yes. disable.
    Log out/in and test.
    Another option is to download and install this plugin. Schubert|it PDF Browser Plugin . PDF Browser Plugin 2 is free for not-for-profit activities if used at home or at educational institutions.
    http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/

  • Bursting Program PDF Fonts different from Report Program PDF

    We have designed a new XML Publisher report which uses bursting mecahnism to send out the output pdf to supplier. The report rdf completes successfully and generates the pdf with right fonts (Font Mapping configured in XML Publisher Administrator). AfterReport trigger of this report triggers the bursting program. This program sends out the pdf to the right recepients. But this pdf that comes through mail has different fonts then what it was in the output of first program. Can some one guide on how to get the same pdf fonts through bursting email file that is similar to the one that was generated through Report Program. Any help will be highly appreciated.
    Thanks,
    Mohammadi

    Anyone who can throw light on this?
    Thx

  • Font Book - after 10.5.2 update, font has no preview and doesn't work

    Help me, this problem is driving me crazy!
    I've done a clean install of Leopard 10.5.0 on my MacBook Pro, on an external firewire drive (I want to keep my Tiger install as is at the momement). I install the adobe postscript Type 1 font Carta, which is a map symbol font, in Font Book. Font Book shows the preview of the font, which looks fine. I download a fresh 10.5.2 update and install it, restart. Now in Font Book, no preview of the Carta font, the preview window is blank, or it shows whichever font was displayed before, ie if I click on Arial then on Carta, the preview of Arial remains. Double clicking on the font itself opens Font Book main window, but no preview. The Opentype version of this font does exactly the same thing. Font Book validates the fonts as being okay.
    When it comes to applications, Word 2004 will display the font, but character spacing is all over the place. Indesign CS3 will display the first 96 characters correctly, but after that it puts in a 'missing font' highlighted space. Opening the font with Linotype FontXplorer, the preview shows the font, though it seems to be missing the 'Z' and 'z'. Character Palette shows all glyphs in the font correctly, but double clicking on any above the first 96 puts in a 'missing font' space in Indesign. The trouble is the characters I need to use are all above this point in the font! Basically, it seems that the OS update has changed the font mapping.
    The Font Book preview problem doesn't just happen to Carta, it seems to happen on a number of other fonts, mostly symbol fonts, some that I've created using Fontographer. All work perfectly in OS9 and 10.4.11. Even more annoyingly, other colleagues with different Macs on 10.5.2 are having no problems. I have done all the usual voodoo of deleting font caches, rebuilding permissions, even gone back to the font CDs to get the originals, reinstalled, etc.
    I have installed Leopard from 2 different DVDs, on two different intel machines (a MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro), and swapped the Firewire drive onto a G4 (I installed it so it would boot both the G4 and the MBP), and always the same result. I'm going to install an HD internally on the G4, install Leopard and see if the same thing happens.
    Anybody got any useful suggestions?

    I'm slowly getting to a solution, or at least a reason, for this problem. It seems that Leopard has tighter requirements on fonts for the languages they support. The Carta info in Tiger looks like this:
    !http://www.biscuit.demon.co.uk/carta/cartainfotiger.gif!
    Whereas under Leopard it says:
    !http://www.biscuit.demon.co.uk/carta/cartainfoleo.gif!
    Indonesian as the language under Leopard?! All the other fonts that I have problems with generally have NO language when I look at the info panel under Leopard AND Tiger. But Tiger seems to cope with them with my language set to British English. At least this may explain why the character encoding goes a bit crazy under Leopard.
    Out of a peculiar sort of masochistic interest, I went through all of the default languages, plus a few others, that Leopard installs, seeing the effect of changing the language on the Font Book preview. I should just say that the Font Book Repertoire is always the same for all the languages, and the same info is displayed each time too. I'm now convinced it's the character mapping that changes when different languages are selected as the default.
    Font Book Repertoire:
    !http://www.biscuit.demon.co.uk/carta/cartaenglishrep.gif!
    All the following languages displayed the preview correctly: English, Francais, Deutsch, Espanol, Italiano, Portugues, Svenska, Norsk Bokmal, Dansk, Suomi.
    The preview looked like this:
    !http://www.biscuit.demon.co.uk/carta/carta_english.gif!
    The following languages showed the same behaviour as British English, in that NO preview showed, it would display the font preview of the previously selected font: Portugues (Portugal), Austalian English, Canadian English, US English, Espanol (Espana)
    Changing to languages with different alphabets tended to show different things. Not sure if I've correctly identified the languages.
    The two Chinese (I think) languages - AaBbCc characters only
    Japanese (I think) - a to m, A to M, numbers 1 to 0
    Korean (I think) - two arrows usually mapped to singe and double quotation marks, and ABcdEFgh 1234567890 - see this image:
    !http://www.biscuit.demon.co.uk/carta/carta_korean.gif!
    Russian (I think) - 1234567890 ("*#%&@`)
    Polski - This produced the most, dropping several characters from the main alphabet, but adding a load that usually map to ("*%&') - see below:
    !http://www.biscuit.demon.co.uk/carta/carta_polski.gif!
    This all means that I have to stick with "English" as my Language, rather than "British English". I have yet to reinstall CS3, but I'll do this without changing the language, and hopefully CS3 with get the encoding correct.
    Questions? Comments? Sorry about all the images.

