I designed something that contains a lot of text. Much of it is from the calendar extension. I changed some of the fonts and font sizes in the result.

I save to PDF. It looks fine. Well, it had one problem. I had cloned the drawing (48 objects) so I could print two on a page. The clone was missing some elements. All blurred, I think. Known bug, I'm certain.

I took it to one national printer/copier place today. Let's call them RedHex. They could read the file, but when they printed it, the text was all missing, and all of the clone. I think it gave them some sort of undecipherable error code.

I took it to another office supply store that has a print shop ("Maples"). They printed it fine.

Discuss. Seriously, if I'm using uncommon fonts, do I need to get into the habit of turning them into paths on PDF output? Or is it likely that printer #1 just has a broken system?

Kjohrf wrote:if I'm using uncommon fonts, do I need to get into the habit of turning them into paths on PDF output?

Fonts are always embedded when exporting to EPS/PS/PDF with Inkscape 0.47 (that doesn't mean they are converted to paths, just that the font definition of the used glyphs is included in the PDF. Text in the PDF file is still searchable and selectable as text)

~suv wrote:

Kjohrf wrote:if I'm using uncommon fonts, do I need to get into the habit of turning them into paths on PDF output?

Fonts are always embedded when exporting to EPS/PS/PDF with Inkscape 0.47 (that doesn't mean they are converted to paths, just that the font definition of the used glyphs is included in the PDF. Text in the PDF file is still searchable and selectable as text)

Thanks. So... Sounds like they just are incompetent or have broken software?

I don't know what their issues are with the PDFs created by Inkscape - primarily because I don't have a lot of personal experience with printing, be it at home (cheap b&w laser) or externally - but simple logic would indicate that it isn't a problem of the PDFs themselves if another shop can handle and print them fine.

Makes sense. Thanks again.

It has something to do with the application they use to print from. Even if they are using adobe acrobat the version of acrobat has a lot to do with what elements are lost. MSword also is spotty. Openoffice gets some things and loses others.. scribus is excellent but no print shop is going to have it. Internet browsers are usually the best widely available option IMO..... You can ask a print shop to use IE8/Firefox?Opera to open and print a PDF that is not printing otherwise...

druban wrote:Internet browsers are usually the best widely available option IMO.....

But browsers don't have native PDF support - if they display PDFs in the browser window it's a done by a plugin (many will use the one supplied/installed by Adobe Reader I guess), so I can't see how that would be different than printing from Adobe Acrobat directly. But then again - I haven't tried and asked in a print shop....

(Firefox 3.5.5, Safari 4.0.4 and Opera 9.64 on OS X 10.5.8 do not have PDF support out-of-the-box)

You're right, it's just that the version number varies. I think it might be that people update their browsers more often - or automatically and freely - than their other applications. Just guessing.

the only certain way - and of course this doesn't address your question at all - is to save as a high resolution (600-900dpi) PNG and place the PNG image in a PDF for universal viewing. it does result in a large file, and ultra7-zipping is essential ...

druban wrote:You're right, it's just that the version number varies. I think it might be that people update their browsers more often - or automatically and freely - than their other applications. Just guessing.

That seems very plausible to me - the net is full of recommendations to always keep Adobe Reader updated (similar to Adobe's Flashplayer it has seen its share of critical flaws exploited by maliciously crafted PDF files on the web ;-)

Use Bullzip PDF Printer......