I noticed that in some PDFs, the letter 'A' is not shown in titles. This is quite annoying, does not really inspire confidence in the product, and makes me hesitant to purchase any Pathfinder PDFs.
Is this a known problem? Am I doing it wrong?
Example: http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5423/pathfinderaproblem.png
It's a screenshot from the 3.5 to PF conversion guide.
Edit: I found out that the problem only seems to exist on Mac OS X (the PDF displays correctly on Debian and other Linuxes). However, on Mac, the problem exists with both Preview and Quicklook (the built-in PDF viewers) and third-party software such as Skim...
Its a known problem. Its on Apple's end.
Do you have any details on this, or a fix?
Edit: Ok, I found the posts on this board and it is related to a bug in freetype, which was fixed upstream, but not yet updated in 10.6.
Apple needs to use a different library. I believe the current one is poppler 0.14
If you look through the boards its been mentioned and discussed a number of times, even in the past week. The best solution most can do on that platform is use Adobe's reader until Apple does something about it.
Yeah, thanks. I really don't like Adobe Reader, it's slow, the UI is crap, and the font rendering is pixelated and ugly.
I submitted a bug report for Skim, in the hope they will link Skim to a custom version of freetype...
I really don't like Adobe Reader, it's slow, the UI is crap, and the font rendering is pixelated and ugly.
...but the letter 'A' does show up quite well in Adobe reader.
I really don't like Adobe Reader, it's slow, the UI is crap, and the font rendering is pixelated and ugly....but the letter 'A' does show up quite well in Adobe reader.
Indeed. Now the choice is
- Skim or Preview, where A's are missing in titles, but are fast and usable or
- Adobe Reader, where all A's are showing, but it's slow, ugly, the font rendering and antialiasing suck, the UI looks like it was created by Stallman and .... well, it's clear the proper A's are not worth it (at least to me) ;)
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There's also the Google Docs viewer which I've discovered to be the fastest viewer once the file loads ... but that one does have the missing A problem as well.
The Google docs viewer (and some other 3rd party viewers) use the Apple libraries to render the fonts, so the problem carries over. Adobe installs its own libraries for Reader.
That I know, and its not actually using Apple's libraries per se its multiple places (including Apple and Google) using an OSS library and not using the one with the fix in place.
If apple manages to get radar (their bug reporting tool) running again in the next few hours, I will file a bug report. Shouldn't be hard to fix for them, simply upgrading to another minor version of a dependency...there is hope.
One of the many reasons why PDF is a garbage document type.
One of the many reasons why PDF is a garbage document type.
Say what? How do you come to this conclusion? What would be your preferred alternative, and why?
How do you come to this conclusion?
See above, obviously, combined with lack of editing, slow, clunky, bloated file size, etc.
What would be your preferred alternative, and why?
For actual electronic document sale? Probably nothing else, as far as I know.
M$ Word is a superior document type overall, however (and unfortunately). Reasons? Everything opposite of the PDF problems, above.
How do you come to this conclusion?See above, obviously, combined with lack of editing, slow, clunky, bloated file size, etc.
I don't agree. Just because there's a bug in an open-source library that uses that format does not mean the format is bad.
Lack of editing - What? PDFs are editable.
Slow, clunky - only when using the official Adobe Reader. Its a problem of that program, not with PDFs themselves.
bloated file size - What? Compared to what? Text files? Since PDFs can use vector graphics, bitmaps, and text, this claim is nonsensical.
There is a reason that the most advanced UI system is based on PDF.
What would be your preferred alternative, and why?M$ Word is a superior document type overall, however (and unfortunately). Reasons? Everything opposite of the PDF problems, above.
Hmm, maybe as a user that has only been exposed to the formats via use of MS Word and Adobe Reader, I could imagine that you get such a distorted view of the format's capabilities. Ouch.