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PDF Import


Conde

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Hello,

There is a problem when importing / placing a PDF created by Sibelius (Music Notation software) . The PDF (see attached example) looks different from the original.

Sibelius creates PDF 1.4

I´m working on Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Publisher 1.8.  Everything looks good in QuarkXpress.

Example-Publisher.jpg

Edited by Conde
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PDF import is the Achilles' Heel of the Affinity Suite. Anything that uses text glyphs in complex ways --  ligatures, glyph variants, OpenType features -- cannot be relied upon to display correctly. Notation software such as Sibelius uses fonts for many of the symbols, as you will know. 
The 1.8 update seems to be a bit better than before, but there are still problems.  

The official line is that it's not a bug, but that importing PDFs with embedded fonts (i.e. all print-compliant PDFs) is 'not supported'.

What's most curious is that Affinity will import EPS files of essentially the same data perfectly. So that's one workaround.

PDF import:

108478991_Screenshot5.png.86c4bc033380bf0abbb230e1feb7da08.png

EPS import:

1728484022_Screenshot6.png.4b7cf4acf32da97bdd22e7613069fe6f.png

The other solution is to "Outline" all text in the PDF. This means converting the text data into 'raw' vector line and curve data. There should be no loss of quality, but you need a software tool that can do it. Most Adobe software can do it (but then you wouldn't be here!). The command-line PDF tool GhostScript can do it, with the suitable incantation:
 

/usr/local/bin/gs \
    -dNOPAUSE \
    -dBATCH \
    -dNoOutputFonts \
    -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
    -sOutputFile="OutputFilename" \
       <inputFilename>


Also: Mountain Lion? You're lucky Affinity works at all, as that's below the minimum system requirements (10.9 Mavericks).  You should be able to run El Capitan (10.11), even on the oldest hardware.

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Thank you benwiggy for your detailed answer.

Sorry - how stupid of me, I am using Capitan 10.11. - Sibelius writes PDF 1.4 (Mountain Lion).
I also noticed writing in Sibelius EPS. With 200 pages of music score and TABs, this problem appears in one composition consisting of three voices. As long as there is a solution, everything is okay. It makes no difference to me to export EPS.  I did this for decades.

Publisher, to be precise the whole Affinity Suite, surprises me in every way. Since I am switching to Catalina later this year, ending my 25-year love-hate relationship with Adobe (Suite 5.5.), I am not confident that Publisher and Designer are completely sufficient for my needs. However, there are still huge differences between Photoshop and Photo.

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I agree with benwiggy's characterization of this as Affinity's Achille's heel. The solution given for the problem of the lack up embedded fonts is usually that the font must be installed and active, or else font substitution will occur. We then suppose that there is no problem as long as the fonts in question are available for Publisher to use.

We can see from this post another example of why inability to read embedded fonts is not the only problem with the lack of a true passthrough implementation. In this case, it appears that the fonts in use were installed on the system and available to Publisher, but Publisher still failed to faithfully reproduce the PDF while it tries to make the placed PDF editable.

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6 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

The solution given for the problem of the lack up embedded fonts is usually that the font must be installed and active, or else font substitution will occur. We then suppose that there is no problem as long as the fonts in question are available for Publisher to use.

Having the fonts installed is not enough: Affinity fails to reproduce even basic fi and fl ligatures in Times New Roman. 

This very day, on another forum, someone was asking for alternatives to InDesign. His work involves placing PDFs on pages, so I was unable to recommend Affinity Publisher.

If you can import an EPS with non-installed, embedded fonts correctly, then really, there's no reason why a PDF made from that very EPS should produce bizarre results. The Affinity 'engine' is over 5 years old now. Photo can't raster a PDF. Publisher can't place one. Designer can't edit one. These are all long-solved problems.

It's a very ugly stain on an otherwise brilliant suite. I hope we don't have to wait for version 2.0 - or longer.

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2 hours ago, benwiggy said:

Having the fonts installed is not enough: Affinity fails to reproduce even basic fi and fl ligatures in Times New Roman. 

