PDFs and Foxit


Customer Service


Hi,

It seems that increasing numbers of PDFs, particularly in the Chronicles range, are only part-readable in Foxit Reader, my preferred PDF reader. Is supporting Foxit fully planned for the future?

Thanks,
Toby

The Exchange

Toby Rogers wrote:

Hi,

It seems that increasing numbers of PDFs, particularly in the Chronicles range, are only part-readable in Foxit Reader, my preferred PDF reader. Is supporting Foxit fully planned for the future?

Thanks,
Toby

I would like to know this as well as my main PC at home won't run Acrobat for some reason which makes it tough to use the PDFs. My favorite recent Foxit weirdness was in the Alpha 2 release where it wouldn't display the letter 'A' in any of the headings (like feat names). Strange...


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Lord Stewpndous wrote:
Toby Rogers wrote:

Hi,

It seems that increasing numbers of PDFs, particularly in the Chronicles range, are only part-readable in Foxit Reader, my preferred PDF reader. Is supporting Foxit fully planned for the future?

Thanks,
Toby

I would like to know this as well as my main PC at home won't run Acrobat for some reason which makes it tough to use the PDFs. My favorite recent Foxit weirdness was in the Alpha 2 release where it wouldn't display the letter 'A' in any of the headings (like feat names). Strange...

I noted the same in several (non-Acrobat) PDF readers on my Linux machine. All those were based on the poppler engine. Actually, the A letters are there, if you copy and paste; they just don't display. Strange!

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

We can't pledge to support any third-party PDF readers because we lack the control to do so. Our print and PDF workflows are built using only Adobe products, which we generally keep updated to the latest versions. Thus, if there are compatibility issues in the final product, only Adobe or the company that makes the third-party reader can solve them.

(By the way, I'd strongly recommend never using any version of Adobe Reader older than version 8, on any platform. My opinion is that Reader 6 and 7 were pretty lousy, but 8 is actually a decent product.)


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:

We can't pledge to support any third-party PDF readers because we lack the control to do so. Our print and PDF workflows are built using only Adobe products, which we generally keep updated to the latest versions. Thus, if there are compatibility issues in the final product, only Adobe or the company that makes the third-party reader can solve them.

(By the way, I'd strongly recommend never using any version of Adobe Reader older than version 8, on any platform. My opinion is that Reader 6 and 7 were pretty lousy, but 8 is actually a decent product.)

The problem that I have with Adobe is that it will oftentimes error out while printing watermarked files (at least the Paizo Watermarked ones). I'm not sure what the cause is, but I've verified with my downloads on 3 different computers (Customized and downloaded seperately to each computer). I switched over to Foxit because it could print my files.

The downside of this, is that if I can't use Foxit and Adobe doesn't work, I have no way of printing these files out (I don't like using the originals because my gaming material tends to get thrashed). The only way to print them is to go find some evil-doer who's stripped the watermark out and grab the files from them (which of course I don't want to do).

Is there a difference (that Paizo is aware of) between the way that you watermark files and the way someplace like RPGNow does?


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Another question for the Paizo crew. Is there a difference in the way that the Chronicles and Adventure Path PDFs are put together? From the last two months Foxit reads the AP books fine but Classic Monsters and the Gazateer are both missing text from every other page.


Nyarlathotep wrote:
Another question for the Paizo crew. Is there a difference in the way that the Chronicles and Adventure Path PDFs are put together? From the last two months Foxit reads the AP books fine but Classic Monsters and the Gazetteer are both missing text from every other page.

Yea, what he said !!! All the APs and the Gamemastery modules are fine with Foxit, it is *just* the Classic Monsters and the Gazetteer that is having problems, which leads me to believe that youse guys are changing something in the layout.

Oh, and Adobe 8.1 reader runs *HORRIBLE* on my machine!

-- david
Papa.DRB

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Nyarlathotep wrote:
Is there a difference (that Paizo is aware of) between the way that you watermark files and the way someplace like RPGNow does?

I have no idea how they watermark their files, but I'd be pretty surprised if they aren't using a similar tool (if not the same tool).

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Nyarlathotep wrote:
Another question for the Paizo crew. Is there a difference in the way that the Chronicles and Adventure Path PDFs are put together? From the last two months Foxit reads the AP books fine but Classic Monsters and the Gazateer are both missing text from every other page.

Both products are done by the same person using the same software on the same computer.

Is it literally every other page from beginning to end, or are there any exceptions?

The Exchange

Vic Wertz wrote:
Nyarlathotep wrote:
Another question for the Paizo crew. Is there a difference in the way that the Chronicles and Adventure Path PDFs are put together? From the last two months Foxit reads the AP books fine but Classic Monsters and the Gazateer are both missing text from every other page.

Both products are done by the same person using the same software on the same computer.

Is it literally every other page from beginning to end, or are there any exceptions?

