Bad character spacing in PDF

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ksoltys
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Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by ksoltys »

This is a Blaze problem, but I didn't see an appropriate section in the Blaze forum so I'm posting it here.

I'm getting really bad PDF output from a project I've created by importing FrameMaker files. The spacing between characters is way off - it almost looks like Blaze is inserting a thin space between letters. The line spacing is also off, but I haven't gone into the style sheet settings to check this part yet. This is what I get in Blaze.
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This is what I should be getting from a PDF created from the source FrameMaker file - the PDF was created on the same machine that I'm running Blaze on.
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The topic files look fine.

I have no idea what's going on. Can anyone help?

Thanks
Keith Soltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by KHHS »

Hello,

i had (and still have) the same problem with Flare and found somewhere in these forums, that a negative "letter-spacing"-value in the style helps, e.g. "-1pt". I can confirm this, at least for the standard-fonts that i use in pdf-output. (I still wonder how a solution like this could ever be found.)
The line-spacing seems to be a know problem with Flare (a bug), so that in pdf output you can't have line spacing with less than 14pt. There doesn't seem to be a solution for this one yet (negative line spacing won't help).
Is that true? Also for Blazes PDF-Output?
ksoltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by ksoltys »

Interesting. If it's a bug, it's one that should have kept the program from being released, given that PDF output is pretty important in a program that's designed to produce output for print.

After reading the previous reply, I tried output to Word and it appears to be fine. I was able to create a PDF from the Word file by printing to the Adobe PDF driver, but this is a bit of a hack and wouldn't be as full-featured as the PDF generated by Blaze (no bookmarks, for example).

Unless I can get a proper fix for this, it renders the program unusable for me.
LTinker68
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by LTinker68 »

What font are you using? Is it a Type 1 or Open Type (I think that's what it's called) font? There are known problems with those fonts in Flare, but you should definitely submit a bug report if you're using those types of fonts.
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ksoltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by ksoltys »

I'm using the standard TrueType fonts that come with Windows: Times New Roman, Arial, Consolas.
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by LTinker68 »

Consolas isn't a standard font, or rather, it doesn't come with Windows by default. If you temporarily set it to a different font, say Georgia or Garamond, then do you see the same effect when you output to PDF directly from Flare?
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by doc_guy »

Consolas is a standard font for Vista and MS Office 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolas
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by LTinker68 »

Ah, well as a Windows XP user who has IE6 installed, I can tell you it's not a standard font. So ksoltys, you might want to choose a different font. Unless you know for a fact that all your customers will be using Vista and/or IE7.
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by doc_guy »

But if the target is PDF, then the end users's OS/fonts is supposed to be irrelevant. However, it does sound like there may be a bug with the way that font is being processed, and if that is true (you can check by changing the font), then that is a bug that should be fixed, since the font _is_ a standard font going forward.

However, I'm not convinced that this is the issue, after looking a bit more into it. The font that is displayed in the image isn't Consolas. Consolas is a mono-spaced font that you might use for code samples and the like. It's not a font that you'd want to use for body text, and it isn't the font that is displayed in the user's image.

I wonder if there still isn't a setting the the style sheet that is causing this; maybe something weird on the <body> tag; maybe something weird with the imported Frame styles.

What happens when you create a new project and add content and build the PDF? If your font looks normal, then I'm guessing that the problem is with the Frame imported styles. I'd also check the topics themselves to make sure that there isn't some local formatting/styles that are causing trouble, though this is probably less-likely, since you aren't seeing the problem in the XML editor.

So, try a new project and see if it happens there. That will tell you if it is a Blaze problem on your machine, or a project-specific problem.
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by doc_guy »

I wonder if this has something to do with the copyfitting features built into Blaze/Flare 4.

A couple of things to check:

Open your Stylesheet. In the simple view, show All Styles, then double-click on 'body'. Verify that Letter spacing and word spacing is set to "default" (it's on the advanced tab)

Then double-click 'p' (which is what you should be using for your body text, unless your Framemaker import got set to something weird), and check out the Short Line tab. Set "Enable Short Line Elimination" to "never". Then check the Advanced Tab, and make sure Letter Spacing and Word Spacing are set to "default".

Then re-build and see if anything changed....

It's a stab in the dark, but I'm wondering if something like that would help.
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ksoltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by ksoltys »

I created a project from one of the default Factory templates, set the font to Times New Roman, which is what I use for body text, and rebuilt the PDF, and it still looks odd.

I also followed Paul's suggestions in the previous message and it didn't make any difference. All of my paragraph styles appeared to have word and letter spacing of default.

My Frame files use only three fonts: Arial for headings, Times New Roman for body text, and Consolas for code listings. Since these are internal documents, I don't have to worry about users not having these fonts (and it shouldn't matter for PDF anyway).
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by LTinker68 »

ksoltys wrote:I don't have to worry about users not having these fonts (and it shouldn't matter for PDF anyway).
So long as the PDFs embed the fonts. Hopefully MadCap set it up that way, but I don't know if it automatically embeds the fonts or not. Although in your case it won't matter since it's for internal use.

Could you post your stylesheet code for the <body>, <p>, and <li> tags?
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ksoltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by ksoltys »

I don't have a <body> tag.

I do have a p.BodyText which is the Blaze translation of my Frame default paragraph style:

p.BodyText
{
text-align: left;
margin-left: 0in;
margin-right: 0in;
margin-top: 0pt;
margin-bottom: 6pt;
font-family: 'Times New Roman';
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
font-size: 11pt;
letter-spacing: 0em;
color: #000000;
text-indent: 0px;
line-height: 13pt;
text-decoration: none;
}

This is one of my list tags:

p.ListBullet
{
text-align: left;
margin-left: 0.25in;
margin-right: 0in;
margin-top: 0pt;
margin-bottom: 6pt;
font-family: 'Times New Roman';
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
font-size: 11pt;
letter-spacing: 0em;
color: #000000;
mc-auto-number-format: '• ';
mc-auto-number-position: outside-head;
mc-auto-number-offset: 24px;
line-height: 13pt;
text-decoration: none;
}

Thanks,
Keith
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by LTinker68 »

What if you get rid of the letter-spacing property from both of those? Ems isn't a print unit of measure so I'm curious about why it's being used. The value of "0", regardless of the measurement type, may be causing a problem. Although I would expect the characters to be closer together, not further apart, but you never know.

I haven't used Blaze since all its features are included in Flare, but I'm still surprised it doesn't have a body tag. Do you not see one at all in the stylesheet file (not the GUI but the actual file), or are you assuming you don't have a body tag because you've never defined it?
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by doc_guy »

First thought, related to your question: I agree with Lisa. Remove the whole letter-spacing property from both styles, and re-publish to see if that helps.

Second thought, not related to your question, and totally unsolicited (so ignore if you want): If you are going to be doing authoring in Blaze, may I suggest you move away from the special class of <p> for body text, and stick with just <p>?

You could do a global search on <p class="BodyText"> and replace it with <p>, or you could re-import your Frame project into Blaze, and change the style mapping so that your BodyText style in Frame maps to the <p> style in Blaze.

If you don't, you'll have one of two scenarios: First, you will have to copy all your p.BodyText styles over to p so that the styles match when you add new content (but that is problematic, because you now have to change style definitions in two places), or Second, you will spend a lot of time applying the BodyText class to all your paragraphs of content.

The <p> element in Blaze/Flare is the same thing as your BodyText element from Frame, so you will be more productive, in my opinion, if you use just the <p> for your body text rather than a class of <p>.

Hope this helps.
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ksoltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by ksoltys »

I've removed the letter spacing parameter from the project's style sheet and rebuilt it. It made no difference whatsoever.

I get the same results using one of the sample projects, so the problem is obviously in how Flare is generating PDFs, as opposed to Word output, which appears to be fine.

I am at a loss here - can anyone tell me how to file a format bug report?

Thanks
Keith
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by LTinker68 »

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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by Richard Ferrell »

Keith,

Can you open a support ticket for this issue, Listed below are the steps for opening a support ticket.

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/support/contact.aspx
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ksoltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by ksoltys »

I've submitted a bug report. I can't open a support ticket as I don't have a maintenance key - the copy of Blaze I have is a review copy, courtesy of Sharon Burton. I have a license key but the support ticket form doesn't accept that.

Thanks,
Keith
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by forfear »

Turn off short-line elimination
Turn off hyphenation
choose Never, not (Default)

look in your body, p or html classes

as the good Dr. House might say, i've seen a case of this before...and its not lupus.
If you submit your bug feedback request here, the more likely it'll get fixed or included in a future release
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by forfear »

don't forget to choose the correct mediums when you edit.
could be 'print' or a custom medium like 'printOnly' (my recommendation) when editing in the Stylesheet view.
while you're doing these edits.

in case i forget, also check your PDF targets to ensure they use the same print medium.

i hope this helps..mr ksoltys
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by Nita Beck »

Anyone have any luck resolving this issue? I have been struggling with exactly the same problem in Flare 4 for direct to PDF output. I'm using Times New Roman and Arial (purely out of desperation) and the character spacing in the PDF output is ugly as all get-out. I've spent hours and hours (which means that I've lost hours and hours of income, given that I'm self-employed).

I thought that I'd try outputting to Word, as there the character spacing is just fine, and then generating PDF from there, but that just spawned a huge number of other sundry headaches.

Does it matter that I'm not using mediums? I have two entirely separate stylesheets for the PDF output and WebHelp output. I realize that this means that I have to have styles of the same names defined in both sheets, but I want to be able to use either of the spreadsheets in other projects where I might have just one target output.
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by Nita Beck »

I haven't opened a support ticket on this, since the original poster has, but I wanted to add something on the assumption that Richard F. et al are monitoring this topic.

On a hunch this morning, I moved my Flare project that yields the bad character spacing in PDF from my Vista machine to my XP machine. I didn't touch a thing, just built a new PDF. Guess what? The bad spacing does not manifest itself. Although I'd prefer the spacing to be a little tighter, it's clearly not screwed up the way it is when the PDF is generated on Vista. It's "good enough" for me to present it to my client.

So, my workaround is to produce the PDF on XP, not Vista. Something is clearly amiss with Flare on Vista.

Nita
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by KevinDAmery »

Nita Beck wrote:I haven't opened a support ticket on this, since the original poster has, but I wanted to add something on the assumption that Richard F. et al are monitoring this topic.
It's best to enter your own support ticket or bug report (bug reports don't count against your maintenance contract if that's a concern). Richard does monitor the forums, but may not see every post, whereas if you submit a bug report it definitely ends up in Madcap's system. Also, the more users report something the more likely Madcap management is to consider it a higher priority.

You can submit bug reports here:

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx
Until next time....
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Re: Bad character spacing in PDF

Post by Nita Beck »

Aw shucks... You caught me. I was hoping to be a slacker...

Seriously, good point. I'll go ahead and do that. I've got a lovely maintenance contract that I barely use, so I've got no valid excuse!
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