This very day, on another forum, someone was asking for alternatives to InDesign. His work involves placing PDFs on pages, so I was unable to recommend Affinity Publisher.

If you can import an EPS with non-installed, embedded fonts correctly, then really, there's no reason why a PDF made from that very EPS should produce bizarre results. The Affinity 'engine' is over 5 years old now. Photo can't raster a PDF. Publisher can't place one. Designer can't edit one. These are all long-solved problems.

It's a very ugly stain on an otherwise brilliant suite. I hope we don't have to wait for version 2.0 - or longer.

This is the number 1 reason I do not use it other then testing and like you why I cannot recommend Publisher. Part of page layout and design is using customer PDF's and not always have access the fonts and really not needing the fonts as the PDF itself is not being edited. This has been an issue since the BETA but many seem to think of it as a feature having a PDF editor in their page layout software. I do not want Indesign to edit my PDF's and I certainly don't want Publisher. I would think this would be more handy in Designer if they are going to edit PDF's anywhere. 

Hopefully this becomes a priority as it is a foundational feature for the program in my opinion. 

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  • 4 months later...
  • Staff

Hi all,

Sorry for the delayed reply. We believe we have fixed this issue in the latest beta (based on the files we have had from other customers). If you could, check it and see how it goes. If you're still affected, please come back with some sample files and we can have a look :)

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  • 1 month later...
  • Staff

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (Incorrect import of PDF with musical font from Sibelius) of the program in the latest release.

The fixes and how to update are described in these forum posts.

We would appreciate you checking that this issue has now been resolved for you,

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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2 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

We would appreciate you checking that this issue has now been resolved for you,

There are still several issues relating to fonts/glyphs in imported PDFs, particularly related to ligatures, OpenType alternates, and PUA Unicode ranges.

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  • Staff

@benwiggy Please can you be explicit (screenshots and/or sample files) thank you

@Gabe Please investigate the remaining issues

 

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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11 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

@benwiggy Please can you be explicit (screenshots and/or sample files) thank you

 

Affinity cannot handle the fi and fl ligatures in this PDF. 
Untitled Project 1.pdf
Also: create a PDF in Affinity Publisher that contains Small Caps, Non-lining numerals, Swash Italics, and other OTF variants.
Then import the PDF back in. Results can vary form font to font, but even using Adobe / Monotype fonts, e.g. Minion, Kepler, Garamond, there are problems.

These have been reported many times.

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38 minutes ago, benwiggy said:

Also: create a PDF in Affinity Publisher that contains Small Caps, Non-lining numerals, Swash Italics, and other OTF variants.

In my case I use a font with lining numerals, creating a PDF in APu and opening this PDF again in APu results in non-lining numerals. Doing this in ID and opening the PDF in Illustrator results in numerals converted to curves. Here is this particular font to blame. I asked the distributor of the font if this is ever going to be fixed, which they denied.

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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7 minutes ago, benwiggy said:

It's not the font's fault.

How do you know? Illustrator failed, Inkscape failed, so ...

LibreTraining had an explanation for "my" font failing.

 

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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Test this PDF, made in Aff Publisher. It contains Non-lining figures in several different Adobe / Monotype fonts. -- Caslon, Garamond, Baskerville, Bembo, etc.  

They are all outlined in Illustrator, because they are alternate glyphs that can't be mapped back. If you claim that these fonts are 'wrong', then almost every font is wrong and we can't use any of them. Or, the application should work with fonts as they are. 

That is what Illustrator does, by outlining the glyphs. That is what Affinity should be doing. 

Instead, Affinity imports this PDF and switches in the default glyphs.

Figures.pdf

 

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  • 1 year later...

Hi, I'm trying to correct a score that was created in Sibelius, and need to move a music symbol called a "mordent" above the note.  

I lost the Sibelius file, and it would be much easier to edit these small fixes in Affinity Publisher.  I can move the note but not the symbols attached to it. 

Any workarounds?  

Mordent_shift_affinityPublsher.png

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