For me it's every other page from beginning to end.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

On the Gazatteer: Page 5 and every odd numbered page past that is missing.

On Classic Monsters: Page 5 and every odd numbered page past that is missing.

The backgrounds are there and if you print it you get everything but the text and images.

Guide to Korvosa is fine.

Hope this helps.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Nyarlathotep wrote:

On the Gazatteer: Page 5 and every odd numbered page past that is missing.

On Classic Monsters: Page 5 and every odd numbered page past that is missing.

The backgrounds are there and if you print it you get everything but the text and images.

Guide to Korvosa is fine.

Hope this helps.

Can everyone reporting the blank page problem with Foxit confirm that the Table of Contents and page 3 of the Gazetteer appears fine, but odd-numbered pages 5 through 63 appear blank?

Shadow Lodge

Nyarlathotep wrote:
The problem that I have with Adobe is that it will oftentimes error out while printing watermarked files (at least the Paizo Watermarked ones). I'm not sure what the cause is, but I've verified with my downloads on 3 different computers (Customized and downloaded seperately to each computer). I switched over to Foxit because it could print my files.

Adobe doesn't crash on me but it has a huge memory footprint and doing anything with large PDFs like the Pathfinder RPG is a bear. I have the same problem with the missing 'A's on the headers. My solution is to use Adobe to print it out, usually 10 pages at a time so it doesn't choke, but if I'm using the content online I use a different viewer such as xpdf (Linux) which seems to be the fastest.

It seems peculiar that all of the third party acrobat readers have this same issue.

The A is only missing in the headers, maybe it's the font?


Vic Wertz wrote:
Can everyone reporting the blank page problem with Foxit confirm that the Table of Contents and page 3 of the Gazetteer appears fine, but odd-numbered pages 5 through 63 appear blank?

Definitely - that is exactly the behaviour I am experiencing.

The only other odd thing I've seen has been the Crimson Throne player's guide, which only displays the bottom left corner of the background image.

Grand Lodge

I've got foxit on my vista machine and have no problems. Perhaps its the unzip utility that is screwing things up. I had to forgo the one in vista for Winrar.

Liberty's Edge

Vic Wertz wrote:
Nyarlathotep wrote:

On the Gazatteer: Page 5 and every odd numbered page past that is missing.

On Classic Monsters: Page 5 and every odd numbered page past that is missing.

The backgrounds are there and if you print it you get everything but the text and images.

Guide to Korvosa is fine.

Hope this helps.

Can everyone reporting the blank page problem with Foxit confirm that the Table of Contents and page 3 of the Gazetteer appears fine, but odd-numbered pages 5 through 63 appear blank?

I see the exact same thing in my files using Foxit.

Sczarni

Herald wrote:
I've got foxit on my vista machine and have no problems. Perhaps its the unzip utility that is screwing things up. I had to forgo the one in vista for Winrar.

for those of you experiencing problems, what OS (Windows, Mac, Linex) are you using and what are you using to unzip?

Using winrar - Foxit works fine, but using the Microsoft unzip tool I have the missing A problem occasionally with other PDFs


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

I'm running Windows XP Pro and using Winrar to unzip the download file. The text is visible in Adobe, so I don't think it's a problem with the file extraction.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Can everyone reporting the blank page problem with Foxit confirm that the Table of Contents and page 3 of the Gazetteer appears fine, but odd-numbered pages 5 through 63 appear blank?

That is *exactly* the problem with the Gazetteer. Thank you for looking into this.

Oh, and I am running Windows XP Pro/SP2, and I use 7-zip to unzip the files. As I said, only these two files have the "blank page" problem, and I have not had a problem with un-zipping files.

-- david
Papa.DRB


I'm running XP (SP2) and normally use the built-in zip manager. Following your suggestion, I tried it with WinRAR, but I still have the same problem.

Sczarni RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

I've been getting the Pathfinder PDFs, and have had no problem reading them with Foxit. Is there something different between the Pathfinder PDFs and the ones that are having problems?


Papa-DRB wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:
Can everyone reporting the blank page problem with Foxit confirm that the Table of Contents and page 3 of the Gazetteer appears fine, but odd-numbered pages 5 through 63 appear blank?

That is *exactly* the problem with the Gazetteer. Thank you for looking into this.

Oh, and I am running Windows XP Pro/SP2, and I use 7-zip to unzip the files. As I said, only these two files have the "blank page" problem, and I have not had a problem with un-zipping files.

-- david
Papa.DRB

For the record, I am running a very similar setup: XP Home/SP2, 7-Zip, and Foxit 2.1 build 2023 with no problems reading the PDF of the Gazetteer.

If I would hazard a guess, the little Sunburst symbol at the top of the odd pages is causing Foxit to fail to render those pages.

My first suggestion is to make sure you have the most up to date Foxit - it had a problem in early versions handling pictures. Also, it doesn't automatically install with certain picture format support, and you have to make sure it downloads and installs the additional support. It has been a long time since I had to do it, so I can't tell you at the moment exactly what to do...

