InDesign CS4 to PDF - Missing characters

I created a brochure (2-sided with lots of copy) using InDesign CS4; I exported it to PDF [Compatibility: Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4)].



When opened in Acrobat 9 Professional on my computer, the file contents were perfect. The file was sent as an email attachment to prepress. When the printer opened it using Acrobat 7.0 Professional (don't know if it was on PC or Mac; they have both), there were missing characters.



The word ''officer'' occurred eight times in the document. In two of those occurrences, the characters ''ffi'' were missing. The remaining 926 words conveyed without a problem.



Any insights will be appreciated.

Frank
InDesign CS4 to PDF - Missing characters
Try embedding the entire font by setting the subset figure to 0% and

tell the printer to be sure he doesn't have use local fonts enabled in

Acrobat.



Bob
InDesign CS4 to PDF - Missing characters
Embedding the entire font shouldn't make any difference whatsoever. InDesign embeds all the glyphs that are used. If the font is embedded at all, Acrobat only uses the embedded font.



Furthermore, Acrobat (including Acrobat 7) uses the local fonts option if and only if the font being accessed is not at all embedded and that particular font is on the user's system.



What is very suspect here is that the ffi ligature appears correctly in only 2 out of 8 occurrences in the word officer and that you see no problems on your system using Acrobat 9 Pro.



Here is what I would look for:



(1) Ascertain that the font is really embedded at all. Use CTRL-D and look to see whether the font is either embedded or subset embedded. If neither, that is the source of the problem. You could also run a preflight profile to ascertain that all fonts are properly embedded.



(2) You might want to find out what your printer is
really doing with your file. Is he opening a page or two in Illustrator, something can can cause very strange PDF corruptions? Are there any steps that he is performing before opening it in Acrobat such as processing it in some prehistoric workflow system that has more errors than an early Mets game?



(3) Find out whether your printer at least has Acrobat 7 updated with all the updates issued by Adobe. They were a whole carload of them. I think about 12 such updates in the 24 months that Acrobat 7 was current. You might also want to suggest that at this point, Acrobat 7 is a fairly old version for any printer that wants to stay up to date in terms of PDF print publishing workflow.



- Dov

Thank you for your helpful postings!



The occurrences of ''officer'' were all in Myriad Pro (regular, bold and semibold condensed). The two occurrences that rendered incorrectly were semibold condensed - the only two in that variant. In the embedded font list were all of the fonts/variants used (shown as Type 1), plus ''MyriadPro-SemiboldCond (Embedded Subset) Type: Type 1 (CID)''. That was the only CID font embedded according to the CTRL-D list. (Perhaps the ''ffi'' ligature from the CID font set was used? But ONLY for the semibold condensed variant?)



I also know that the prepress guy opened the file in Illustrator CS3, but not being privy to their process, I don't know how my PDF file transitioned into their printing plate.



The bottom line for this job is that the plant figured out a workaround and correctly printed the piece. And I am now thinking that I must ALWAYS outline fonts to protect against odd procedures and/or software versions used by prepress.



Again, thanks!

Frank

%26gt; I also know that the prepress guy opened the file in Illustrator CS3



What in the world did he do that for?



Bob

%26gt; What in the world did he do that for?



I can't answer that with any confidence. We typically send this plant artwork created in Illustrator, but thought InDesign a better choice for this job. Perhaps he opened it before he read the copy in my transmittal email. Perhaps he just wanted to preview the artwork. Maybe he typically uses Illustrator to get from PDF to plate. Since I have no knowledge of the prepress process for this plant, I can only guess.



Cheers!

Frank

The prepress process does not involve opening PDFs in Illustrator. This

is very likely where your ffi ligatures got ruined. The ''workaround''

your printer came up with was probably just to skip Illustrator and open

the PDF in Acrobat, the way he should have in the first place.



Outlining your type is a poor but effective solution to protect you from

your printer's ''odd procedures''. Better protection, though, would be to

get a printer who doesn't think Illustrator is a prepress tool.



--

Kenneth Benson

Pegasus Type, Inc.

www.pegtype.com