Jump to content

PDF import text errors


Recommended Posts

I'm seeing a few errors when opening PDFs into Publisher (and Designer)  with some text objects being positioned incorrectly. Also ligature glyphs are replaced by a ?. 

Occasionally, some other glyph substitutions. I've no reason to suspect the PDFs themselves, as they behave in all other apps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here are some simple examples of the problem.

1.Example1.pdf  PDF file from Indesign CS6, PrePress settings. The PDF contains standard ligatures, Old Style figures, and a Swash capital. 

Affinity Publisher does not display the ligatures, but uses the glyphs of the individual component letters. It does not display the non-lining figures, and it does not display the Swash capital.

2. Example2.pdf  PDF file from Dorico (music notation software, using the Qt framework)

Affinity Publisher displays the 'fi' ligature as a Question mark symbol. It also moves one of the "FI" text elements to a random position.

The problem occurs whether the PDF file is placed onto a page, or Opened directly. It occurs in Publisher and Design. 
 The PDFs display correctly in InDesign, Illustrator, Apple's Pages, MS Word. Acrobat reports no Syntax errors or problems with the PDFs in Preflight.

In fact, the problem even occurs with PDFs made in Affinity Publisher!

Unfortunately, this means Affinity Publisher cannot be relied upon to display PDFs containing text correctly, and all PDFs have to be outlined before use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, benwiggy said:

Unsurprisingly, this has come up before, and according to this thread, PDFs with embedded fonts are not supported. 

That essentially means "all PDFs that you're likely to encounter in the wild" can't be used. :o

I have just been converting all PDF's sent to me with embedded fonts to high res JPEG using Apple Preview. So far so good. And if fonts are converted to curves, I open PDF in Affinity Designer and save it as artwork instead rather than use PDF (not trying to sound too anti Adobe, but...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, abfdesign said:

I have just been converting all PDF's sent to me with embedded fonts to high res JPEG using Apple Preview. So far so good. And if fonts are converted to curves, I open PDF in Affinity Designer and save it as artwork instead rather than use PDF (not trying to sound too anti Adobe, but...)

Yes, but any extra step is extra time and one more thing to go wrong. Conversion to JPEG has the potential to lose image data, alter information about colorspaces and overprinting, and remove metadata which might be crucial to workflow.
Affinity Designer handles PDFs in the same way, so outlining fonts to curves works in both Designer and Publisher. But again, outlining may well introduce errors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.