But if people still have problems, let me know and I will look into it.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Disenchanter wrote:


If I would hazard a guess, the little Sunburst symbol at the top of the odd pages is causing Foxit to fail to render those pages.

My first suggestion is to make sure you have the most up to date Foxit - it had a problem in early versions handling pictures. Also, it doesn't automatically install with certain picture format support, and you have to make sure it downloads and installs the additional support. It has been a long time since I had to do it, so I can't tell you at the moment exactly what to do...

But if people still have problems, let me know and I will look into it.

I'm grabbing an update now (to 2.3.2008.2825) and will see what happens. Back in a few....

Edit: I'll feel really dumb if that's what the problem is.


Well, I just completely removed Foxit 2.2 and installed Foxit 2.3.

Now it works for both the Gazetteer and Classic Monsters. I'm happy...

-- david
Papa.DRB


Nyarlathotep wrote:
The only way to print them is to go find some evil-doer who's stripped the watermark out and grab the files from them (which of course I don't want to do).

I took the latest Pathfinder RPG release to my local Kinkos and had them print it out for me (double-sided/B&W/spiral-bound=$16.) Sure, it means you have to actually take it somewhere instead of printing the 125-pager from the comfort of home but it sure saved me time not to mention the printer ink and I got a sweet binding that I couldn't have done otherwise.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Papa-DRB wrote:

Well, I just completely removed Foxit 2.2 and installed Foxit 2.3.

Now it works for both the Gazetteer and Classic Monsters. I'm happy...

-- david
Papa.DRB

Same thing here. 2.3 Fixes the problem.

Officially, I'm allowed to feel dumb now.


Just to chip in my 2 cents on 3rd party PDF viewers...

I haven't had any problem reading the PDFs using Preview for Mac.


Nyarlathotep wrote:

Same thing here. 2.3 Fixes the problem.

Officially, I'm allowed to feel dumb now.

Don't be. I was having the problem with Classic Monsters and it came out before the update from 2.2. to 2.3 which was 4 days ago!! In fact looking for a new version was the first thing.

-- david
Papa.DRB


Quite bizarre! 2.1 works, 2.2 (which I was using) doesn't and 2.3 works fine. I'm sorry if I caused any inconvenience in asking about this - thanks to everyone for their help!


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Toby Rogers wrote:
Quite bizarre! 2.1 works, 2.2 (which I was using) doesn't and 2.3 works fine. I'm sorry if I caused any inconvenience in asking about this - thanks to everyone for their help!

I'm glad you asked, I wasn't sure what the problem was with it either, so it's nice to have it solved.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Disenchanter wrote:
If I would hazard a guess, the little Sunburst symbol at the top of the odd pages is causing Foxit to fail to render those pages.

Close—but that symbol appears on page 3, which people say works fine. I suspect that real problem is that the prior version of Foxit didn't like the font used for the numbers inside that symbol—the numbers don't begin until page 5, which is where people report the problem starting. We don't use that font in the Pathfinder Adventure Paths, or in the Guide to Korvosa—just in the Gazetteer and Classic Monsters.

(See—this is why we can't guarantee support for 3rd-party software!)


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:
Disenchanter wrote:
If I would hazard a guess, the little Sunburst symbol at the top of the odd pages is causing Foxit to fail to render those pages.

Close—but that symbol appears on page 3, which people say works fine. I suspect that real problem is that the prior version of Foxit didn't like the font used for the numbers inside that symbol—the numbers don't begin until page 5, which is where people report the problem starting. We don't use that font in the Pathfinder Adventure Paths, or in the Guide to Korvosa—just in the Gazetteer and Classic Monsters.

(See—this is why we can't guarantee support for 3rd-party software!)

Ahhh Fonts. Will we see no respite from their evil designs!


Vic Wertz wrote:
(See—this is why we can't guarantee support for 3rd-party software!)

Myself, I don't expect you to.

But, I use third party software knowing I'll get a few "quirks" here and there. Which is why I am so used to trouble shooting problems with them. :-) But they are still usually great programs, and often worth the effort to avoid using the main program.

Just a tip for people still reading, if you are having a problem with an alternative program (Foxit for Adobe, GIMP for Photoshop, etc.) odds are that it is a problem with the alternative program. Always start with trying to update that program, and check its technical support options first.


Toby Rogers wrote:
Quite bizarre! 2.1 works, 2.2 (which I was using) doesn't and 2.3 works fine.

I just confirmed this myself. Due to this topic popping up I found I was two releases behind in my Foxit.

So I went ahead and downloaded 2.2 and it did not read the Gazetteer as reported. And, also as reported, 2.3 works fine.

As another note, you no longer have to have Foxit install picture support. Nice change. ;-)

Community / Forums / Archive / Paizo / Customer Service / PDFs and Foxit All Messageboards
Recent threads in Customer Service