  • 10.6.8 combo & 10.6.7 pdf fonts problem

    Does the 10.6.8 update combo correct the pdf fonts problem that was inherent to 10.6.7?  After a couple days of stress I had to do the lengthy 10.6.7 uninstall process in order to refine my doctoral dissertation.  This has made me gun-shy & fearful of updates.  Is it safe to update now?

    The combo should fix your problem.  As always have a back-up in case you have to revert.
    The Font update came out to fix the problem in 10.6.7
    http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1377
    It should be rolled into the Combo-Update:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399

  • PDF font problem on Solaris (Reports9i)

    Hi.
    We are recently moving our application from 9ias Release 1 to 9ias Relese 2. After several configuration problems I was managet to get most of it to running, but encountered big problem with Reports. In Reports6i we used font aliasing, and included several modified fonts with AcrobatReader3. With AcrobatReader5 it's not posible because of more strict checking of PDF standard.
    Then of course with Reports9i we start using PDF font subsetting. After added several ttf's (Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman) it started working fine with one exception. Report created with plain Courier New 10pts is not subsetted - in pdf i receive fixed-bold 12 pts.
    It happening only with this one size of font. Courier New with size 10 pts and bold or italic looks good. When I change size to 9 or 11 pts - it's ok. I've checked if fonts existed in Xserver - they are.
    I double checked uifont.ali - it's ok. I've temporarily solved the problem by changing font in builder on Windows from Courier New to Courier (same size), and then everything works ok. Of course it might be solving - but for the amount of work (about 200 reports) I'm looking for more 'normal' solution.
    Any ideas?
    Reports server working on Sun Sparc Solaris 5.8, 9ias Release 2 (Patch 2).
    Builder works on WindowsXP, 9ids Release 2 (Patch2).
    Czesiek.

    Reports 6 or Reports 9? Note that Reports 6 does not generate
    syntactically correct RTF for Unicode characters.
    We've been running with a postprocessor to correct the RTF and
    to change the Oracle-set font to Arial; I'll be watching to see if
    there's a better way since our postprocessor shouldn't be needed.
    -- allan

  • Create a pdf font catalog

    Hello,
    anyone know is there a freeware that can create a pdf font catalog?
    I use theTypeBook to create printed font catalog for all the fonts but takes a lot of space,
    now would like to recreate it in pdf format but don't want to scan them all.
    Thank you

    Hi, B_L. Create your catalog in TypeBook, then choose Print, and in the Print dialog box, click the Save as PDF button.

Maybe you are looking for

  • I have converted a PDF to a word document but how do I save it to my computer

    I have converted a PDF to a word document but how do I save it to my computer

  • Find a filename in a folder with aperture databases (or files)

    hi, I guess it has been asked before. Is there a way with OSX 10.6.8. to search a folder with about 20 aperture files (or databases) for a single filename? I am not searching for duplicates (so Tidyup or Duplicate Annihilator don't work for this), bu

  • Camera with High Definition option.

    Forum, I have read many posts about HD cameras. It seems HD can be many things,I think? My needs are quite simple. Holiday video, yachting,animals and messing about. I have 1200£ ,say 2000 $ to spend. A camera that will fit in a small bag. Not someth

  • Changing A Language In Java

    Hey, I am looking to do a program in netbeans 4.1 and I am looking for advice on how to create a set of methods on changing language to english to french and german. The labels are in english I wanna make this code a bean so I can change the language

  • Retreving Image from Blob in forms 6

    I am using forms 6 and oracle 9i.i have an image item and on when_button_press trigger i insert an image into the image_item by calling the read_image_file function and then save that image into the database.it gives me a message that 1 transactoion