Weird PDFs

[Ann_Camilla]

So the publisher asks me to change the isbn number of various archived books so that he can get them reprinted as paperbacks. They go like this:

1. Typeset a book (always in Adobe Garamond Pro), send PDFs of hardback and dustjacket to printer.

2. Couple of years later  take text from front and back flaps of dustjacket, set them as front pages of book, export to PDF and insert them at the front of above PDF. Using Edit Document Text (acrobat X 10.1.16), I change the isbn number and add a reprint date. Send publisher new PDFs for a reprint with case.

3. Couple of years later (i.e., last week) take PDF from 2 above, add reprint date and change isbn number. Save again as PDF and send to publisher for his new reprint as a paperback. Publisher complains that the prelims/front matter page looks like braille.

4. Only solution is to dig back into ancient archives on NAS, resurrect InD prelims/front matter and start all over again ... then the publisher 'likes' them.

So what I'm asking is why oh why the second time can the publisher not see good PDFs on his PC whilst I, on my Mac, can? Can't be anything to do with PC/Mac or even fonts as it's always the same one. Perhaps PDFs don't like being changed more than once?

Thanks for listening. Any advice will be gratefully received.

Ann

[William Adams]

Sounds as if the encoding of the font/ text got messed up when re-saving.

If you must edit .pdfs, use PitStop.

William

[C F Majors]

When I receive a PDF of a book that needs updating, I lay the whole thing out in InDesign (using "place multipage PDF"). Then I do paste-ups of any corrections. 

When I export that file to PDF, I have more confidence in my resulting file because I am able to control the embedding of fonts and images. 

Carol 

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[Dick Margulis]

On 2/17/2016 8:37 AM, Ann_Camilla wrote:
>
>
> So what I'm asking is why oh why the second time can the publisher not
> see good PDFs on his PC whilst I, on my Mac, can?

"Looks like Braille" makes me think he's looking at an EPS of the page
rather than text rendered from fonts. As you probably know, an EPS
renders differently on screen (no hinting or aliasing; if the outline
touches a pixel, the pixel is rendered black). In print, the difference
is somewhere between nonexistent and barely perceptible. On screen,
particularly at small scales (100% or less), the difference is quite
noticeable. Tell the publisher to zoom in on the offending text and see
if it doesn't smooth out nicely.

[Ann_Camilla]

Thank you for your emails everyone. Not sure I understand Dick as I only sent a PDF, not an EPS. And William, I have looked at Pitstop but it's so so expensive. I'll give Carol's advice a go -- thanks Carol. Thing is, I've done all this hundreds of times before and it has always worked -- but not one of the PDFs worked properly last week -- not one. Grrrrrr!! :)

[Dick Margulis]

On 2/17/2016 12:24 PM, Ann_Camilla wrote:
> Not sure I understand Dick as I only sent a PDF, not an EPS.

I'm suggesting that the pages in question, by the time you were done
with whatever steps you engaged in to add them to the PDF, may have been
rendered as EPS by the software. It's easy enough to check.

[Bevi | PubCom]

"Looks like Braille"
Do you mean the letters are now round black dots?
Could be a font problem. Either the font is missing (wasn't embedded into the PDF).
Or in the case that the font was embedded but was subsetted, it could be looking for characters that weren't part of the original PDF's subsetted fonts.

This often happens when a PDF is edited; missing characters are not in the PDF's original subsetted font and they show as round dots. Looks like Braille.

<< > So what I'm asking is why oh why the second time can the publisher not
> see good PDFs on his PC whilst I, on my Mac, can?>>

Because YOUR machine has the complete font and the PDF is getting all the characters from your system, including the missing ones from the subsetted font.

Your publisher's machine doesn't have the complete font and therefore gets the characters from what was subsetted into the PDF when it was originally made.

Has nothing to do with mac or windows. Has everything to do with how the fonts were embedded into the PDF by you.

—Bevi Chagnon

— — —
Bevi Chagnon | www.PubCom.com | be...@pubcom.com
Technologists, Consultants, Trainers, Designers, and Developers
for publishing & communication
| PRINT | WEB | PDF | EPUB | Sec. 508 ACCESSIBILITY |
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[William Adams]

There's a preference which one can toggle in Acrobat --- it allows one to control whether Acrobat uses local fonts, or only those which are in the .pdf --- set it to the latter so as to be able to troubleshoot issues such as this.

William

[Ann_Camilla]

Many thanks William. That sounds like a good solution and I've toggled it. Thank you all for your help. Love this list.

Ann

On Wednesday, 17 February 2016 13:37:52 UTC, Ann_Camilla wrote: