Help with Arial being replaced with ArialMT in PDF output

[mjansari]

Hi,

Does anyone know how Flare generates PDFs??? I'm running windows 7 and Flare 6.1 and I'm in the process of converting our frame template to flare. However, I'm running into a really annoying issue. When I generate the PDF, the arial font is replaced with arialmt, which completely messes up the look of the PDF. I've read the other posts about the issues with the adobe open type fonts, but this font comes with Windows 7??? What's even more strange is that I installed Flare on my home machine with windows 7 and the PDF output is fine!

Anyone have any suggestions that I can try?

Thanks!

[LTinker68]

Did you double-check the print medium in your stylesheet to make sure you (or someone else) didn't inadvertently specify ArialMT for the font?

[RamonS]

On the PC that goofs up the PDF, is the desired Arial font installed? It should, because it is one of the default fonts, but even those can be removed. May have happened by accident.

[mjansari]

Yes to both questions. Print-medium is set to Arial and it's on PC. What's even weird is that I don't have ArialMT on the machine yet that's the font that appears in the PDF.

[RamonS]

So the ArialMT font appears on the same PC where you make the PDF? Does it look OK on a different PC? AFAIK the fonts are not embedded in the PDF.
What happens when you create Word output. Does that use ArialMT as well?

[mjansari]

What i did was copy the project from my home laptop to my work laptop. Both are running win7 64-bit, acrobat 9, and frame 9.
When i generate the PDF on my home laptop, the PDF is fine, but on the work laptop it's different. When I look at the properties of the DPF, it says ArialMT.
I didn't try outputting to word, but I'll give that a try on Monday. I'll also be getting my coworker to give it a try on her laptop and see what she gets.

[LTinker68]

AFAIK the fonts are not embedded in the PDF.

I thought ones I've built and examined in Acrobat afterwards indicates the fonts were embedded, but maybe it only did that because my copy of Acrobat is set up to embed those specific fonts, so Flare might use that setting. I assumed Flare didn't touch Acrobat when it built PDF since you don't need Acrobat to be able to build PDF, but maybe if it's on the system then Flare will use it. Or at least utilize its standard settings.

[NorthEast]

I'm pretty sure that ArialMT is just the postscript name used for Arial; they should be exactly the same.

If I build a PDF containing text in Arial, Acrobat Pro lists it as ArialMT in the document properties.
How are you checking the font name in the PDF?

[RamonS]

From what I found out about Arial and ArialMT is that they seem to be two different fonts, but compared side-by-side they look identical to me. What exactly is messed up about the look in the PDF? Is everything else the same ,especially margins?

[mjansari]

I took a look at the font properties for the PDF that i generate at home and that too says ArialMT. However, that PDF turns out fine.
Here are pages from the two pdfs. What I need is my output to look like the one on the right.

Page2.gif

Page1.gif

[NorthEast]

If the generated PDFs are both showing Arial MT as the font, then that suggests Flare isn't behaving differently; and perhaps the difference is related to the fonts on your laptops.

How do both PDFs appear on other PCs; do they look the same?
Or does the 'bad' PDF look ok on other PCs? And does the 'good' PDF look wrong on the work laptop?

[mjansari]

On a WinXP machine they look as is. That is the Bad PDF looks bad and the good PDF looks good. I'm suspecting that it might be a distiller job option or something similar that's causing the issue, but I have no clue what Flare uses to generate the PDFs.

[RamonS]

AFAIK the latest Flare versions use their own PDF engine and no longer require anything from Adobe to be present. I'd try a file compare to make sure that the files really are different not just get rendered differently.

[mjansari]

RamonS, I'm not sure what you mean by doing a file compare. How would I do that on the PDFs?

[RamonS]

Use WinMerge to compare the two PDF files. Everything except for date and time stamps should be identical. I tried it out with two simple pdf files created from the same source text file and the only difference is this:

Code: Select all

/CreationDate (D:20110322120936)

That means if the same Flare project files on two different systems each generate a PDF that only differ in the time stamp, but look differently, then it is a rendering issue in the PDF viewer, not an output issue of Flare.

[mjansari]

Gotcha! Will give it a try.

[mjansari]

I got a chance to compare the two pdfs, and there's lot of differences. I installed Flare on my Win XP PC and generated the PDF and it came out fine. I'll get my colleague to give it a try since she has a similar laptop and setup as i do.

I just tried generating the PDF on my colleague's win7 laptop and the output is fine. So it must be something on my laptop that is causing the output issue. Before I go ask IT to install my colleague's win7 image on my laptop, is there anything else I can look at?

[i-tietz]

On a WinXP machine they look as is. That is the Bad PDF looks bad and the good PDF looks good. I'm suspecting that it might be a distiller job option or something similar that's causing the issue, but I have no clue what Flare uses to generate the PDFs.

My ideas:
1. Win XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3) had it's problems with fonts ... do you use it? Then maybe you shouldn't.
2. There's something like "replacement tables" in Windows somewhere. They list what font is used to replace what other font if it's not available.
3. Joboptions are a good guess. Have you looked at them? Did you change them?

[mjansari]

i-tietz,

To answer each of your suggestions:

1. Win XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3) had it's problems with fonts ... do you use it? Then maybe you shouldn't.
The issue is on Win7 not WinXP and only on my laptop.
2. There's something like "replacement tables" in Windows somewhere. They list what font is used to replace what other font if it's not available.
One of the PM for Flare told me that ArialMT is exactly the same as Arial. After playing around with Flare, I've realized that it's increasing the spacing between each letter and line when i generate the PDF.
3. Joboptions are a good guess. Have you looked at them? Did you change them?
RamonS said that Flare 6.1 uses it own PDF engine and doesn't require adobe.

[i-tietz]

RamonS said that Flare 6.1 uses it own PDF engine and doesn't require adobe.

Knowing Adobe I say: Doesn't mean they don't invite themselves. Have you got Acrobat or sth Adobe-else on the compi?

[mjansari]

I do have acrobat 9 pro, but I also have it on my home laptop and the output from the home laptop is fine.

[cbdebris]

Did anyone look at the default setup for the printer output to PDF? If you don't embed your fonts you are likely to get substitutions.

In Win7 go to Start > Devices & Printers, right-click the print driver and select Printing Preferences. Where it says Default Settings click Edit. Make sure things are set just the way you want.

We select to embed all fonts -- that way we don't get surprises in our outputs.

[cjcbrown]

Hi, just popping over from the other thread on kerning and rivers of text.

did you check the Windows display settings on each of the machines? When I had difficulties it was with a 120 dpi setting for Windows display properties, instead of 96 dpi.

[mjansari]

Thanks cjcbrown!!!! That did it! I ever going crazy with this issue!
I'm going to make sure my manager gets the maintenance package for the next release!

[cjcbrown]

Glad to hear it. Boy do I know that going crazy feeling!!!